Curated OER
Detective Fiction: Focus On Critical Thinking
Turn your 6th graders into detectives while growing their love of reading. Using critical thinking skills, they will be able to describe the five basic elements of detective fiction, read detective novels, make predictions, use the...
Curated OER
A Bug's Life
Look at life from a bug's perspective, and create a wonderful image based on what you think it sees. Learners use the crayon resist painting technique to draw and paint and picture of a bug's world from its point of view. Tip: This would...
Curated OER
Langston Hughes Was a Dreamer Too
Encourage your pupils to imagine their own dreams for the future. After studying three poems by Langston Hughes and listening to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, young poets craft their own dream stanza.
Curated OER
Condensation Polymerization
This organic chemistry lab activity is appropriate for teaching polymerization, percent yield, melting point, or the types and uses of polymer materials. Chemistry pupils imagine that they are working for a company to develop a special...
Memorial Art Gallery
Art Alive! - Beach at Blue Point
And then what happened? Class members engage in a series of activities that model for them how to read the story in a painting. Participants respond to questions that ask them to closely examine the elements in William Glackens' "Beach...
Curated OER
My Math Curse!
Math novices examine how math can help them in real-world situations. They listen to the book The Math Curse by Jon Scieszka, solve various word problems from the book, explore various math websites, write original math word problems,...
Curated OER
Summarizing Details in Sequence
Seventh graders write a few sentences explaining the most important events of their lives during the past year. As a class, they discuss why they chose the elements they did for their sentences. To end the lesson, they read a variety of...
Curated OER
1.2 Points, Lines and Planes
This is a lengthy overview PowerPoint that defines, explains, shows examples, and has practice problems about points, lines and planes. The class will need to write many notes and there is an example of how to set up in the Cornell...
Curated OER
Supporting Character Worksheet
Where would Harry Potter be without Ron Weasley? Where would Holmes be without Watson? Where would a good narrative be without an interesting supporting character? Encourage character analysis with this resource, which includes six...
Curated OER
Time Travel Advertisement
What makes an effective advertisement? Read the advertisement for the Time Machine 3000, and discuss the format and heading with your class. A short series of questions help middle schoolers analyze this advertisement before they write...
Curated OER
Metaphor Meanings
Help your young writers decipher the literal meanings of metaphors. After reading several metaphors, learners write the real meanings that the phrases are describing. Use this resource in a figurative language lesson, or when preparing...
Curated OER
Preterite -ar verbs 1
Focus on conjugating -ar verbs in the preterite tense. Your beginning Spanish language learners read the 32 sentences provided, filling each sentence's blank with the appropriate word. There are three word choices for each sentence. This...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Tar Beach (Ringgold)
Anyplace can become a beach! Budding readers explore Faith Ringgold's world of imagination in her book Tar Beach, which can be found on YouTube if you don't have it. What words will budding readers learn? They focus on the following...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Lu Shih — The Couplets of T’ang
Writing poetry in ancient China was the modern equivalent of sending a greeting card. Scholars learn about the ancient Chinese poetic form called the lu shih. They read about the context of poetry during the T'ang Dynasty and complete a...
Curated OER
Beginner's Guide to Arabic
Introduce your language learners to Arabic. The most useful portion of this resource is the detailed information on the Arabic alphabet. Each letter is placed in a grid that shows the various ways to write it based on the situation...
Schools Linking Network & Lifeworlds Learning
How Do We All Live Together?
Explore the concepts of community and point of view with these activities complementing the children's book Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne. Following a class reading of the story, ask students to either draw a map of the...
National Park Service
The Poet's Toolbox
If you need a lesson for your poetry unit, use two poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("Rain in Summer" and "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp") and a resource on Elements of Poetry. The lesson plan guides you through activities on...
Curated OER
Homer's The Odyssey
Whether or not you are new to using The Odyssey with your classes, this publisher-produced teaching guide deserves a place in your curriculum library. The packet includes background information, chapter by-chapter summaries, study...
Curated OER
Handout for "Tell-Tale Heart"
Looking for some additional materials for Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"? Included in a 14-page packet are an anticipation guide, a vocabulary list, exercise, and quiz, a list of literary terms, and an essay assignment with pre-writing...
Curated OER
Activity Guide for Snow
Create a cross-curricular learning experience around a shared reading of Cynthia Rylant's book Snow. From writing poetry and a singing a song about snow, to creating paper snowflakes and solving math story problems, this resource uses...
Book Units Teacher
Sentence Unit
Imagine using history to teach grammar. This 178-slide PowerPoint presents an amazing collection of images and historical information about the settlement of Tennessee and about famous residents like Daniel Boone. Viewers are tasked with...
Education Outside
Papermaking
Imagine recycling food scraps and using them to make paper. The directions are all here in a seven-page packet that details several paper-making strategies.
Apache
Gerunds and Infinitives
Learning proper grammar rules for a middle school student can be difficult, especially in a texting world, but this resource demonstrates how the verb changes by adding a gerund or infinitive. Keep up the texting, but use this to...
New Hampshire Bureau of Adult Education
Dystopian Literature: from Fiction to Fact
Imagine an entire course devoted to dystopian literature. If that concept appeals to you, check out this course that uses 1984 as the anchor text and includes classic short stories as well.