Go on a scavenger hunt around your school to find evidence of math. Investigate different areas of your school for patterns, fractions, and different geometric shapes. Finally, create a spreadsheet and plot the data you've collected.

“It was a dark and stormy night.” Thus begins the 1830's novel Paul Clifford and, of course, all of Snoopy’s novels! Encourage young writers to craft settings for their stories that go beyond Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s often-mocked phrase...

How does your location alter or impede your movement? An interesting question posed by two artists, who work to show the restrictions of people in various landscapes. Learners analyze both exhibitions, discuss location and movement, then...

Differentiate instruction with this crafty approach to demonstrating comprehension. Learners choose a fictional book at their reading level, and afterward create a quilt square. The square is "decorated" with words, illustrations, and...

Conduct research focused on improving a current technology by having learners work in groups to investigate improvements that could be made to a particular piece of technology. They list the current problems and attempt to develop...

Scholars explore graphing. They will listen to and sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and estimate how many gifts were mentioned in the song. Then complete a data chart representing each gift given in the song. They also construct...

Demonstrate how to cite information from Internet sources without plagiarizing. If your class is working on an Internet research paper, and you have observed learners cutting and pasting directly from the Internet, the activities and...

Have you ever conducted a Web search and received too many hits? Teach your class about Boolean search terms and provide them time to practice conducting efficient online searches. This lesson plan contains several fun activities which...

A carefully crafted three-day lesson integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The lesson activates...

Note-taking is an essential study skill, and it needs to be taught! In the context of a research project on energy sources, learners find multiple sources, evaluating, paraphrasing, and citing them correctly. Two lists with note-taking...

Get your future professionals working in teams as part of a college and career readiness lesson. Discuss times learners have been on teams. What worked and what didn't? How did they settle disagreements? There is a teamwork handout here...

"What are Henry's options?" "What do you think Henry will do?" To better understand the central conflict for the main character in Robert Cormier's Tunes for Bears to Dance to, class members engage in a compare-and-contrast activity that...

Examine the role of social media in social and political uprisings. Pupils listen to NPR audio clips about social media and the Arab Spring and read an article that proposes the idea that revolution will not happen through social media....

Young scientists grab their measuring tapes, rulers, and yard sticks as they see how big Arctic animals really are. To conceptualize the trait of height or length, each small group will measure out the entire length of an arctic animal....

How can an unfamiliar place help you learn something about yourself? Use a narrative writing prompt as you culminate your unit on Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic. Kids consider the ways that, like the main character from the...

The Museum of Modern Art provides this educators' guide to Dada and Surrealism. Featuring the works of such artists as Jean Arp, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, and Meret Oppenheim among others, the guide is ideal for art history and...

Get the scoop with a fun, engaging newspaper project. After analyzing the parts of a newspaper, including the headline, subtitles, and pictures or images, young journalists get to work by writing their own stories in a newspaper article...

Design your unit on The View From Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg with a concept and vocabulary analysis resource. It outlines the plot, literary elements, vocabulary issues, and any possible considerations for planning a differentiated...

After completing an assessment task where they express numbers as the difference of squares (i.e., 9 = 5^2 – 4^2), class members note any patterns that they see in the problems.

Class members take center stage as groups perform scenes from Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope. Actors are encouraged to add stage directions to the script, as well as create costumes and props to...

Class groups brainstorm the characteristics that make up a successful student before taking part in a whole class discussion. Assigned group roles promote member participation.

The final instructional activity in a skill-based series focuses on setting goals and making checklists. Class members discuss what it means to set realistic goals and practice making lists to manage their time effectively.

Fighting a war over home soil makes a living nightmare even more real. Class members describe the experience of a Civil War soldier during the Battle of Franklin, poised right at a major turning point of the war, after researching the...

Explore the mathematical relationship between a solvent and solute. Learners use technology to measure the cooling patterns of a solvent with varying concentrations of solute. Through an analysis of the data, pupils realize that the...