Lois Lowry's The Giver is one of the most engaging and thought-provoking works of literature in the middle school curriculum. Round out your novel unit with a collection of reading activities, comprehension questions, memoir and...

Reading about history is nothing like experiencing it firsthand. Encourage your eighth graders to do the next best thing with a historical narrative prompt, in which they describe the experience of a first-time traveler on the...

John Knowles' A Separate Peace provides readers with an opportunity to develop their close reading and analytical skills as they look for what Knowles feels are the factors that shape our identity.

Everyone deserves to read a great book! Here, pupils write a persuasive letter to the school's librarian detailing their favorite story and why it should be found on the shelves. Class members' persuasive reading passages are shared with...

Rocks can bend? Pupils investigate how heat and pressure produce metamorphic rocks by modeling them using clay, and then categorize samples based on observable characteristics. The activity ends with a metamorphic rock...

The circle of life is all around us, from the black bears in the nearby mountains to the pile of dead leaves in the backyard. Encourage young scientists to take a critical look at the world around them with a set of lessons...

Build trust—literally—with a lesson that sparks reflection, grand conversation, and creativity. Scholars construct a trust tower out of blocks showcasing a picture that represents a good deed they have done to gain trust from their...

What does is take to be a role model? Through grand conversation, and the use of books and a graphic organizer, scholars find out and apply the requirements to identify a role model within their family. They then journey through the...

After watching a brief video on making metric conversions to standard units, pupils complete tables to describe certain items with the appropriate unit of measurement. Then, they convert liters to millimeters, millimeters to...

Practice makes proficient! Here, scholars practice their ratio skills to convert measurements while cooking. Nine problems make up a nine-page document equipped with clear instructions and advice for successful completion while working...

There's a container for every matter—liquid, solid, and gas. Pupils design three different containers, each with the capability to hold one of the states of matter, and share their design with the class.     

How do you combine linear and nonlinear functions? You piece them together! The lesson begins by analyzing given linear piecewise functions and then introduces nonlinear parts. Then the process is reversed to create graphs from given...

Polygon ... an empty bird cage? After finding the angles of a polygon, young mathematicians use the provided methods to solve the problem in multiple ways.

High schoolers attempt an assessment task requiring them to find the radii of inscribed and circumscribed circles of a right triangle with given dimensions. They then evaluate provided sample responses to consider how to improve...

Every time a bell rings ... there is lightning in the area. The activity provides directions to build a model of a lightning detection system. Similar to a system designed by Benjamin Franklin, the system uses static...

Let your class bounce to examine the concept elastic potential energy. Individuals bounce on a pogo stick in order to calculate its elastic potential energy. Groups then compare the elastic potential energy to the gravitational...

Pupils revisit the concepts of ergonomics and order picking examined in previous lesson and use the results of a simulation to brainstorm ergonomic designs for medical supply stations.

Entropy, it isn't what it used to be. Presentation includes kinetic-molecular theory, heat and internal energy, thermal equilibrium, temperature scales, laws of thermodynamics, entropy, latent heat of fusion, specific heat, calorimetry,...

In 1879, Sir William Crookes discovered the fourth state of matter, plasma. The presentation covers states of matter, phase changes, density, pressure Pascal's Principle, buoyant force, Archimedes' Principle, Bernoulli's Principle,...

Create trigonometric functions from circles. The first lesson of the module begins by finding coordinates along a circular path created by a Ferris Wheel. As the lessons progress, pupils graph trigonometric functions and relate them to...

Transform your lesson on transformations. Learners use given congruent triangles and tracing paper to determine the single transformation that carries one to the other. The concept is extended to combinations of transformations to...

The class gets their mean and median all in a row with an assessment task that uses a population of ducklings to work with data displays and measures of central tendency. Pupils create a frequency chart and calculate the mean and median....

Scholars explore triangles with rods of different lengths. Using rods of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 cm class members build as many different types of triangles as they can. They also describe properties of these triangles and determine...

Santa sure is fast. In the assessment task, learners calculate the number of minutes Santa can spend at each house. This calculation requires the use of given population demographics data.