21st Century 7th-Grade Learners

The focus of this lesson plan is on leadership, but also incorporates critical thinking skills and collaboration.

This lesson plan allows students to explore bias while learning more about technology and media literacy.

Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

This lesson from the U.S. Department of Labor helps students learn about healthy and successful communication through role play and journal activities.

This collaborative or cooperative lesson plan from Thought Co. uses the jigsaw method to have students collaborate about a specific section of a topic. This type of strategy can be used for any topic and virtually any age group, if modified.

If the classroom is more technology based, this collaborative lesson might be of more use. Although it requires you to sign up for a free trial to access the entire lesson plan, there is a nice overview of the the tasks at the top of the web page.

As an ELA teacher, I searched for a lesson plan that would combine subject material with opportunities for creativity. In this lesson plan, students will explore character, plot, setting, symbolism, and conflict as they design a new cover for a book they are reading.

This website provides simple activities that foster critical thinking skill and creativity in the classroom.

This lesson plan created by the Annenberg Classroom helps students use critical thinking skills to examine primary source documents and arrive at how each is pertinent to them. Although the content focus of this lesson is geared toward Social Studies, there are many key ELA strategies included.