After completing an online activity about the Mayflower, scholars draw a picture about what they know of the Thanksgiving holiday, including a one-sentence summary. A reading of If You Were at the First Thanksgiving by Anne Kamma is...

It's time for the feast! Young historians complete their study of the First Thanksgiving by completing an online activity, watching a slideshow, and examining a First Thanksgiving timeline. After answering text-dependent questions to...

Students investigate the hardships and difficulties that the Continental army faced in the early years of the American War for independence. the battles of Lexington and concord and the expectations of the Continental Army forms the...

Discuss the history of slavery by analyzing historic photography depicting slavery. Learners write fictional stories based on these photographs. This is a creative and motivating way to launch a discussion of these topics. 

Help your class transition into better writers with this lesson, which guides them through the process of adding transitions to increase sentence fluency and organization. The activity is designed for a classroom with a SMART board, but...

Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. Class members use Bloom's taxonomy to craft six levels of discussion questions for Chris Crowe's novel, Mississippi Trial, 1955. Model questions from Chapter 3, a...

Explore Japanese society and national identity. Class members share ideas about the Japanese economy and then investigate a series of resources, including an article, a film, a lecture, and a poem, to learn about Japan's Bubble Economy...

Going out to lunch, reading a menu, making choices, and spending time socializing are all parts of growing up. Teens with visual impairments use several braille menus from local restaurants to practice ordering and appropriatelyeating...

Exploring the weather has never been more intriguing! Whether you are looking for a quick glance at the 10-day forecast, trying to figure out if lightning is heading your way, or wondering what the pollen count is, you will find out...

While this activity was designed for students with special needs, it could be used with any group learning about the calendar or days of the week. Old calendar pages become the bingo board, and numbers 1 through 31 become the numbers...

Daily routines not only help to manage classrooms, they can also provide students with rich opportunities for learning. This activity supports young learners in developing their number sense by counting up the school days on a class...

How can evidence and perspective challenge even the most well-known of stories? Through primary and secondary source analysis, think-alouds, and discussion, young historians evaluate the historical narrative of Rosa Parks across multiple...

Four out of five teenagers experiment with science by accident. This unit teaches the five parts of the scientific method through examples, guided practice, independent practice, and then through a hands-on experiment. Each step is...

Zeroes are more important than they look! A guided practice activity takes learners through the process of both scientific and decimal notation, culminating in more complex word problems and equations.

How are short stories from South Africa connected to issues of civil rights in the United States? A unit plan uses South African short stories to discuss issues such as apartheid, colonization, and civil rights. Questions and activities...

An interesting resource addresses the role of youth in civic participation and community events. It also explains the role of the justice system in creating boundaries and how citizens play a part in the judicial process.  Pupils...

After reading chapter 14 of the story Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, scholars take part in a read-aloud of the poem If by Rudyard Kipling and compare it to the reading of Bud, Not Buddy. Learners then go deeper into the poem...

Take the next step in the writing process with a lesson plan geared towards the completion of writing an evidence-based essay about a rule to live by, as Bud did in Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. Pupils collaborate with their...

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. 

Students choose reading materials on things that they are interested in. They discover voluntary reading habit and discuss the importance of independent reading. They "teach the class" about what they learned in their silent reading.

Students investigate Thomas Jefferson's intentions for the Declaration of Independence. In discussion, they consider what parts of the document are most useful today and to what purposes does it address the most. Finally, students...

Young scholars explore the benefits of silent reading and practice reading silently in this lesson. As they are silently reading, they use the cross checking strategy to monitor their comprehension. The teacher assesses their progress...

Students explore silent reading. They discuss how to choose their own reading materials and how to tell if a book is right for them. Students read a book silently to themselves for ten minutes. They write a message about what they...

Students practice reading silently. After discussing how reading silently can enhance the reading experience, students discuss decoding strategies. Individual students read selected, level passages during sustained silent reading.