Young historians use the prompts on a worksheet to analyze President Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" speech. They identify the intended audience for the speech, the devices FDR used to persuade his audience, the responses promoted, and the...

Young scholars perform raps and analyze issues among the rich and poor. They explore how countries are labeled as "third world" and "first world." They create a dialectical journal and examine the country of Nigeria through the reading...

Students examine the preparations for the invasion of France on June 6, 1944. After viewing a clip from "The War", they identify the demands and concerns of all military leaders for this invasion. They use maps to examine the...

Students, operating under simulated budget constraints, build pop-rockets and launch them. Working in pairs, they complete budget worksheets and use their "Blast Off Bucks" to pay for the construction. They then redesign their rockets...

Students explore the concept of Japanese internment. In this Japanese internment lesson, students examine primary sources that enable them to discover what internment camp life was like and its implications, Students write their own...

Here is an amazingly thorough, and detailed, lesson plan on elements of art and art appreciation. Designed for third graders, this series of lessons should open up the eyes of your charges to the wonderful world of art that is all around...

Addition and subtraction are essential skills for all young mathematicians. Explain the step-by-step process with respect to place value using these real-world examples. Focus is on numbers in the tens, hundreds, and thousands, making...

Students read "How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World", the story of a girl who traveled the world to find the ingredients to make her apple pie. They conduct a series of interdisciplinary activities including testing their senses,...

Third graders are exposed to finding the area of polygons by decomposing figures and recomposing them into rectangles. This strategy allows children to expand on their prior knowledge of constructing shapes by rearranging parts into...

Where in the world (or at least in the coordinate plane) is the third vertex? Given two coordinate points for the vertices of a triangle, individuals find the location of the third vertex. They read an account of fictional...

Research current and proposed peace talks around the world with this New York Times lesson, Using the Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria as a starting point, middle schoolers create a news program on the subject. They propose a future...

Thirds graders reinforce that a map is a drawing that shows what a place looks like from above. They use a map key and symbols to create a map of the school and its neighborhood.

Students engage in this, the third in a three-part series on ships. The overall lesson series is designed to allow students to extend their understanding of floating, sinking, density, and buoyancy and apply it to the design and testing...

In order to create some tasty fudge, learners must adapt a recipe. Using a recipe for fudge, ingredients must be correctly converted using fractions. If one fraction is incorrect, the fudge will reveal it! Although you will only make one...

Several real-world problems are posed as a way to learn about vector fields in order to make some predictions after analyzing the data. The main problem comes from the tv show NUMB3RS and is based on solving a crime where a body has...

What is the meaning of sea level? This resource helps your class understand the meaning of elevations above, below, and at sea level. Provides for good discussion on using positive and negative numbers to represent quantities in the real...

Young mathematicians read, interpret, and complete a variety of real-world pictograms. Each question includes a key and information to complete the graphs. 

Third graders complete a worksheet, first with known information, and then with researched information. They create a PowerPoint, video, or radio broadcast to convey the results of their research. They learn to use a graphic organizer to...

This detailed overview of a curriculum unit suggests using travel literature to engage and stimulate your third graders’ interest in reading. The suggested reading list includes fiction and non-fiction materials and offers urban children...

Our oceans are composed of many complex relationships. Young oceanographers explore relationships between organisms, understand the world ocean's currents, and discover the effects of water pollution and how it behaves. There are...

Introduce youngsters to the important role shape and form play in art with this extensive collection of activities and projects. From teaching first graders how to create mandalas to engaging third and fourth graders in the design...

Examine how the economics of a school store relate to real world economics. Elementary learners explore various websites, complete a Venn diagram, create a schedule of wages for the students, read the book "A Chair For My Mother" and...

Play the lively music of flamenco and tango for your emerging Spanish speakers, and introduce them to popular dances from Spanish-speaking countries around the world. Discuss various types of music and dance, showing either pictures or...

Explore polygons with your elementary learners. Divide the class in 12 to configure the polygon puzzle before them. They list the attributes of each type of polygon they see, and if there's time, they jump on the interactive website...