Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....

Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...

Honor the great poet, Shel Silverstein with eighteen activities and lessons showcasing his collection of poems from the book, Every Thing On It. Activities challenge scholars to rhyme words, make inferences, recite a poem, and...

What's the best way to learn how watersheds work? Build one! Combining engineering, the water cycle, and ecology concerns, the activity is the perfect fit for an interdisciplinary unit. Teams construct a model watershed with simple...

The Cay has been criticized by groups such as the Council on Interracial Books for Children because of the way race is portrayed. Explore the argument against the book while taking the author's perspective into account. Class members...

Make a study of Timothy and his development as a character over the course of the first half or so of The Cay. This idea focuses in particular on chapters 10 through 12. Learners start out by working on double-entry journals created in...

How do engineers determine the most efficient highway designs? Introduce young scientists to the world of topology, the branch of mathematics that examines how things are connected. Teams use model highways to create the most...

Is Sherlock Holmes an inductivist or a deductivist? Users of this interactive to distinguish between inductive and deductive reasoning. They consider in various situations whether it is better to list evidence and then introduce a claim...

Here's a sweet activity! As part of a study of psychological research methods and statistic gathering, individuals develop a hypothesis about the number of each color of M&Ms in a fun-size package. They then count the number of each...

What's the link between lactase persistence and dairy farming? Biology scholars analyze data to find evidence of the connection, then relate this to human adaptation. Working individually and in small groups, learners view short video...

How can you predict the weather without any technology? Young scientists learn to forecast the weather using traditional Native American techniques. Based on their observations of the weather, as well as talking to their classmates, they...

Does mass change during a chemical reaction? Demonstrate the Law of Conservation of Matter while encouraging class members to be creative with a two-part lesson. First, learners use Alka-Seltzer® tablets and water to demonstrate the...

Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be lessoned by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My...

Does your ELA class need some practice with the specific skills outlined in the Common Core standards? Then this is the perfect resource for you! One in a series of connected lessons that cover the standards for reading literature,...

Choosing a poet or a theme, eighth graders conduct research in the world of poetry. They conduct Internet research and select five poems that fit their poet or theme, and create a seven slide PowerPoint presentation on their selected...

Students research and chart extreme weather events on a timeline. In this extreme weather lesson, students interview older people who have experienced extreme weather events. Students complete a worksheet based on the information of the...

Your young environmentalists can calculate their carbon footprint and discuss ways to reduce it with a worksheet about climate change. After reading a handout about what impact one's carbon footprint can have on the environment, kids...

Scary stuff! Whether approached as the first horror story or a "serious imaginative exploration of the human condition," Frankenstein continues to engage readers. Here's a packet of activities that uses Mary Shelley's gothic...

Students create paper airplanes.

Develop an understanding of how the media and society are connected and responsible for the defense of universal human rights. Learners investigate and examine the conflicts of police brutality as it is portrayed in the media and through...

Invite your learners to discover the efforts of Night author Elie Wiesel to promote awareness of genocide in the world. After watching and reading an interview of Elie Wiesel, high schoolers work to create a living Holocaust...

Compare these two passages for some interesting ideas about how technology affects our lives. The questions that follow ask you to identify the main idea from either direct statement or inference.

In this lesson, students examine photographs of Europe as they learn to distinguish between physical and cultural characteristics of a landscape, and make observations and inferences about the places and people in the photographs. They...