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...

What did abolitionists have in common with those working for women's rights? How has the Native American struggle for voting rights differed from the struggles of other groups? Class members examine the 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th...

See how Boolean algebra relates to video games with a lesson that teaches young scholars how to use Boolean algebra to create rules for a virtual world. They test the rule base for consistency in groups.

Skills, talents, and personal qualities are the focus of the fourth session in a 23-lesson series of life skills exercises. Participants build a mind map of all the skills and talents in the class, and then groups work together to...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...

Introduce learners to allegorical art with four bronze sculptures by Francesco Bertos. After modeling how to recognize bias and allegory in Bertos' Africa, class groups examine the other three sculptures in the series before creating...

This basic, black-and-white printable is a copy of the periodic table of elements. It includes the standard element name, symbol, atomic number, and atomic weight. Across the bottom is an explanation that says for elements without stable...

Translate transition words for your class with this handout and brief exercise. Fairly straightforward and informative, it includes sample sentences and a working link to a more complete list of transition words. There are two different...

The electoral college can be confusing for citizens of any age. Clear up misconceptions with a handy printable map that details how many electoral votes are allotted to each state, as well as a history of modern elections, complete with...

Note values are the focus of a short worksheet that asks young musicians to respond to short-answer questions and to complete a measure with notes of the appropriate value.

Do your kindergartners become frustrated when learning about handwriting? Use a guiding chart to show your learners the most efficient ways to form each lowercase letter. Additionally, it provides methods to remember how to write numbers.

From three-way neck rolls to a figure-5 hurdler's stretch, this is an ultimate guide to healthy exercises. It begins with a bulleted list of general guidelines on cardiorespiratory exercise, flexibility, resistance exercises, and range...

The 20th installment in a series of 36 focuses on the characteristics of the p-block elements. Learners discuss, read about, and answer questions pertaining to the occurrence of these elements in nature, their electron configurations,...

A reading of Tanya Lee Stones' biography of Ella Fitzgerald lets middle schoolers get up close and personal with the First Lady of Jazz. Stone recounts details of Fitzgerald's life from her early days through her experiences as a teenage...

A timeline can be a powerful learning tool because it reveals a pattern in events. While few would consider St. Augustine, Florida a hotbed of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, a selection of background information and a timeline of...

Notes provide useful background information about the group portrait of the Graham children painted by Hogarth in 1742. Includes ideas to extend the study of the painting to other disciplines.

Discusses the history of the Ku Klux Klan, the group's resurgence after World War I, and the film about the KKK called Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith.

Learn how apartheid came to be official policy in South Africa. Under apartheid, South Africans were divided into four racial groups: Whites, Asians, Coloreds, and Blacks. Discover what life was like for black South Africans and how...

The U.S. Department of State provides an annual report on "developments in countries in which acts of terrorism occurred, countries that are state sponsors of terrorism, and countries determined by the Secretary to be of particular...

A comprehensive look at the history of South Africa beginning with its settlement by Zulus and progressing through apartheid to the current strong democracy. Information is from the U.S. State Dept. Background Notes.