Students write descriptions of characters, incorporate new vocabulary words, practice using simile and metaphor, engage in peer editing, and post their revised descriptions on the walls for a matching game.

Students will have a roaring good time when they watch a scene from "The Lion King" as a way to compare standard and described programming media.

Students write descriptions of 100th day bottles they create at home, write clues about their bottles for a guessing game, practice descriptive writing, and create a class book.

Students learn about the types of possible loads, how to calculate ultimate load combinations, and investigate the different sizes for the beams (girders) and columns (piers) of simple bridge design. Students learn the steps that engineers use to design bridges: understanding the problem, determining the potential bridge loads, calculating the highest possible load, and calculating the amount of material needed to resist the loads.

Students explore the genre of posters, review informational writing and visual design, and then design poster presentations to share in class or at a school-wide fair.

Students are introduced to engineering, specifically to biomedical engineering and the engineering design process, through a short lecture and an associated hands-on activity in which they design their own medical devices for retrieving foreign bodies from the ear canal. Through the lesson, they learn the basics of ear anatomy and how ear infections occur and are treated. Besides antibiotic treatment, the most common treatment for chronic ear infections is the insertion of ear tubes to drain fluid from the middle ear space to relieve pressure on the ear drum. Medical devices for this procedure, a very common children's surgery, are limited, sometimes resulting in unnecessary complications from a simple procedure. Thus, biomedical engineers must think creatively to develop new solutions (that is, new and improved medical devices/instruments) for inserting ear tubes into the ear drum. The class learns the engineering design process from this ear tube example of a medical device design problem. In the associated activity, students explore biomedical engineering on their own by designing prototype medical devices to solve another ear problem commonly experienced by children: the lodging of a foreign body (such as a pebble, bead or popcorn kernel) in the ear canal. The activity concludes by teams sharing and verbally analyzing their devices.

Using "The Grapes of Wrath" as a backdrop, students conduct research on issues that the novel addresses, publishing their findings in a multigenre museum exhibit.

Students are challenged to design a permanent guest village within the Saguaro National Park in Arizona. The design must provide a true desert experience to visitors while emphasizing sustainable design, protection of the natural environment, and energy and resource conservation. To successfully address and respond to this challenge, students must acquire an understanding of desert ecology, environmental limiting factors, species adaptations and resource utilization. Following theintroduction, students generate ideas and consider the knowledge required to complete the challenge. The lectures and activities that follow serve to develop this level of comprehension. To introduce the concepts of healthy ecosystems, biomimetics and the importance of sustainable environmental design, students watch three video clips of experts. These clips provide direction for student research and challenge design solutions.

Students acquire a basic understanding of the science and engineering of space travel as well as a brief history of space exploration. They learn about the scientists and engineers who made space travel possible and briefly examine some famous space missions. Finally, they learn the basics of rocket science (Newton's third law of motion), the main components of rockets and the U.S. space shuttle, and how engineers are involved in creating and launching spacecraft.

Students are introduced to detail drawings and the importance of clearly documenting and communicating their designs. They are introduced to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Y14.5 standard, which controls how engineers communicate and archive design information. They are introduced to standard paper sizes and drawing view conventions, which are major components of the Y14.5 standard.

Students are introduced to the unit challenge: To develop a painless means of identifying cancerous tumors. Solving the challenge depends on an understanding of the properties of stress and strain. After learning the challenge question, students generate ideas and consider the knowledge required to solve the challenge. Then they read an expert's opinion on ultrasound imaging and the potentials for detecting cancerous tumors. This interview helps to direct student research and learning towards finding a solution.

Students read Raymond Carver's story "A Small, Good Thing," focusing on characterization in order to develop one of the static characters: the hit-and-run driver who causes Scotty's death more fully.

Students will love unwrapping this lesson about before, during, and after reading activities based on Margaree King Mitchell's book, "Grandaddy's Gift".

Students analyze their past readings and use that knowledge to create reading plans for the future.

Student pairs aim to be the first team to call out "bingo" in this lesson in which they use skimming and scanning to locate information about ancient Greece and Rome.

Lights, camera, action, and a bit of mystery! In this lesson, students use mystery props in a skit bag to create and perform in short, impromptu skits.

"That's my position and I'm sticking to it!" After reading about the Korean War, students will take a position in response to an open-ended question, support their position, and evaluate that support.

Students collaboratively interact with a variety of texts as they define reading and develop their own Reader's Profiles modeled after online social networking sites.

Using the guiding question, "What is reading?" students interact with a variety of texts as they uncover the skills necessary to interact with texts and develop a definition of reading.