“Macbeth: The Social Network” is an excellent way to bring differentiated instruction to the classroom for a complicated Shakespearean play. We hear a lot these days about how our students enjoy communicating with one another on sites like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. This project is essentially a character analysis assignment in the form of a “mock social network.” Students must imagine that characters from Macbeth have social networking pages where they post their thoughts, concerns, activities, motivations, and more. There have been many creative ways to teach Macbeth over the years including mock newspapers, mock trials, and the like. This project puts a 21st-century spin on those assignments and allows students to express themselves in a familiar medium. This packet includes pages for seven characters in Macbeth. Students may role-play as any of them (or all of them) and write “status updates” as if they were the characters. They must write updates in a way that imaginatively demonstrates their knowledge of the character. Ideas for doing so might include interpreting the character’s motivations, justifying his/her actions, inventing private thoughts, and more. The idea however must apply to all: we must find this character’s social networking profile “believable”; the student must stay within character to prove their knowledge of the play. For example, a student might role-play as Macduff and post thoughts that reflect his impulsiveness, while a student role-playing as Lady Macbeth might make comments reflecting her constantly twisting mindscape. A student might take artistic liberty to imagine Malcolm’s thoughts on being king, while another student might get really wild and explore what it’s like to run a joint social media account as the three witches. (That one will be wild, right?) Consider purchasing the assignment today!

The Lewis & Clark Expedition R.A.F.T. Creative Writing Project is an excellent assignment to use to wrap up a lesson about this famous moment in American History. This R.A.F.T. is also a great idea if you wish to make a unit multidisciplinary: you can combine social studies and language arts into a fun, challenging creative writing project! What is a R.A.F.T., you might ask? R.A.F.T. is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. R.A.F.T.s provide rigor, flexibility, and variety. A R.A.F.T. can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres or types of writing to create one of several products including a letter, a television commercial, a journal entry, and several more. I define this further in the packet. This packet includes: (1) the R.A.F.T. assignment sheet; (2) a Ready your R.A.F.T. graphic organizer; (3) a Show, Don't Tell graphic organizer; (4) a Planning My First Draft graphic organizer; (5) a Revising My Draft graphic organizer; (6) a Peer Review Checklist; (7) a Grading Rubric; (8) and a Ticket-Out-the-Door summarizing exit slip. Please see the preview! Why are RAFTS wonderful for reading comprehension assessment and writing projects? (1) They require higher-order thinking skills: students must role-play as the character they choose and utilize unique character traits to write a convincing response. (2) They are extremely difficult to plagiarize or copy from the Internet. This is NOT a basic report. Students must synthesize key details and create a brand new piece of writing. (3) As a result, students will emerge from the writing project with a much better understanding of the assigned reading. After all, they must demonstrate mastery in the project. Consider purchasing it today!

This six-question activity challenges students to identify the "Big Six" British Romantic poets - Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth & Keats - by lines of poems they wrote. The complete assignment features lines from Ode to the West Wind, The Chimney Sweeper, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, She Walks in Beauty, and Ode to a Nightingale. Also, included: please find a short list of free online resources you might consult while planning your lessons for this topic. (If you have access to subscription databases, however, you might consider those first.) Consider downloading the activity to challenge your students to identify these six great poets!

This is a map skills assignment for young students that teaches students how to properly use cardinal directions (north, east, south, west) and intermediate directions (northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest) with a map of Europe. So, what makes this assignment different from all of the others that you have used? The assignment is written so that students must interact with the map before they use cardinal and intermediate directions. They must first properly label the cardinal and intermediate directions on the included map's compass rose. Then, they must locate and label 15 European cities and 10 bodies of water. After successfully locating these places, there are 10 questions that require them to think about how people move from one city to another.

The French & Indian War R.A.F.T. Creative Writing Project is an excellent assignment to use to wrap up a lesson about this famous moment in American History. This R.A.F.T. is also a great idea if you wish to make a unit multidisciplinary: you can combine social studies and language arts into a fun, challenging creative writing project! What is a R.A.F.T., you might ask? R.A.F.T. is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. R.A.F.T.s provide rigor, flexibility, and variety. A R.A.F.T. can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres or types of writing to create one of several products including a letter, a television commercial, a journal entry, and several more. I define this further in the packet. This packet includes: (1) the R.A.F.T. assignment sheet; (2) a Ready your R.A.F.T. graphic organizer; (3) a Show, Don't Tell graphic organizer; (4) a Planning My First Draft graphic organizer; (5) a Revising My Draft graphic organizer; (6) a Peer Review Checklist; (7) a Grading Rubric; (8) and a Ticket-Out-the-Door summarizing exit slip. Please see the preview! Why are RAFTS wonderful for reading comprehension assessment and writing projects? (1) They require higher-order thinking skills: students must role-play as the character they choose and utilize unique character traits to write a convincing response. (2) They are extremely difficult to plagiarize or copy from the Internet. This is NOT a basic report. Students must synthesize key details and create a brand new piece of writing. (3) As a result, students will emerge from the writing project with a much better understanding of the assigned reading. After all, they must demonstrate mastery in the project.

This packet is titled "Let's Explore America! Use a Map to Find American States, Cities, Landforms, and Bodies of Water." It includes seven assignments you can use to teach essential geography skills. Please see the full preview! This would make a great introduction to young students preparing to study the United States for the first time. You might even consider them "substitute assignments" and leave them for a substitute teacher on a day you are away from the classroom. These assignments will work well individually or as a partner assignment.

The "Endangered Animals Television Commercial" Project allows students to demonstrate their knowledge about endangered animals in a unique way. In small groups or individually, students will select an endangered animal for research. They will then plan, research, write, and simulate a complete television commercial or public service announcement about the animal they have chosen. They will present their commercials to the class. If you have a camcorder handy, this project makes for great fun for recording and sharing at an open house or similar public function!

This project contains 15 questions for younger researchers to consider when planning a trip to a new place. These questions will test students' abilities to think about geography skills like location and direction as well as provide opportunities to learn about new cultural experiences. Students will need either access to age-appropriate Internet resources or books about the countries of their choice. The final results might pair well with a bulletin board or poster display.

"The Hunger Games RAFT Writing Project is a culminating project to end a unit of study on Suzanne Collins's popular dystopian novel. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.). I define this further in the packet.

This is a five-page packet that provides detailed instructions for the world cultures theme park project. In this project, students will apply information they know about world cultures and then create a theme park reflecting those cultures in a unique, fun way. I use it to reinforce students' knowledge about world cultures and to brush up on their mapmaking skills. This would also make an excellent project to leave with a substitute teacher, as I have provided very detailed instructions that are easy to follow. This project encourages creativity and critical thinking. You might consider using it as an alternative to a test or an essay. Students will create a theme park that demonstrates their acquired knowledge of a nation's culture, while also demonstrating an ability to accurately create and label a map. You can adapt this assignment to fit any culture (or cultures) that you have taught.

I have used this successfully with ninth grade English/language arts students to begin a research project, but I believe it would also work best with students in the middle school grades. Students will be able to identify criteria (authority, objectivity, authenticity, timeliness, relevance, and efficiency) for evaluating sources of information. Students will be asked to reflect upon the following questions: “What does it mean if something is ‘credible?’ Why is credibility important when you are looking for information? For example, if you’re looking for song lyrics, why must that web site be credible? How else might we evaluate things in our daily lives for both quality and credibility? Students will then paraphrase major points discussed in the PowerPoint-aided mini-lesson about evaluating resources. They will use the graphic organizer to paraphrase these points.

Consider purchasing this quick vocabulary assignment to introduce your students to some basic geography terminology about landforms and bodies of water. You might even use it as a vocabulary quiz. The choice is yours! There are twenty terms found in the complete assignment, with kid-friendly definitions, and an answer key for quick, simple grading. The vocabulary words included are: Basin, Bay, Butte, Canyon, Cataract, Delta, Fjord, Flood Plain, Glacier, Island, Isthmus, Mesa, Peninsula, Plain, Plateau, River Mouth, Strait, Tributary, Valley, and Volcano. Also included, please find 6 puzzles: 2 crossword puzzles, 2 word search puzzles, and 2 cryptogram puzzles. For the puzzles, I divided the 20 vocabulary words into two segments. Therefore, each puzzle contains ten vocabulary words. I found that dividing the terms in this manner made retention easier for my students.

The Graveyard Book RAFT Writing Project is a culminating project to end a unit of study on Neil Gaiman’s popular novel. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.). I define this further in the packet.

This assignment is titled “‘Julius Caesar’: The Social Network.” We hear a lot these days about how our students enjoy communicating with one another on sites like Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter. This assignment is essentially a 21st century character analysis assignment as a “mock social network.” Students must imagine that six characters from “Julius Caesar” have social networking pages where they post their thoughts, concerns, activities, and more. There have been many creative ways to teach “Julius Caesar” over the years including mock newspapers, mock trials, and the like. This particular project puts a 21st century spin on those assignments and allows students to express themselves in a familiar medium. Students may role-play as one of six characters in Shakespeare’s play – Caesar, Brutus, Antony, Portia, Calpurnia, and/or Cassius – and write “status updates” as if they were the character.

The Frankenstein RAFT Writing Project is a culminating project to end a unit of study on Mary Shelley's famous novel. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.).

This assignment is titled "Let's Explore the Middle East! Use a Map to Find Countries, Cities, Landforms, and Bodies of Water." This assignment includes 20 questions that require students to analyze a map of the Middle East for national borders, capital cities, landforms, and bodies of water. Here are two sample questions: "In which country is Mount Demavend located?" and "Name at least three countries that border the Red Sea." This would make a great introduction to young students preparing to study world regions for the first time.

This is a collection of wall art you might consider printing, laminating, and hanging on the walls of your classroom. There are six pieces. You might even open them on a SmartBoard screen and ask students in your Life Skills/Social Development class to write what they think these proverbs mean to them.

Primary sources are defined as "works of human endeavor that were created at the time or very close to the time that is studied." Teaching with primary sources allows students to interpret information for themselves and demands of them higher level critical thinking skills. They also provide students a "window to the past," and depending on the era or subject taught, can provide eye-opening perspectives about social and political issues, economics, artistic movements, and so much more. The following 27 websites are my favorite resources for locating primary source materials to use in my classroom. I have organized this document categorically: the first part of the document contains primary sources related to American history and culture, while the second part of the document focuses on more global resources.