Use this lesson plan to discuss inventions that have changed your class's world and have impacted society. Middle schoolers investigate important inventions of their time and design an invention in a simulated business atmosphere. Modify...

What do you imagine when you think of the sea? Put on some ocean sounds, close your eyes, and listen to a guided meditation based on the imagery from The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. After class members listen to...

A guided imagery exercise is a great way to get readers thinking about writing. As part of their study of Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse’s 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel, class members listen to a reading of one of the poems...

Sad, depressed, miserable, inconsolable, forlorn: so many synonyms have a lot of variety with their connotations. Through the guided imagery activity, writers explore the use of connotation and its influence on imagery and description by...

Close your eyes and picture a time where you decided to tell the truth to someone. What were you wearing? How did you feel? Such prompts begin a guided imagery activity for Zach's Lie. Directions for creating an environment conducive to...

What's the least number of colors needed to color a U.S. map? The lesson begins by having pupils view a video clip on continuous and discrete phenomenon, then launches into an activity reminiscent of Zeno's paradox. A separate video...

After reading up on the history of sports racquets, engineering teams design and construct a racquet for batting a Velcro-striped ball at a target. Teams evaluate their design by aiming for the target three times each and answering...

Elementary-aged scientists discover that all matter has mass. They are shown the difference between mass and weight, and learn how to calculate mass using the appropriate tools and methods. The scientific method is used while estimating...

Young mathematicians use bags of Skittles to help them gain practice in graphing and organizing data. They work in pairs, and after they have counted and organized their Skittles, they access a computer program which allows them to print...

Electronic engineering hopefuls get hands-on with hand geometry and the technology of biometrics. After taking the appropriate measurement on their hands, they configure their personal hand geometry codes and compare them to classmates....

After examining how a spring scale works, teams work together to design their own general measurement device. Reading material provides background information, but there is no part of the procedure in which learners handle an actual...

Does your shirt hate water? In the activity, future engineers observe the hydrophobic effect in fabrics. They brainstorm and test some ideas for waterproofing fabrics.

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Kimi and Jordan have taken summer jobs to supplement their weekly allowances. Kimi earns more per hour than Jordan, but Jordan's weekly allowance is greater. This activity asks students to determine how the incomes of the two workers...

Save those precious minutes and hours spent planning math lessons with this mini-unit on telling time. Offering a series of engaging hands-on and collaborative learning activities, these three lessons teach children how to read...

A collection of two lessons, kindergartners will identify two-dimensional shapes in solid shapes. They will develop basic knowledge of the components that make up a sphere, rectangular prism, pyramid, cylinder, cone, and cube. Young...

Introduce search engines with an activity that models how search engines work and the different algorithms they employ. Working in groups, class members then build search queries to demonstrate the knowledge learned.

View Byzantine architecture from the comfort of your classroom. A PowerPoint presentation introduces important vocabulary terms and examples of Byzantine architecture in the ninth activity of the 11-part series. A Jeopardy game reviews...

Students explore the function of various road signs and international symbols.  In this sign recognition lesson, students construct road signs with blank paper, markers, and scissors.  Students make 2 or 3 different signs and...

Looking for help in introducing integration by substitution to your calculus students?  Here is a activity that walks a learner through a review of the change rule, and then by starting with more recognizable derivatives, it helps...

Students practice measurement and geography in this lesson. They build a Lego vehicle using an RCX. They predict how many seconds it will take their vehicle to reach a specific state on the United States of America map that each group of...

Young ratio masters calculate and cut a frame (out of poster board) to accurately create an even frame around a picture of themselves. The frame needs to be proportional to the picture with constraints determined by the instructor.