To instill the importance of a positive classroom community small groups create a collage out of magazine clippings that highlight three characteristics of self-awareness. Written examples accompany the finished product. Groups turn in...

Group members take on roles to create a positive classroom community. Learners perform their role—leader, recorder, presenter, timekeeper, encourager, and collector—in preparation for a formal presentation of their positive thinking...

As an exercise in self-awareness and improvement, class members create a Conflict Shield listing 12 skills they believe are the most useful in conflict resolution. They then color the ones they have mastered while leaving uncolored those...

When it comes to teamwork, it's best not to drop the ball. Pupils stand in a circle, tossing around a ball of yarn to one another to create a web. Next, they use teamwork skills to keep a soccer ball from falling off the web before...

Class members work to translate the Declaration of Independence into their own words, as well as design a Facebook page within the context of 1776 to raise public awareness about the document and its meaning for citizens.

Students design and illustrate a pop-up book of their original writing after studying the book, The Jolly Postman: Or Other People's Letter's. They present their book and complete a self-assessment rubric.

It's tough for high schoolers to assess what is a credible resource and what is not. A helpful resource prompts class members to research a particular topic and record two facts—and create one lie—while documenting the sources. They...

Class members select a favorite book and write and present a book review. They view and discuss a sample PowerPoint presentation, then write a rough draft for their own slide show book review. They create a six-slide presentation to...

The Le Moyne brothers, Jean-Baptiste and Pierre, were among the first explorers of the Gulf Coast. Class members read biographical information and journal entries about these men, study maps showing where the settlements they established...

Bring a lesson about Negro League Baseball to your Black history unit, or any other research unit throughout the year. While the lesson plan itself is simplistic, there are several good ideas that you could use, such as creating trading...

Summarizing text is a balancing act between being brief but thorough. You need to be short and to the point, but also cover all the important details, a task that presents a challenge for many young learners. In this lesson based on the...

Students inquire about the politics and culture of Ancient Rome. In this Ancient Rome project/unit, students research life during ancient Roman times and create a newspaper with articles on politics, sports, culture, and economics.

Seventh graders perform an experiment to determine the effect of temperature on reaction rates. In this chemistry lesson, 7th graders take measurements and record data. They create a graph and analyze results.

Are you thinking of reading Any Small Goodness with your students? Engage them with these worksheets. Sharpen prediction and response skills, in addition to creating a character analysis map. Also included, are some thoughtfully-written...

Disguises and role playing are the focus of a resource that uses Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Henry IV, Part I, to demonstrate how we all play many parts in our lives; how we all are “merely players.” The many...

Some self-paced writing resources are just better than others. This one is great. The 205-page packet includes exercises on every aspect of the writing process, from crafting sentences and paragraphs, to proofreading, revising, and...

Use picture cues as a tool in order to create meaning along with text. With a wordless comic, young illustrators discuss the main idea and character traits, and independently write a summary for a page of a wordless comic. This strategy...

Twelfth graders set up a formal table setting in their classroom. Individually, they identify the proper serving or eating utensil for the various courses of a meal. To end the lesson, they discuss and role-play proper table manners and...

Students brainstorm a list of characteristics that friends should and should not have. In groups, they are given a set of hand puppets in which they role-play different scenerios in front of the class. To end the lesson, they are shown...

Computer savvy kids construct a lift-the-flap poster to aid them in selecting appropriate search sites for research and information gathering. Through online observations, they record and compare the features of four children's search...

Get your frogs hopping by introducing them to the concepts of ratio and proportion. As a class, they perform arithmetic operations using ratios then discover how they represent quantitative relationships. In groups, they write their own...

First graders identify and discuss different kinds of feelings and emotions. They take turns pulling a feeling out of a bag, and acting out their feeling while the other students guess the feeling. Students also complete a Feelings...

For this first of four lessons on book design, students are introduced to the vocabulary of book design through the use of bookwalks and a non-linear PowerPoint presentation in game-show (Jeopardy!) format.

Upper graders will use a reading comprehension worksheet about the meanest teacher to practice comprehension. They will read a 5 page story titled The Meanest English Teacher Ever and answer 4 comprehension questions about it.