Ninth graders research burial practices that originated in West Africa and then migrated to the South Carolina and Ohio. They compare and contrast burial practices in both places. As students collect information and data, they organize...

Use political cartoons to spice up a discussion on national security! Two cartoons, one by Normal Rockwell in 1948, the other a parody of Rockwell's by Chuck Asay in 2010, depict the dangers of leaking information. Background information...

Students describe how graffiti is a part of everyday culture. They develop basic vocabulary terms for thinking and writing about graffiti and make and justify judgments about aesthetics qualities in graffiti art. They compare and...

Eighth graders compare and contrast weather and climate. In this earth science instructional activity, 8th graders research weather data site and analyze historical data. They present their findings in class and explain identifiable trends.

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

The steps of the scientific method examine a problem, make a prediction, and attempt to solve the problem—similar to the path most stories take. In the activity, individuals see how stories can explain natural events similar to the way...

Here is a set of advertising lessons, explore language, techniques, representation, and target audiences. Discuss the impact ads have on our daily lives. What do we see and how do they make us feel? Observe ads from around the...

Turn your classroom into a pig sty with a instructional activity based on the Appalachian folktale The Pig Who Went Home on Sunday. Similar to the story of The Three Little Pigs, the folktale tells a story of four pigs who leave...

Use measures of variance to compare and analyze data sets. Pupils match histograms of data sets to their respective statistical measures. They then use calculated statistics to further analyze groups of data and use the results to make...

After reading and analyzing two narrative memoirs, middle schoolers engage in a variety of activities, including writing an essay, developing a story map, and creating character charts. They then compare and contrast story maps, and...

Take your class of youngsters on a prehistoric adventure with this four-lesson series on dinosaurs. Accompanying the Meet the Dinosaurs books by Don Lessem, these lessons engage children in writing their own dinosaur books,...

Animals are the theme of this series of challenge activities. Extend scholars' learning opportunities by writing personal narratives and book reports, creating picture and alphabet books, and drawing scenes from stories read aloud.

Picture books aren't just for children; they carry strong, valuable messages for adult as well. Explore the audience for Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince with a instructional activity that compares picture books to...

What were the virtues and values that helped form America? Pupils watch and discuss a video, read biographies of early Americans, chart the differences between early American religious movements, write journals and letters, draw, and...

Discuss the life of Franklin D. Roosevelt. This story, called "Franklin D. Roosevelt" by Laura Hamilton Waxman, is used to explore comprehension skills. Some of these skills include identifying prefixes and suffixes, making comparisons,...

Young scholars classify objects based on their attributes. They explain how archaeologists use classification to help answer research questions.

After watching Treasure in the Sea, a documentary about Channel Islands National Park and the video First Contact, about the voyage of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo to the Channel islands, groups research and then compare the...

Students explore animal habitats.  In this cross curriculum animal survival and writing lesson, students view a website about wild horses on Shackelford Island and discuss ways in which the horses have changed to this...

Great minds think alike. Scholars read two texts and compare how the authors develop the same central idea. Readers analyze "Women" by Alice Walker and "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr. They discuss word use and new...

Objects are larger (or smaller) than they appear! Scholars use a laboratory investigation to explore the difference between resolution and magnification. The activity allows them to calculate the size of the field of view of their light...

Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores were both born in 1858, and both came to the Dakota territory in 1883, but they influenced the developing country of America in different ways. Elementary and middle schoolers apply written and...

Ben Franklin was the only American to sign The Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris, and the US Constitution. An interesting resource explores his role in the latter by comparing the US...

Readers determine if this statement applies when comparing the central idea of Ahmad Shamlu's "A Blind Alley" and Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter From Birmingham Jail." Learners analyze the standard related to the central message, listen...

Jump into the classification of animal and plants cells, through this inviting lesson comparing Elodea leaves and Epithelial cells. Middle school learners will create wet mounts, write journal entries that compare specimens, and finally...