Columbus City Schools
May the Force Be with You
You won't have to force your classes to complete these engaging activities! Through exploration, young scientists learn that force has both magnitude and direction. They draw force diagrams, investigate force models, and complete a...
Tech Museum of Innovation
Launch It!
Launch a activity on flight with a challenging resource that asks scholars to first brainstorm and test ways to move a ping pong ball with given materials, then apply the results to design a launcher for them.
Scholastic
The Flight of Amelia Earhart Teaching Guide
Amelia Earhart's accomplishments and strength of character extend beyond her status as one of the first female aviators in America. Elementary and middle schoolers learn about Earhart's early life and the historical context surrounding...
Curated OER
Book Report Task Cards
With 52 task cards, learners will not run out of things to do with a book they are reading independently or with the class. Tasks include making a poster on a specific topic, writing a summary, drafting a sequel, creating a windsock,...
S2tem Centers SC
Seasons
Winter, spring, summer, and fall—take the learning of the seasons beyond the elementary level to the middle school classroom. Curious learners begin by watching videos about the seasons and the rotation of planet Earth. Then,...
Teach Hub
New Year’s Resolution Classroom Activity
Create a sense of accountability among scholars with a lesson that focuses on making and keeping New Year's resolutions. Writers compose a five paragraph essay focused on three resolutions—promises to self improvement, to...
Curated OER
Build Your Dream Science Lab
Would your ideal science lab be filled with bubbling beakers and zapping Tesla coils? Or would it contain state-of-the-art computer technology and data analysis? Dream big with an innovative lesson that connects math and language...
Civil War Trust
Contrasting the North and South before the War
Learners create a standing cube with four panels that display information on the North and South's economy, geography and climate, society, and means of transportation before the Civil War. Through discussion and reading...
Energy for Keeps
The Energy Times
Extra! Extra! Read all about past and present energy use in a classroom-made historical newspaper. Useful as a cross-curricular assignment between science, history, and language arts, the project is sure to get young journalists...
PBS
Analyzing Stop and Frisk Through Personal Stories and Infographics
How much can you learn about an important topic from a single image? High schoolers analyze an infographic that represents the number of stops performed during the Stop and Frisk police procedure. After building background information...
PBS
A Veterans Day Thank You Note
This Veterans Day inspire scholars to say thank you to a veteran. Here, learners discover key details about a specific war using an interactive timeline, and then write a thank you letter offering their gratitude to someone who risked...
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
Water's Journey Expedition
Step into a scientist's shoes to go online and discover the Florida Springs Expedition, and participate in two activities focusing on how humans impact the environment. The first activity asks scholars to summarize the six...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Writing Prompts for Middle School
Scratching your head when it comes to engaging writing prompts? Check out a list of prompts designed for middle school classes, which includes topics for persuasive writing, expository writing, how-to essays, personal narratives, and...
Dream of a Nation
Big6 Research Project
Do research projects at your school look like a class of eighth graders staring at a blank screen? Use the Big 6 research method to guide middle schoolers through the process of finding a topic, searching for and evaluating sources,...
Olomana School
Mixtures and Solutions: Paper Chromatography Experiment
Why does some ink bleed through paper, and other ink doesn't? Practice some paper chromatography to separate the colors from a pen with an interactive experiment for middle and high schoolers. Learners use a variety of solutions to track...
Cleveland Metro School District
Novel Lesson for The Giver
Lois Lowry's The Giver is one of the most engaging and thought-provoking works of literature in the middle school curriculum. Round out your novel unit with a collection of reading activities, comprehension questions, memoir and...
Curated OER
Creating a Newspaper
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...
Curated OER
Understanding Protagonists and Antagonists
How can you tell if a character is a villain? What about a hero? Work on literary analysis with an engaging language arts worksheet. After completing an activity about the four types of conflict, learners fill out a character map about a...
PBS
Team Work and Planning
Welcome to the Great Marshmallow Challenge. To conclude a unit study designed to help scholars develop teamwork and collaboration skills, groups are charged with developing a free-standing structure using only one marshmallow,...
Safe Drinking Water Foundation
To Filter or Not to Filter
Drinking clean water can be taken for granted. Explore the process and high cost of filtering water with a water pollution and filtration activity. Young scientist build a filtration system to filter polluted water, examine the economics...
Lampstand Press
Compare/Contrast Worksheet
Walk your class through the process of writing compare and contrast essays with this easy-to-use graphic organizer. After first using the included Venn diagram to record the similarities and differences between two subjects,...
Curated OER
Phineas Gage: Assessment Strategy
Close up your study of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a letter-writing assignment. Pupils prepare by journaling and sharing with a partner. They then compose letters that focus on a big idea from the...
Nemours KidsHealth
Skin Cancer: Grades 6-8
Do we really need sunscreen? What are the risks of tanning? Learners explore these questions through a series of informational texts and engaging, hands-on activities.
Nemours KidsHealth
Vision
From the iris and retina to glasses and contact lenses, learners will be excited to see what activities are in store for them as they learn about the complex organ of the human eye.