Curated OER
Call of The Wild
Prompt your class to interact with Jack London's Call of the Wild. By analyzing the events in the novel, middle schoolers discover how human experiences create who a person becomes. They critique and analyze the reading, focusing on...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 11: Beginnings
Every good novel needs a solid beginning! Setting the stage can have your budding authors stumped, so use this lesson to get them thinking. After examining the plot rollercoaster image (included) they consider the four places their story...
Illinois State Board of Education
Common Core Teaching and Learning Strategies
Here's a resource that deserves a place in your curriculum library, whether or not your school has adopted the Common Core. Designed for middle and high school language arts classes, the packet is packed with teaching tips, materials,...
Curated OER
Middle Passage: a Journey of Endurance
Students determine that thriving African cultures engaged in international trade and exploration before the emergence of European civilization. The study ancient Ghana, its geographic locale, the diversity therein to include its people,...
Curated OER
The Responsibility of Preservation
Upper elementary and middle schoolers study the case of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird that was once-thought to be extinct. Learners explore the responsibility of people to preserve habitats, and take care of the animals who live in...
Curated OER
On The Road Again: Cars, Culture, and Change Along Historic U.S. Highway 67
Middle and high schoolers look at historical photos and analyze some of the changes brought about by the automobile revolution in Arkansas during the 1920's. The book, A Journey Through Arkansas: Historic U.S. Highway 67, is used for...
Curated OER
Arkansas' Top Ten Events of the Century....Says Who? Why? Deciding What is Important in History
Middle and high schoolers work in small groups to compare four different lists published in the Arkansas Times newspaper which chose the "top ten" Arkansas news events of the 20th century. Learners look for similarities and differences...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
Intensities in the Classroom
Everyone learns and experiences life differently. A set of lessons about character intensities encourages middle and high schoolers to analyze themselves, their peers, and characters from a book based on the five listed intensities:...
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Color Variation over Time in Rock Pocket Mouse Populations
A species-specific look at natural selection, the resource herein examines how adaptations have helped the population of rock pocket mice survive in a changing landscape. To begin, middle or high schoolers watch a 10.5 minute video,...
Alabama Department of Archives and History
New Deal Programs in Alabama
New Deal programs are the focus of an activity that prompts middle and high schoolers to consider the end of the Great Depression. Groups examine primary source materials to gain an understanding of how these programs were implemented in...
WindWise Education
Which Blades Are Best?
If I change the length, will they work better? After brainstorming the variables of wind turbine blade design, groups choose one variable to isolate and test. The groups then present their data to the class in order for all to have the...
Bully Free Systems
Bully Free Lesson Plans—10th Grade
Two lessons, "What Does Cyber Bullying Look Like?" and "Factors Influencing My Reporting the Bullying of Others," serve as examples of the 12 included in a Bully Free curriculum. Each plan includes discussion questions, an activity, and...
EngageNY
Estimating a Population Proportion
Find the percent of middle schoolers who want the ability to freeze time. The 21st installment in a series of 25 has groups collect a random sample of respondents who answer a question about superpowers. Using sample statistics,...
National Park Service
Living & Non-Living Interactions
What better way to learn about ecosystems than by getting outside and observing them first hand? Accompanying a field trip to a local park or outdoor space, this series of collaborative activities engages children in learning about the...
Teach With Movies
Title: "The Yearling" - Topics: Literature/U.S.; U.S./1865-1913 & Florida
Life in the Florida swamps after the Civil War comes alive in the 1946 film adaptation of Majorie Kinnan Rawlings’s The Yearling. The film of this powerful coming-of-age story, filled with love and loss, can be used with or without a...
Curated OER
Planets in Our Solar System
Each member of a four-student group takes on a specific aspect of an assigned planet to research. After gathering information, the team works together to create a travel brochure and a presentation intended to convince other classmates...
EngageNY
An Area Formula for Triangles
Use a triangle area formula that works when the height is unknown. The eighth installment in a 16-part series on trigonometry revisits the trigonometric triangle area formula that previously was shown to work with the acute triangles....
BBC
Community Action
Upper graders and middle schoolers engage in a instructional activity on community. A class discussion kicks off the instructional activity. Pupils share things that they do as community service after school or on weekends. They imagine...
Curated OER
Irony in Poetry and Prose (Fiction and Non-fiction Texts)
Middle and high schoolers examine the impact of irony in poetry and prose. In this figurative language lesson, they read instructor-selected literature and identify uses of irony. Then they discuss how irony enhances literature.
BBC
Conflict
Middle schoolers take a close look at the different forms that bullying can take, and share their ideas of ways to stop bullying in schools. Learners get together in groups of three and come up with a scenario that depicts a conflict....
BBC
Identity
Ethnic diversity is the focus of the political science lesson presented here. In it, pupils discuss the variety of ethnicities they see at their own school. They share their knowledge, or personal experiences of the way that people of...
BBC
Rights and Responsibilities
Middle and high schoolers engage in a lesson about rights and responsibilities, and the differences between them. After a class discussion, pupils break off into pairs and come up with mimes that respect or abuse a specific right such...
Curated OER
Brochure Writing
What do you use a brochure for? Middle schoolers or underperforming high schoolers identify the attributes of informative brochures. Either bring in a few brochures you've collected or use the sample brochures attached here. While...
Curated OER
Heroic Vocabulary: Using Decoding Strategies and Thesaurus
Develop the decoding skills of your middle and high schoolers. Scholars participate in a classroom activity that requires them to decode a word with a prefix and suffix. They apply the skill of breaking the word into parts of meaning as...