Choose a readers' theater play with a reading level that your students will be able to handle with confidence and expression. Assign roles for students to preread to themselves. Place classroom chairs in a semi-circle. Read through the play several times, with students reading their respective parts. Point out examples to the class of students who are reading with great inflection and expression. If time permits, encourage students to bring in or make costumes to dress up as their characters. Arrange for your troupe to perform their play in front of other classes or student groups.
Contact your representative for a free copy of a state map for each student. Give all upper elementary students a map of their state. Tell them to look over the map and write down the cities they would like to travel to for their ideal road trip. Demonstrate use of the map scale for students to use in plotting out the distance of the trip. Look at several different vehicles to travel in. Write down the miles per gallon of each vehicle. Have students choose what vehicle they would like to travel in and calculate the gasoline expense for the entire road trip.
Cut a stack of green construction paper into three inch by three inch squares, creating approximately 200 green cards. Give each student a plastic grocery bag. Take the class outside to the playground in an area with boundaries about the size of a kickball field. Line the students up at the boundary and have them watch as you quickly scatter the green cards throughout the field. Assign 3/4 of the class to take on the role of rabbits. When you say "Go," they will scamper into the field and begin nibbling peacefully on the grass by picking up one card at a time and placing it in their bag. After about one minute of quiet eating, release the hawks. The hawks are all but two kids from the rest of the class. The hawks must chase a rabbit and touch it on the back. When touched, a rabbit must forfeit its bag and go to the sideline. After three minutes of the hawks eating rabbits and the rabbits still trying to eat grass, release the last two students who are wolves. The wolves will run into the field and eat the hawks and the rabbits by touching the students on the backs and taking their bags. After playing for a while, regroup and switch roles.
Arrange ahead of time with the support staff, such as secretaries, custodian, kitchen helpers and school nurse at school for upper-elementary school children to interview them with a few basic questions. Divide the class into as many groups as people being interviewed. Help each group brainstorm what facts they already know about the person they are assigned to interview and what important information they would like to know. Develop constructive questions together. Send students at the appointed time to interview their assigned adult and record the answers the best they can. Help students synthesize the information gathered and write a synapse of the information learned in the interview.