What can happen if you eat too much cafeteria food? Or wear dirty clothes every day? Or talk back to your mother? Use a lesson on humorous poems as a way for students to practice silly rhymes as fictional epitaphs.

A pinwheel encourages deep breathing to calm one's body and recenter their thoughts. Scholars breathe into a personal pinwheel with different types of breathing patterns then answer a question about how they feel. 

What a fun way to review the year's learning! Working in small groups, learners select a major concept covered in class then create a game about it. The type of game is up to each group, but the expectations of what should be included...

Writing funny poems is the best part about learning poetic forms! Young poets learn all about clerihews—humorous four-line poems about people—with an explanatory lesson.

In groups, young environmentalists investigate water samples that are contaminated with different types of pollutants. Each group presents their findings to the class and fills out the "Types of Pollutants Chart." This lesson plan is...

How can you teach a person about technology and engineering if he has never been exposed to the tools and devices used to create and construct? Learners with visual impairments examine a number of common tools, such as hammers, wrenches,...

Hook your class into an exploration of and discussion about violence in video games with a cute animal clip and a video game trailer. After a quick discussion about how media can affect mood, class members read a related article and...

Scholars examine the jobs found in their community by way of surveying. After collecting data, pupils analyze their findings and share their observations with their peers. A video sparks interest. Two posters motivate participants to...

Give your learners a leg up in their study of engineering. Groups design and create a prothestic for a leg. They test out their designs for strength, stability, durability, and comfort.

A Reading Adventure Pack focuses on rocks. Scholars participate in three activities after reading a fiction and nonfiction text—The Jade Stone, a Chinese folktale adapted by Caryn Yacowitz, and Rocks in His Head by Carol Otis Hurst....

How fast are those thumbs? Pupils view a short video showing a person typing out a text message in a speed challenge. They use the information they can glean from the video to estimate the number of seconds it will take to completely...

Write a letter on horse-themed stationery. Three pages to choose from showcase a variety of horses and the history of horseback riding.

A reading adventure pack, featuring a fiction and nonfiction book focuses on the weather. Scholars read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett and Seymour Simon and then complete three creative activities. Participants craft...

Academics take turns as actors in an engaging poetry cafe. Elementary learners work in small groups to create original poems or stories addressing community issues and read their work in front of a live audience. Scholars also reflect...

Review the vocabulary from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a magic squares activity. To find the magic number, readers match the numbers on a grid with the words and definitions from the novel.

Has your class wondered how fast a human could run or how high they are capable of jumping? Help them understand these concepts as they explore acceleration and use an accelerometer to make semiquantitative measurements of acceleration...

Young grammarians demonstrate their understanding of the eight parts of speech by creating a scrapbook that uses personal stories and photos to illustrate each term. After defining a term, individuals relate and illustrate a personal...

Earth historians research a specific dinosaur, write a paper about the Mesozoic era that it lived in, create an artistic rendition of the environment, and give a presentation in class about what they learned. Be aware that there are...

Twenty-three, fun-filled activities make up a list of icebreakers designed to familiarize class members with one another, and add a sense of community to the classroom. 

Sally and Joe both want the last cookie in the jar, so they split it in half. That's an example of a win-win situation, one of the many principles Sean Covey outlines in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Using the...

If you like poetry, wait till you try backward poetry! Young writers read Shel Silverstein's "Backward Bill" before writing their own funny poems that are full of backward imagery and phrasing.

Investigating the large numbers of science is the task in a simple but deep activity. Given a one-sentence problem set-up and some basic assumptions, the class sets off on an open-ended investigation that really gives some...

Connect art to social issues with a extended inquiry project. Individuals or small groups select a social issue and a type of art to explore. They complete a KWL chart for both the social issue and the art strand and take time to create...

Allow your pupils to take on the role of the instructor with an informative speech that covers a new topic related to your unit of study or new information on a subject your class has already studied. Pupils fill out the provided outline...