Explore rural and urban environments over the course of four days. Each day offers a new look into how both environment compare and contrast. Activities include the observation and analyzation of images, a read aloud and grand discussion...

Accompany the story, Town Mouse Country Mouse by Jan Brett with an assortment of activities designed to reinforce concepts covering story structure, comprehension, grammar, and social studies. Here, scholars identify the difference...

How can you tell when an author is expression an opinion or stating a fact? Use two short reading selections to emphasize the difference between a statement that you can prove and one that you can't. The first passage explains food...

To discover the impact of urbanization on the environment, learners compare landscape paintings from the past with contemporary photographs, create found poems from descriptions of artwork, design backyard or public garden spaces,...

Students design an artistic and literary collage of contemporary urban life that seeks to interpret, analyze, and evaluate its mettle. They integrate their impressions of urban life with established views, thereby enriching their...

Students investigate the broad range of jobs that can be found in the world of design. Students explore sound design, language architecture, etc. Students design a resource book and post it on a website for others to share.

Students identify how do geography and ecology influence a region's folklife. Then they investigate this question and consider how an outsider might view their own region in this instructional activity. Students also identify how the...

What makes a community? How communities differ? Young scholars research different types of communities, small rural towns, and large crowded cities. They respond to writing prompts, and write essays in groups to understand the wide...

"People Everyday" offers class members an opportunity to develop their literacy analysis skills and to develop media literacy. Guided by an included list of discussion questions, groups examaine the word choice, literary devices used,...

Use this model, based on urban youth poetry competitions, to create an engaging venue for your poets to share their work out loud, with expression. Build class community, have fun, and celebrate your authors' original verse....

A unique series of lessons on trees is here for you. The series has learners utilize visual art, musical compositions, and literature in order to examine how trees have a place in a culture. The classic tale, The Giving Tree is one...

Throughout history, the growth of big cities has resulted in the destruction of ecosystems. In the case of Chicago, IL, a grassland that was once home to bison, deer, wolves, and foxes quickly became a booming city of over three million...

Students compare and contrast suburban, rural and urban communities. They read books such as The Little Red Hen and identify the type of community in each book. Using computer software, they write about each type of community and...

Students examine the type of language they use on the street in the city. In groups, they brainstorm ideas about a topic they decide on from a cluster of words. Using those ideas, they organize them into a written paper using proper...

Develop critical thinkers and awareness of the media's techniques. Impressionable minds analyze advertisements they see all around them in this potentially 3-week long unit of five complete lesson plans. Extended discussions, outside...

What is a ‘Zine? Although the referenced PBS video that launches this study of self-published magazines is not available, the activities detailed and the step-by-step directions for creating ‘Zines would engage young writers. This...

Want to teach your pupils about debate, effective speech techniques, propaganda, and the women's movement? The first in a sequential series of three, scholars analyze real propaganda images from the the historic women's movement, view a...

Students explore homelessness.  In this speaking, listening, and critical thinking lesson, students listen to and discuss 3 scenarios in which families from urban, rural, and suburban communities became homeless due to different...

Fourth graders orally share similarities and differences between their culture and the Masai culture based on their reading of Masai and I, by Virginia Kroll

Students study Bearden's style of collage and create their own collage that reflects their neighborhood. They are read "The Block" and poems about neighborhoods and write one about theirs.

Young scholars research categories within President Obama's agenda and create a PowerPoint presentation. In this President Obama agenda lesson, students research a category within President Obama's agenda and present their topic in a...

Students examine tenement life. In this lesson on early urbanization, students research the role of journalism for social change in early American cities. Students write a journal article for themselves that demonstrate an understanding...

Students create a storybook using vocabulary from the topic "urban and rural life". They write about past events in a children's story. They present their story to the class at an author's tea.

Learners discover how geographical advantages, locational and regional, ultimately led to western Eurasian societies' disproportionate accounting of world power and innovation. They utilize a workbook which can be downloaded within this...