Students investigate the ways in which ancient technologies - six types of simple machines and combinations - are used to construct modern buildings. As they work together to solve a design problem (designing and building a modern...

Do not let the class just sit and rot. Pupils learn how decomposition and nutrient recycling is important to an ecosystem. Groups design an experiment to determine how environmental conditions affect decomposition. They develop a poster...

Students reverse engineer a cereal. In this dietary lesson students identify the minerals that the human body needs to function. Students examine how foods are fortified by food engineers. Students find the amount of iron in a cereal by...

An outstanding lesson plan on financial literacy is here for you. Learners are presented with six scenarios, then compute the amount of savings they will have in their accounts. They complete a series of exercises designed to teach them...

A great way to learn to understand people and their environment is to study their folktales. Stories from China, Vietnam, India, Iran, Persia, and Palestine offer an opportunity for readers to investigate the cultures of Asia. A list of...

Upper graders form a "Presidential Task Force," and attempt to make recommendations concerning the future of the national power grid. After a teacher-led discussion which proves that our nation's energy consumption will soon outpace our...

Who would you love to see at your table? Groups research a decade, ranging from the 1840s to the 1960s, read a short story associated with that decade, and plan a dinner party, complete with table set-up and menu. After researching...

How can you tell if something is living or nonliving? Introduce a set of criteria which can be used to determine which things are alive and which are not. The class discusses the basic needs of all living organisms, checks out an...

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...

Young readers travel back to the time of the dinosaurs in this literature unit based on the story Dinosaurs Before Dark. Intended for use with upper-elementary special education students, this resource provides reading...

Here is a beautifully designed volleyball lesson plan on the forearm pass/bump and overhead pass/set. It includes a detailed multimedia presentation and set of instructional guidelines, skill cues, and lists of strategies for...

Grouchy? Sad? Here's a great resource that shows kids how music can be used to lift their spirits. Kids collect and chart data on the effects of music on emotions. After analyzing the results of their experiment, they develop...

Three activities make up an introductory lesson designed to create a strong foundation in comparing fractions to decimals and exploring and building decimal models. Pupils brainstorm and complete a Venn diagram to show how decimals and...

A series on environmental engineering introduces the class to issues that environmental engineers work to solve. This first lesson focuses on air and land issues, and looks at ways to reduce pollution.

...Then the water heater exploded like a bomb. Using a video of an exploding water heater, the resource presents the definitions of energy, potential energy, and kinetic energy to be used in later lessons of the unit.

What are the issues surrounding water quality? Viewers of this short presentation gain information about the importance of clean water, the lack of fresh water, water contamination, and ways that engineers treat water. 

The engaging story Rain School is further explored in the third lesson of a larger unit that explicitly teaches close reading skills by answering questions whose answers can only be found inside the text. Through teacher...

Teach young readers how to compare two texts and select passages that exemplify a specific theme with Lesson 6 from Unit 3. Begin by modeling how an expert reader selects examples from a text, performing a think aloud on how Article 2 of...

Explicitly explained and delightfully detailed are two ways to describe this tenth lesson plan in a larger unit designed for the first few weeks of third grade. Learners continue to use and develop previously learned close reading...

For this ninth lesson plan in a larger beginning-of-the-year unit, close reading skills are used independently to find the gist of the story That Book Woman. Rereading for important details is the targeted skill to unlock a deeper...

In the second lesson plan in a series that revolves around the story, Thank You, Mr. Falker, learners practice the skill of answering direct questions from the text while using complete sentences. After a teacher-led review of how to...

As your 3rd grade class finishes reading Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, the eighth lesson plan of this unit helps readers from an understanding of the very specific information on the final page of the book. As with the entire unit,...

As 3rd graders continue reading Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, they focus on the concepts of predator and prey in the fifth lesson plan of this unit. Scholars further develop their ability to answer questions using evidence from the text...

In the third activity from this unit based on the book Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, learners focus on using specific details from the text-to-answer questions about the habitat of bullfrogs. While reading the text, young...