Ground-truthing ... is it even a word? The last installment of a five-part series analyzes how scientists collect sea surface temperature data. Scholars use government websites to compare temperature data collected directly from buoys...

Support science instruction with a combination of engaging activities and skills-based worksheets that focus on clouds. Learners take part in grand discussions, write an acrostic poem, complete graphic organizers, solve word...

Compare and contrast World War II to the modern Iraq war with this instructional activity. After watching a film, learners use supporting evidence to support their point of view of the conflicts. Using the internet, they create a...

Get your class up and moving with these engaging hands-on-activities that target their five senses. Children explore four different work stations that require them to look, smell, hear, touch, and taste as they record their responses...

What is the hip bone connected to? Learn about body parts and the human skeleton with a game of Simon Says, skeleton puzzle, and five question quiz.  

Show young chemists what a chemical reaction looks like with two parts of a hands-on experiment. First, learners conduct a wet lab where they observe the reactants (baking soda and calcium chloride, with phenolsulfonphthalein)...

How should a cashier stock a cash register with coins? Learners use mathematical modeling and expected value to determine how many rolls of coins of each type they should place in a cash register.

What was the Children's Crusade and how did it impact the civil rights movement in the United States? Your young learners will learn about this incredible event through a variety of instructional activities, from reading a poem and...

World War I propaganda techniques employed by the United States government are the focus of this lesson plan. The resource includes an excellent handout of propaganda techniques, ranging from appealing to authority to repetition, lying,...

What's the difference between a rock and a mineral? And what properties are used to identify minerals? The first installment of a five-part series on earth materials and processes prompts young scientists to identify a set of...

The second lesson in a unit of 15 introduces pupils to text compression. The class begins with discussing how they already use text compression when sending text messages. Pairs learn more about the subject as they work to compress a...

Is there a correlation or causation relationship between air pollutants? Groups develop a hypothesis about the daily variation of air pollutants, specifically ozone and CO2. Using Excel to analyze the data, the groups evaluate their...

Yes, scientists say, there is other life in our solar system! And the best place to look is on Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Here, learners mimic the techniques scientists use to gather information about objects in our solar system, write...

For anyone learning or teaching chemistry, nothing beats a free and interactive periodic table of the elements. Peruse the elements while learning about atomic number and mass, melting and boiling points, and many other properties of...

Lead your class into watercolor with a well-sequenced plan. Pupils learn about famous watercolorists Winslow Homer and Georgia O'Keeffe and take notes on a presentation about these artists and watercolor techniques. After a teacher...

Young grammarians locate pronoun agreement errors, in number, gender, and/or person, in a series of sentences, and then re-write the sentences correcting the errors.

The sky's the limit of what you create when combining functions! The module begins with a review of transformations of parent functions and then moves to combining different function types using addition, subtraction, and...

Not all variables are created equal. Discover how variables in computer science are different from variables in math class. Scholars learn to work with variables in computer programming by developing a mental model for how variables...

Explore the unique characteristics of polymers. A complete instructional activity begins with a presentation introducing polymers. Following the presentation, young scientists develop a laboratory plan for creating substances using...

Model the effects of practice on texting speed. Pupils develop a linear equation that models the change in texting speed based on the amount of practice. The sixth performance task in an eight-part series requires learners to solve...

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a strange tale indeed, but a crossword puzzle based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story is pretty straightforward. Help learners review key facts and quotes from the book in a quick...

Scale up your lessons with a performance task. Young data analysts work through an assessment task on scaled bar graphs. They answer questions about a given scaled bar graph on favorite colors, analyze a bar graph to see if it matches...

Obviously, four is the perfect number when you're playing Four Square. Scholars first use multiplication and division to solve a set of problems on the number of balls needed, the number of games, and the number of players required for a...

Let imaginations run wild as participants design animal pens. A performance task challenges young mathematicians to determine the perimeter or a missing side length of different animal pens. They then design pens that meet given...