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Garden Path Sentences

Garden Path Sentences seem to begin one way, but quickly fall apart, forcing the reader to start over and interpret words in a new way. A simple example is: “The old man the boat.”

Puzzler: A Number With ‘A’

Counting up, what’s the first number with an “a” in it?

Create A Holiday

Take students beyond the decorations and ask them to identify what a holiday reveals about a culture’s values. Then, push them further as they develop their own holidays.

Exploring Characters’ Virtues and Vices

What separates a life well-lived from a poorly lived life? Aristotle believed it was moderation: too much of good thing can become just as much of a problem as too little. Looking at traits as excessive, moderate, or lacking is a unique take on character analysis.

Math Project: Shrinking Airline Seats

What kind of math project could you build based on the shrinking dimensions of seats on the Boeing 777?

Like Everyone Else?

Fitting in only gets you so far.

Get Students Out Of Creative Ruts

Sometimes students need a little structure to force them into a more creative state of mind. Here are a few ideas for interesting writing prompts

A Remix Library

A list of stories inspired by older stories to teach your students about the history of reusing ideas.

Poe’s The Raven

The Raven is a great starting point for students’ to learn about Poe. Not only does the poem clearly demonstrate “tone,” but it is a figurative language tour de force. Plus, there are some amazing readings available online!

Classic Halloween Stories

With Halloween approaching, it’s a great time to expose students to some spooky classics. Lucky for us, many of these stories are in the public domain and freely available in many formats.

Brains Only Get Stronger When It’s Difficult!

As a 6th grade teacher, I would see students give up just as things became difficult. Because of their natural intelligence, they could succeed without putting in the work that their peers were learning to do. So I introduced a motto.

Calvin: The Unexpected Gifted Kid

As a kid, I read Calvin and Hobbes religiously, checking out collections from the library and cutting out favorites from the newspaper. Now, I read these same comics and see Calvin in a different light: an example of all of the unexpected traits of gifted students.

Classic Paintings for your Classroom

Exposing students to great pieces of art is an easy way to enhance a lesson, provide a visual way to practice a skill, and educate our students beyond the prescribed curriculum. Here’s a list of works that you can easily grab and use in your class.

Creating A Class Motto

Using Hilda Taba’s model of inductive thinking, use your students’ prior knowledge to develop a statement about expected class behavior.

Introducing “Criteria” To Students

Teaching our students to identify the criteria behind a decision will make them better decision makers and help them understand others’ points of views.

The Surprising Financial Failures of Walt Disney

As I read about the origins of the Disney studios, I’m struck by the endless financial trouble Walt Disney found himself in. Even after his classic films hit theaters, the studio was constantly in debt and faced a dismal future.

Homographs and Homonyms

This product features 125 homographs and homonyms to upgrade your spelling and vocabulary lists. Includes definitions, examples, parts of speech, and pronunciation guides.

Summer Reading: Book Edition

Here’s some summer reading recommendations of books you can actually touch! No real theme to these, except that each one challenged my understanding of kids and made me rethink the way I approach learning.

Summer Reading: Digital Edition

The internet is a treasure trove of fascinating and inspirational reading material, but how can we keep track of it all? Here are three tools that I use to tame the wild web and set up digital reading system.

Skits With Constraints

For many years, I shied away from skits, because they typically de-evolved into silly giggle-fests. For teaching grammar, however, they became an essential tool once I gave students clear constraints.

Create Your Own Civilization Project

Each year, my students created their own civilization to mirror what we were learning about Rome, China, India, and beyond.

Mindset & Impostor Syndrome

Our gifted kids receive lots of well-intentioned “you’re so smart” praise. But, this leads directly to a fear of straying beyond their safety zone. In college or the workplace, where they face challenges for the first time, the impostor syndrome rears its terrifying head.

Tickling Curiosity

Let’s look at a way to encourage and scaffold curiosity in our classes using a “Book of Unanswered Questions.” Begin by sharing intriguing objects or images and asking your own questions. Give kids a chance to find answers to their questions. Then encourage students to bring in their own intriguing conversation starters. Finally, move students towards curriculum based questions.

Puzzle: Words Within Words

In need of some nice word puzzles that will keep your students busy? Ask them to find as many words as they can within another word. For example: can you find 10 words made from the letters in “soldier”? How about 20? 50?

A Book For The Trivia-Obsessed

There’s a type of gifted kid who is simply filled to the brim with “did you know” trivia. If you know a student like this, then have I got a book recommendation for you! “The Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things” explains how objects, customs, and sayings got their start.

Chess Sets Over Time

How did chess sets arrive at their now-standard look? Several recent articles trace the design of the modern chess set.

What Can We Learn From Gifted Adults?

What better way to learn about gifted students’ needs than by talking to gifted adults? Here’s a tour of some of the resources I found online.

Assessing Creativity?

Nothing’s harder than trying to figure out how to honor students’ amazing creativity without coloring their academic grades. My solution: a vote and some special certificates.

Puzzle: Word Ladders

One of my favorite tricks in the classroom was having a “puzzle of the day.” The great difficulty was finding puzzles that challenged my students, but didn’t require meticulous work or strange knowledge. Word Ladders were always a consistent hit.

Goldbach’s Conjecture

Our look at math conjectures continues with Goldbach’s Conjecture, which states that all even integers greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes. Is this true for all cases? Another authentic, unsolved question.

3 More Paradoxes, Part III

Here are even more amazing paradoxes to baffle your students: Buridan’s Bridge, the Bootstrap Paradox, and the Barber Paradox.

The Collatz Conjecture

A “conjecture” is an idea that is believed to be true, but has not yet been proven. They are authentic unanswered questions for students to explore. The Collatz Conjecture uses two simple rules to get from any number to 1. It seems to work for all numbers…

Why Pi?

Pi Day is just around the corner, but the typical fare include π art projects, memorization challenges, or other activities that separate π from its real uses. But π is such a fascinating topic that it should inspire curiosity and wonder on its own.

Using A Classic: Charlie Chaplin

Integrating a classic is a great way to pump up an otherwise simple lesson. It seems like a black and white movie is the last thing a kid would want to see, but classics are classics for a reason!

Forming A Big Idea: Details Within Details

We’ll use a deductive-style lesson. While inductive thinking is open-ended and student-controlled, deductive thinking is focused on a teacher-designed topic. It makes it easier to teach a specific concept and raise the expectations of a lesson.

Sharing Byrdseed

Frequently, people email to ask my permission to share a resource from Byrdseed in a presentation. Yes! Absolutely. Don’t even ask!

An Academic Twist on Valentines

Want to have some February fun? Let’s merge the idea of “going together like milk and cookies” with curriculum to create Academic Valentine’s Day cards!

3 Sites For Free Classics

The public domain is a rich collection of creative works whose copyrights have expired. More than ever we have incredible access to this art and literature. Public domain images and writings add depth to lessons and expose students to classic works.

3 Advanced Literary Techniques

Students’ education about literary devices seems to max out with personification, similes, and other types of figurative language. But what about more complex tools?

Kids Aren’t Naturally Good At Technology

Sure, students use a lot of technology, but that doesn’t mean they use it correctly, completely, or competently. Kids have an improvised tech-literacy in the same way a bright child might have an improvised ability to read before starting school.

A Creative Coloring Book (For All Ages)

A few years ago, my young niece picked up interesting coloring book while we vacationed in Mammoth Lakes, CA. This is no “stay within the lines” book, however. Titled Scribbles, this book is filled with nearly 400 creative, divergent, and open-ended thinking tasks.

Build Relationships With Small Talk

Intelligence may get students through school with high marks, but out there in the wild, a high-performing brain can only get one so far. We need to explicitly help our students learn to relate to those around them by teaching them about “small talk.”

Looking Back on 2012

A look back at Byrdseed’s five most popular articles of 2012.

21st Century Careers: Shaun Inman

I’ve written about people creating interesting new careers as part of the 21st century. Shaun is another fascinating example…

A Holiday-Themed Shakespearean Sonnet

Now we’re going to create our own holiday-themed Shakespearean Sonnet. To add complexity (and help our students get started!), we’ll write from the point of view of a specific holiday decoration, tradition, or character.

Big Gifts, Small Prices

What if you want to buy a big gift that’s cheap for its size? By calculating the volume of the object, we can find how much each cubic inch costs. Measured by price per volume, Thomas is 250 times more expensive than a big outdoor slide!

Mathematical Curiosities

Sometimes you encounter that math student who is simply interested in numbers. Here are some famous (and not so famous) sets of numbers that have curious properties.

Finding The Conflict in Math

Sometimes I find authentic data, but it doesn’t necessarily have an obvious conflict. The measurements of the Great Pyramid are cool, but where’s the conflict? What draws students in if they’re not inherently interested in pyramids?

Patterns In Writing: Conflict

Discussing types of conflict is a great first step towards building a strong narrative. Although the term conjures up images of ninja battles for many of our students, conflict can take on many more sophisticated forms than physical fights.

Conflict and Quadrilaterals

Rather than merely asking “what patterns are there in these quadrilaterals” we’ll set up an exploration of conflict and quadrilaterals.

Math Project: Box Office Totals

As a teenager, I loved monitoring the weekend’s box office results. This kind of data is exciting, oozing with built in conflict. It sets up questions that require math to answer.

Writing Better Personal Narratives

How can we apply literary themes, five act plots, and types of conflict to upgrade students’ personal narratives?

Math Project: Disneyland Parking Structure

Let’s develop a math project to challenge students who have demonstrated a mastery of multiplication and are ready to explore its applications. We’ll count the parking spaces in the Disneyland parking structure!

Beyond Checkers

Even the simplest game takes on interesting new twists when we alter the rules a bit. Let’s look at ways our students can modify checkers and turn this children’s game into something new to explore.

Ideas for Idiom Activities

Here are four idiom activites I’ve used.

Remix Poetry: Christmas To Thanksgiving

Let’s remix a famous Christmas poem, give it a Thanksgiving theme, and teach our students advanced poetry concepts at the same time

Creating In Science

It’s easy for science instruction to linger in the bowels of Bloom’s Taxonomy as we try to cram everything into the tiny time allotted. However, isolated facts don’t inspire our students. Let’s set up units that invoke creativity but demand knowledge.

Halloween: Characters Dressed As Characters

What if characters from film or literature dress up like other characters based on some parallel such as: conflict, trait, accomplishment, etc.

Inductive Thinking in Spelling and Vocabulary

Let’s look at a couple ways to bring inductive thinking into word studies. We’ll examine simple plural rules all the way up to etymology of foreign words in English.

Persuasive Writing: Holiday Vs Holiday

Let’s write a persuasive essay about one holiday from the point of view of another holiday’s “mascot.” For example, what would the Easter Bunny think about Christmas, how would Santa feel about Valentine’s Day, and what would a Turkey have to say about St. Patrick’s Day?

Math Game: The Game of 100

The Game of 100 is a simple game requiring no supplies, yet it opens up a rich world of exploring strategy and a little mental math.

Differentiate Math with Inductive Learning

With inductive learning, we still define terms, explain rules, and practice, but the order is different. We’re harnessing gifted students’ natural abilities to enhance our lessons.

Empower Students to Think Inductively

When Sherlock Holmes infers Watson’s hometown from just a few details, he’s thinking inductively. We can set up lessons to capitalize on this same method of thinking.

Researching Idiom Origins

Learning about idioms is simply a fun activity that students will enjoy far more than writing spelling lists out five times each. Researching idiom origins is a great example of assigning gifted students less, but more complex work than their grade-level peers.

Climbing Bloom’s Taxonomy In Science

Science should be more than memorizing facts. Let’s spice it up and push our students from the doldrums of remembering to the soaring heights of evaluation. While it’s true that this will take longer than just following a textbook, we’re not just teaching facts, we’re equipping students with the ability to make well-informed judgements.

Building Creative Confidence

Let’s tackle Torrence’s specific elements of creativity and build up students’ confidence in their creativity through vocabulary games, drawing games, and the alternative uses task.

Keep Their Bikes Rolling

Increasing brain stimulation for gifted kids during lessons means a reduction in behavior problems, an increase in enjoyment, and a more comfortable learning environment.

2012 Annual Report

Byrdseed.com is now in its fourth year. This site began simply as a way for me to remember lesson ideas and explore my thoughts. Its continued growth surprises me every month, but what truly excites me is the hunger that this growth represents. People are actively searching for ideas and inspiration to reach our gifted learners. Here are my plans to help meet that need.

The Curious Case of Impostor Syndrome

They believe that only they are aware of their limitations, near misses, and potential for error. They attribute their success to luck, not ability. In an attempt to maintain an illusion of perfection, they avoid situations in which they might not be the best. This is called Impostor’s Syndrome.

Coats of Arms, Seals, and Other Heraldry

Symbolic seals, crests, and coats of arms are a common concept across cultures. From the simplicity of Japanese mon to the regality of English coats of arms all the way to America’s Great Seal, humans around the world create graphical representations of themselves.

Five Examples of Origins

Some fascinating origins that might interest your students and provide you with a great hook for a lesson: the first photo, school mascots, early bikes, Ronald McDonald, and animated cave paintings.

Multiple Perspectives: Right And Wrong At The Same Time?

It’s essential to teach our students to think flexibly and consider multiple points of view. Flexible thinking leads to product innovation, diplomacy between nations, and advances in science. School, however, often encourages students to settle into a “one right answer” mindset.

Review: Orientation

“Orientation” is a unique sci-fi novel specifically written for gifted children as a tool for learning about their social and emotional needs. I’ll open with my highest praise: I wish someone had given me this book when I was in elementary school!

Fuzzy Problems

Fuzzy Problems are, quite simply, the types of problems we face in our regular lives. Issues that have no best answer and no single path to a solution. Problems that are missing information and require best guesses. They’re the kinds of problems we want our students to grapple with.

Asynchrony and X-Men

Not only are they dealing with the usual trials of growing up, they are often doing it with an increased awareness of their faults, a frustration with being unable to do everything well, and a world that often doesn’t know what to do with them. Worse, they often lack the emotional tools to accompany their increased awareness.

3 Examples to Introduce ⏳ Change Over Time

Here are three visual resources to discuss change over time, compare and contrast, and multiple persepctives: beauty tips from 1889, company logos over time, and 1950s 7up ads featuring babies.

Pre-Assessment Documents

In a previous post, we discussed traits of quality pre-assessment. Here are three documents to help you make pre-assessment easier: a parent letter, a daily work log, and a rubric for grading project presentations.

Overexcitabilities: Five Unexpected Intensities

We know gifted students are far more complex than their test scores might suggest. And while we might expect certain quirks, others blindside us: a strange reaction to sound, a sudden outburst of tears, or a need to stand up at inopportune times. Dabrowski’s five overexcitabilities provide some insight into these unexpected moments.

5 Visual Paradoxes To Blow Your Students’ Minds

We’ve seen some awesome logic paradoxes, now let’s examine a few visual paradoxes that would make great mental warm-ups for your class! The penrose triangle, penrose stairs, impossible cube, the blivet, and the Möbius strip! Plus, download a powerpoint to share with your students.

Analyze Characters With Personality Types

Previously, we discussed using morality, multiple intelligences, and scholarly habits to analyze characters. Not only does this add deep layers to questioning, but (more importantly) it provides opportunities to discuss gifted students’ unique emotional needs. Personality types are another tool that serve these two needs.

6 Behind The Scenes Links

Nothing ignites creative thought like seeing what it’s like “behind the scenes!” Here are six links detailing the process of everything from creating beautiful McDonald’s hamburgers to a writing a clever Pixar story.

What If Another Creator Created A Creation?

I came across these drawings by Adam Watson. They’re scenes and characters from Star Wars, remade in the style of Dr. Seuss. What a fascinating way to extend a typical writing assignment: ask students to recreate a story as if it were created by another author.

Sensitivity in Gifted Kids

In class, a child suddenly explodes at another for making a clicking pencil sound, a student shuts down for the day after making an error while presenting, a distant natural disaster effects children’s moods. As a teacher, this layer of complex sensitivity builds on your already difficult job of tracking academic progress. To be effective, you must also navigate this emotional minefield.

Inspiration From Socrates

As my students learn about Socrates, countless avenues of discussion open up. Time does not permit a deep enough study, so here are three raw ideas inspired by Socrates: taking a stand, the truth of history, and the power of questions. Have fun!

M.C. Escher Across The Disciplines

As a gifted kid, M.C. Escher fascinated me. Without a doubt, he continues to fascinate the gifted kids I work with. Here are some links to inspire a study of Escher in your classroom.

Books Featuring Gifted Girls as Main Characters

Here are a bunch of books featuring gifted girls as their main characters. Each protagonist struggles to balance her abilities with others’ expectations. None rely on tired cliches or overused school settings. And each novel is so well-written that I read them on my own during summer break!

3 More Paradoxes

Last month’s paradox post was very popular, so here’s another. These are a blast to share with kids. Use them to help students think through a complex problem, finding all possibilities. Work on the ability to articulate thinking. And, naturally, have them find and create their own.

Upgrading Questions with Key Words

How adding a single “key word” can upgrade your questions to a whole new level.

Evaluating Characters on a Graph

Here’s an idea to integrate two-dimensional graphing with deep character analysis. Use the right characters, and you’ve got an exciting debate on your hands. Plus, it leads to a beautiful product that’s perfect for Open House.

3 Paradoxes

The paradox content imperative is a blast to expose students to. Here are three famous paradoxes to delight and confound your deep thinkers (and one bonus from Yogi Berra).

I Read A Book That Was Too Hard

I have a class set of HG Wells’ The Time Machine. It was affordable, a classic, and recognizeable to my students. The problem? It was written in the 19th century and is simply above most of my students’ independent reading levels. However, this book was definitely within their instructional reading level, so I turned this novel study into a read–aloud.

Think Like A Philosopher

Up near the top of Bloom’s taxonomy is “evaluating.” A great use of this level of thinking is to evaluate a character’s ethical choice. But we can go deeper! Let’s ask students to evaluate characters’ actions based on another character’s point of view. To add another layer, we’ll teach kids about philosophers and use their points of view as well.

Differentiating “Compare & Contrast” with Classics

Here’s how I differentiated the reading skill of “Compare & Contrast” for my students, who have been successfully comparing and contrasting since kindergarten. Students investigated artists, developed a haiku, and learned how to shade with pencils.

Constructing Meaningful Math Projects

Here are four key attributes I look for when developing math projects: juicy data, interesting conflict, an expert’s lens, and a final product.

Inductively Evaluate Website Reliability

Last time, we discussed a few ways to help students search Google. Google helps us find related websites, however its ranking system does not necessarily return the most reliable pages. The final step requires our human mind to make difficult decisions that computers can only approximate. Simply choosing the top result is not enough. We must teach our students to evaluate websites.

Discuss Online Reputation Using Historical Figures

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that students need instruction in how to interact online. Unfortunately, we’re stuck using textbooks that teach “computer” lessons about card catalogs. In this unit, we’ll combine famous historical figures, frightening Facebook facts, and the concept of reputation.

Symbolism and Pixel Art

Symbolism, a mainstay of literature discussion, seems too abstract and ephemeral to teach to younger students. However, with a well-constructed lesson, students will quickly get the hang of symbolic representation. We’ll finish this unit up with some great pixel-art and computer painting.

Explore Geometry: Area and Perimeter

The problem is that we dive in with formulae before students have their bearings. Let your students get their hands dirty with geometry. They’ve got to play with the shapes and explore. Beginning adders and subtractors work with manipulatives before they delve into abstract arithmetic. Older students are still beginning geometers. Give them a chance to touch the math and have some fun.

Multiple Perspectives: Lunar Calendars

Looking at calendars throughout history is an interesting way to explore multiple perspectives. Nothing is as ingrained in our lives as seven day weeks, twelve months, and 365 days per year. Challenge your students’ perceptions by investigating various solar, lunar, and lunisolar calendars.

Math Project: Furnish A Hotel

Starting with an IKEA catalog, a hotel furnishing math project was born. Use this project as a tool to differentiate your math instruction and impart some practical knowledge on your students.