Intended as a follow up to the Protecting Your Drinking Water activity, young environmentalists use their assessment of the a hypothetical town's water supply to debate the installation of underground chemical storage tanks. With...

Get all your blends organized into neat little boxes! This resource provides pages and pages of words that you can print out and place into labeled boxes so that you can find the exact words you want to work on with your class...

After conducting research on a given scientific animal name, group members take a walk around their school and look for the specified animals in that classification. Then, they come back to their worksheets and create five creative clues...

Imagine children working long hours in factories, coal mines, and in the fields. Class members examine a series of pictures and read about early attempts to regulate child labor and current child labor laws.

To begin the learning about dams, learners read (or are read to, depending on the age group) a passage about how dams work. Next, they work in groups to use the materials provided to build a small scale working dam. After the experience,...

Display knowledge about Pablo Picasso and his works with a folder book. Learners cut out images, paste them into tiny petal books, and then attach those onto folder pages. In the additional space, pupils write about the words of art.

Could you live without your phone? What about cars, steel, or clothing? Class groups collaborate to produce presentations that argue that either the telephone, the gramophone, the automobile, the textile industry, or the steel...

William Shakespeare penned some of the richest and most fascinating works of literature—or did he? Middle schoolers read three brief informative passages and conduct additional research to evaluate the claim that Shakespeare did not...

Budding poets create two acrostic poems, one for their name and another using a word of their choice. Over the course of five days, scholars compose, revise, publish, and share their work with their peers.

When school and community leaders are at odds, what's a young person to do? Grouped pupils examine the details of a difficult situation during the 10th in a series of 12 leadership activities. Presented with a decline in community...

Test mathematicians' knowledge of adding fractions with a brief assessment that challenges them to play teacher while correcting a peer's work. Scholars examine Carl's mathematical response, identify where he went wrong,...

Many regard John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as the great American novel. The lesson plan combines a variety of strategies, including partner work, independent practice, creative writing, grammar instruction, and small group...

How do you balance a set of data? Using a ruler and some coins, learners determine whether the balance point is always in the middle. Through class and small group discussions, they find that the mean is the the best estimate of the...

Shuffle 'em up and deal! Learners practice operations with polynomials using cards they pass around the room. The activity works with pairs or individuals, so it offers great flexibility. This is the fifth installment in a series of 42...

How many points are needed to define a unique parabola? Individuals work with data to answer this question. Ultimately, they determine the quadratic model when given three points. The concept is applied to data from a dropped...

Investigate expected value as a long-run average. The eighth installment of a 21-part module has scholars rolling pairs of dice to determine the average sum. They find aggregate data by working in groups and interpret expected value as...

Make all the ratio representations fit together. The 15th segment in a series of 29 presents ratio problems to solve. Scholars use a variety of representations to respond to the questions. The problem set has pupils show how the...

Continuing from the previous lesson in the series, scholars learn to use positive and negative integers to describe real-world situations. In groups, they come up with their own situations for given positive and negative integers. 

What's the link between lactase persistence and dairy farming? Biology scholars analyze data to find evidence of the connection, then relate this to human adaptation. Working individually and in small groups, learners view short video...

Get moving to a better understanding of graphs of derivatives. Using motion sensors, scholars vary their velocities to create graphs of the first derivative of a function. The activity challenges groups to first create a script of the...

After reflecting on jobs people perform in the present day, scholars discuss what they believe jobs would have been like in Colonial Virginia during the American Revolution. Small groups then perform a jigsaw using informational packets....

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...

Seniors work with teachers, counselors, and administrators to organize a community wellness fair. Committees take on the responsibility for the various tasks (publicity, set up, hospitality room, agency contact, thank you letters, etc.)....

Tap into the desire to learn about computer codes. Pupils apply the Tap Code and the Polybius Square to send secret codes using sound. They design a code that tells a robot what movements to make and then test out their code using one of...