Here's a collection of unit plans for middle school musicians. Topics include the mbira, opera, rhythm and culture, music in Africa, music in the movies, music theory and notation, blues and jazz, and the ocarina. Definitely worth a look.

Introduce some nonfiction reading into your classroom! This resource contains seven comprehension questions pertaining to an article from The New York Times website about the first middle schoolers to ever win the United States Chess...

Join the newspaper business with a series of lessons and exercises focused on elements of journalism. The packet focuses on distinguishing fact from opinion, writing effective headlines, sequencing events, and editing and...

Middle schoolers have a bushel of fun as they engage in activities and research core facts about apples. Packed with suggestions for in-class activities and out-of-class research, the colorful 6-page packet is sure to satisfy hungry...

Marijuana affects the brain differently than inhalants, which have a different effect than opioids. Elementary and middle school classes read about these drugs as well as nicotine, methamphetamine, hallucinogens, and steroids before...

Have fun with shape poems! First and second graders write calligrams that add to the meaning of their poems. Great for your poetry unit or if you want to combine poetry and art lessons. 

What's theme, and can texts of every length have one? Explore the themes of fives short reading passages with your middle school class. Encourage them to highlight specific places in the text where they recognized the theme. 

Connect science, math, and art for a true interdisciplinary instructional activity! Learners explore simple machines in art. Through analysis with a physics app, they identify positions of kinetic and potential energy and make...

What? A long-lost poem from Robert Frost? Introduce your class to a poem recently found and published from Robert Frost's personal collection. The lesson includes background information on the author, the poem itself, and a list of...

Middle and high schoolers are walking into a world rife with strong political viewpoints and vocal opinions. Help to prepare them for controversial discussions with a lesson in which they choose, research, and learn more about a...

A lesson begins with a description of a diamante poem and the rules to follow while writing one. Scholars examine the ins and outs of synonym and antonym diamantes, then compose an original poem using their newfound knowledge. 

As middle and high schoolers experiment with their writing styles, it's easy to slip in a few accidental sentence fragments. After reading a full-page of information regarding how to identify and avoid sentence fragments, learners...

The country of Egypt is more than just big pyramids and ancient pharaohs. After reading a brief overview of this African nation, young learners will demonstrate their understanding of the text by identifying the main idea and supporting...

Everything you need to know about informational text features can be found in this resource. Recognizing these types of text features and how they are used in text allows readers to better understand information. Teachers...

Celebrary the holiday season fluently with a packet designed for English learners. The resource includes reading comprehension, spelling, scrambled sentences, and writing worksheets focused around Christmas.

While offering a long list of questions involving verb conjugation, this activity would require teacher direction. Some of the instructions aren't clear. The 30 question review of verb usage would be a good review for middle school...

Enhance your lesson on Shakespeare with this poetry activity. After reading lines 139-167 from As You Like It Act II, Scene 7 (provided on the first page), middle schoolers work on a graphic organizer to paraphrase each...

What exactly is a direct object? Use this resource to introduce direct objects to your middle and early high school classrooms. The section at the top explains the part of speech, and then there are 20 sentences below for learners to...

Budding poets compose an original free verse poem. Encouraged to use personification and alliteration, scholars read over three tips and examples then try their hand at drafting a poem of their own style.  

Each one of the learners in your class has a story to tell, so help them learn the most efficient and organized way to tell their tale. A thorough unit on narrative writing addresses the writing process, grammar, story structure,...

Her is an interesting topic, as well as a great way to teach it! You'll find two worksheets on this link, one for the teacher, and one for the learner. Worksheet one describes how classical composers used musical repetition to make their...

To increase awareness and launch a discussion of consumerism, class members view What Would It Look Like, a 25 minute film of images that capture the global effects of the consumption of goods. Viewers make a list of the images that...

Here’s a graphic organizer that permits learners to chart the introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution of a story. The PDF file can be customized to work with any narrataive.

In this parts of a sentence interactive worksheet, students recognize nouns in sentences. Students answer ten multiple choice questions relating to nouns.