National Science Teacher Association
Middle School Sampler: Science
Focus on inquiry-based learning in your science class with a series of activities designed for middle schoolers. A helpful packet samples four different texts, which include activities about predator-prey relationships, Earth's axis...
Peace Corps
Family
Family traditions are the focus of a instructional activity that explores the lives of children in India and those in your classroom. Scholars examine their own family roles and traditions, then respond to an informative text...
Peace Corps
Community
What is a community? Find out with a lesson that sheds light onto the different types of communities—school, local, and global. Scholars read informational text detailing the life of a young girl from Cape Verde and take part in a...
Code.org
Multi-screen Apps
Scholars continue their study of event-driven programming by creating a multi-screen app in the fifth instructional activity of the series. They incorporate previously learned elements and events in the mini-project.
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing Using the Book Rumpelstiltskin
Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Students use this list...
Science Matters
Fault Formations
The San Andreas Fault moves about two inches a year, approximately the same rate fingernails grow—crazy! The third lesson in the series allows for hands-on exploration of various fault formations. Through the use of a Popsicle stick,...
Smithsonian Institution
Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon
How do barns serve as a window to a community's past? Here are a series of lessons on the symbolism and historical context of barns throughout American history. Topics include community-building, in-depth primary and secondary...
The New York Times
The Horror! The Horror!
Gear up for Halloween by studying the horror genre with your class and analyzing films and texts to uncover the genre's traditional conventions.
Baylor College
It Begins with the Heart
Aspiring anatomists label a photograph of a human heart by comparing it to a colored diagram on the same page. The video that is mentioned in the procedure does not seem to be available, but the overview provides plentiful background...
North Carolina Consortium for Middle East Studies
Federalists v. Anti‐Federalists
Here is a solid lesson plan to support your instruction on the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation. It includes close analysis of primary source images, a guided notes template and answer key, and many key...
Media Smarts
Media Awareness Network: Hate or Debate?
Discuss the difference between legitimate debate on a political issue and arguments that are based on hate through a science-fiction scenario that shows how a controversial issue can be discussed in both ways. Then learn how purveyors of...
North Carolina Consortium for Middle East Studies
The French and Indian War: The War That Shaped America’s Destiny
How would a Frenchman, Englishman, and Native American have each viewed the French and Indian War? Your young historians will learn about their unique perspectives and the war as a whole through a role-playing activity,...
Curated OER
Reading Skills: Chunking
Prepare advanced English learners and low-level readers for the reading demands of post-secondary education with skill of chunking. Readers learn to make meaning from phrases rather than individual words, helping them to read more...
Curated OER
What's the Purpose Anyway?
Examine author's purpose in newspaper articles, comic books, cookbooks, encyclopedias and other forms of written materials. Working in groups, middle and high schoolers read teacher-selected articles and write an explanation of the...
Maine Content Literacy Project
Setting in "Hills Like White Elephants"
Continue your study of the short story with the next lesson in this fourteen-lesson series. After wrapping up a study of "Hills Like White Elephants" through a quiz and discussion of the setting, learners are introduced to the final...
Curated OER
Reading With Fluency And Expression
Practice makes perfect, and this lesson provides a rubric to prove it! To improve their ability to read with fluency and expression, readers listen to a series of online stories in order to hear how a well-read story should sound. They...
Curated OER
Summarization Superstars
How do you read when you know you're going to be summarizing a text? Summarize a nonfiction text with your upper elementary schoolers. Your pupils independently read a nonfiction article and write a summary paragraph using the six-step...
Curated OER
Teaching Summarization
Examine the process of summarizing a piece of text using the book So You Want to Be a President? Kids review the definitions for main idea, topic sentences, superordinate terms, and supporting details. Next, they work in small...
Curated OER
Summarizing: James and the Giant Peach
Text marking and a T-chart format to distinguish important information from trivia help elementary readers summarize effectively. Encouraging readers to construct a chapter summary from paragraph-level topic sentences is another sound...
Curated OER
Question What You Read
Readers test their reading comprehension after reading a nonfiction text about Paleo Indians. (This text is in Alabama: It's History and Geography, but other texts can be used.) After reading the nonfiction article as a class, they...
Curated OER
Writing Process-- Revision and Editing
As guided practice, class members work together to revise a model persuasive paragraph. Then they practice independently with their own writing. The included rubric looks at prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, nonfiction text...
Curated OER
Icky Fingers
Which i sound is used in the word icky? Kindergarteners and first graders listen to the short /i/ sound. They practice shaking their fingers to indicate icky when they hear the target sound. Then they practice reading a poster with the...
Curated OER
Shorten the Length
Learn how to summarize by identifying main ideas and supporting details. Readers cross out unimportant information as they read through a text. Is it a random detail? Cross it out! They then draw a concept map, placing the main idea in...
Curated OER
Indiana Igloo
Your young charges practice identifying the /i/ sound in this lesson. The class looks at words on cards and identifies which word has the target sound. They continue their practice using Elkonin letterboxes to spell words with the /i/...