Students identify a veteran to interview. This could be a family member of one of students or someone contacted through an organization in the community. They use a storyboard to plan their movie about their subject.

Read biographies and use the internet to research stories of courage.Young writers compare and contrast characteristics that societies value. They write reports about their family and community's heroes.

Sixth graders compare and contrast various forms of artistic expression. They create an abstract painting.

What is a signal word? Recognizing these words is an important step in both reading and writing formal text. Review a list of signal words (provided and organized into specific categories), and then have your class play a game to...

Third graders relate dance movements to chants. They tap out the rhythm of poetry on different body parts.

Students view the movie "Tru Confessions" about the life of teenagers. They participate in activities in which they analyze themselves. They record their thoughts and feelings to be analyzed at a later date.

Eleventh graders focus on the rise of American business and industry and how it led into the response by labor forces that helped to shape the present situation of United States business, government, and working conditions.

Prior to reading Fever 1793, class members are introduced to vocabulary drawn from the text of Laurie Halse Anderson's novel with a bingo-style activity. The vocabulary list, a teacher copy with definitions, and the bingo template are...

Intended for an audience of teachers, this presentation lays out the six traits of writing, the writing process, and the teaching process for traits and strategies. If you are trying to understand the writing process more fully, you...

Engage your class in art analysis of Indian Look-Alike by Melanie Yazzie. Using this work of art as inspiration, writers compose a poem or short story. After a peer review session, the teacher conveys information about the work of art as...

Tenth graders explore Shakespearean comedy. They read and discuss A Midsummer Night's Dream and create a soundtrack, complete with CD cover, for the play.

Students analyze and critique various artists and their work. They write research papers on artists and create reproductions of their works, reflecting their earlier critiques of the works.

Fifth graders, in groups, spend one to two days researching their person or event. After the research process, each student has to write two to three sentences describing their person's most important contribution to the American...

Ninth graders read Romeo and Juliet. They complete a character analysis on one of the major players and present it in an informative and entertaining way. They rewrite and perform one scene from another character's point of view.

Eleventh graders analyze a Shakespeare soliloquy by writing a prose summary of it. They keep a character journal, following one character through the play and analyzing what the character does and says, as well as, might have done or...

Students explore survival techniques in the light of their own values and personal situations. The differences between needs and wants and how consumerism effects the environment forms the main focus of this three lessons unit.

Students explore different backgrounds of Americans.  In this instructional activity, students discuss how people in the United States may come from a different background, yet have similar values and beliefs.  After the class...

Students discover visual arts by participating in a sculpting activity. In this artistic expression lesson, students examine some of the more famous sculptures in world history by utilizing the Internet. Students utilize clay, paper...

Students relate the immigrant experience to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In this immigration experience lesson, students read Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and relate it to the immigrant experience...

Young scholars interview a hero. In this heroes instructional activity, students read Number the Stars to begin a discussion about heroes and then create mind maps on each character. Young scholars pick a local hero and interview them...

Ninth graders evaluate works of Robert Harris. They apply historical methodology to interpret and understand time, continuity, and change at an age appropriate level. They demonstrate awareness of the effect of context.

Students take a "field trip" with the teacher through the school then draw a diagram of what they saw. They bring the maps to the computer lab where they create electronic maps using the software program Neighborhood Map Machine.

Fourth graders read a nonfiction story that is presented to them with graphic features, and presented to them with only the text.  In this text features activity, 4th graders decide what the benefits of text organizers are and...