So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
A favorite of mine! This task is delightfully complex and ambiguous, forcing students to make choices without enough information and with no right answer. How will they survive on the moon for three days?
Asking students to "think creatively" won't get you far. They won't know how to start, they'll get stuck with simple ideas, or they'll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?
We'll take two seemingly unrelated pieces of content (say volcanoes and the human body) and then build analogies to connect the two ideas. In the end, students can create a skit, comic, or story relating the two concepts.
So, I heard you like Tic-Tac-Toe. What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it? 🤯
Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!
Let's make valentines with an educational twist!
What if we played Tic-Tac-Toe with numbers and instead of three-in-a-row, we add up to 15? Well… then we'd have Number Scrabble!
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.
How quickly can you break the code with Bulls and Cows?
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
What if a students' self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?
In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?
Who can guess the other person's codeword first? This game practices inducting thinking and encourages the development of a strategy.
What do you see in this squiggle?
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe if both players could play as both Xs and Os!
What if this triangle pattern just kept repeating… forever!?
Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you'll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!
You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!
Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Dots and Boxes.
Let's encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
Terri Eicholz explains how she builds empathy in her students using the story of the Faberge Eggs.
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.
Can your students come up with a one-syllable word to sum up their time away from school? And then rewrite The Beatles' song Help!?
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe, but both players can both play as both X and O throughout the whole game! First to get three-in-a-row still wins!
What's going on in this painting? Who is that guy? What's his job? And where's his other boot?
Students start with facts, then make groups, and then work with a single statement about Christmas Trees.
Want to take Tic-Tac-Toe to the next level!? Imagine a 15Ă—15 board. You must get five-in-a-row. You cannot get six-in-a-row. That's Gomoku!
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Col!
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Chomp!
Put these animals into groups. Then do it again. Then… do it one more time. How does re-re-grouping the same creatures reveal new patterns and give new insights?
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
Ready to learn a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game? Let's… go!
What if you only played Tic-Tac-Toe with Xs and you could play on multiple boards?
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) subtraction game!
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!
How fast do you get your mathematical car going without crashing?
Nothing like a paradox to get your kids brains exploding 🤯! This one starts with five simple words: "This statement is a lie."
Students start with the same squiggle and then draw on it, turning it into whatever they think it might be.
What are these two women up to? What's that thing she's holding? Let's make some inferences!
Let's encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!
Create mathematical art with curves that, well, aren't curvy.
How to draw a simple version of this twisty Henri Matisse knot!
What if we completely rebuild something slowly? What if we completely rebuild it all at once? Is it still the same thing?
Students grapple with The Crocodile Dilemma, a paradox from Ancient Greece in which a tricky crocodile makes a deal with some parents. Warning: students brains might explode 🤯
Students will work their brain in several ways, noticing details, comparing, synthesizing, and finally identifying a parallel. All with one artist's work!
Turn your students into a bunch of Monets with q-tips and some tempera paint.
Cindy Phan shares her method of introducing watercolor to students using a mosaic technique.
What if we turned a tooth brush into a robot… that could do art?
Let's give our students an art history lesson while teaching them how to enhance their drawings using one-point perspective.
Now let's try the Path Cipher - a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.
Here's how you can draw The Penrose Triangle, an example of an impossible shape.
The barber shaves everybody who doesn't themselves. So... does the barber shave himself?
What's going on in this room? There are shoes everywhere! Are those… oranges? Let's make some inferences!
What surprises can you spot when a kernel pops in super slow-mo?
So, what can a pencil be used for other than writing and drawing?
Let's try a cipher that doesn't substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.
Students will be working with examples and non-examples to deduce the topic of cubism.
What if we played chess on a board that's only 4Ă—5?
Let's get students' art really popping with two-point perspective!
So, what can a cardboard tube be used for other than holding wrapping paper?
Watch astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti cook a meal in zero gravity on the International Space Station.
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
Students start with the same squiggle and then draw on it, turning it into whatever they think it might be.
So, what CAN a CAN be used for other than storing liquids?
So, what can a chair be used for other than, you know, sitting in?
How to draw a more complex version of this twisty Henri Matisse knot!
What if you had really weak chess pieces, but you could always move twice?
What would the consequences be if no one had to sleep anymore?
What would the consequences be if all people lived much, much longer?
Tired of boring ol' chess? Then you need to try FOUR PLAYER chess!
Sure, anyone can win at checkers… but can you lose!?
Teach students to draw, and then build on, natural curves using the style of artist Andy Goldsworthy.
Nothing could possibly go wrong with a love potion on the loose!
How to draw the final version of the twisty Henri Matisse knot!
Students start with the same squiggle and then draw on it, turning it into whatever they think it might be.
What happens when you blow a bubble in below-freezing temperatures?
What would the consequences be if a town's tap water became… unreliable?
You won't believe how fascinating it is to watch a map of the most popular baby names by US state.
Who will win the tournament of Van Gogh self-portraits!?
Put these countries into groups. Then do it again. Then… do it one more time. How does re-re-grouping the same places reveal new patterns and give new insights?
What if one player had, say, 32 pawns?
Romeo and Juliet in just about five minutes.
What if one side played with THREE QUEENS and the other had SEVEN KNIGHTS!? What if?
Watch oil paint float on water and become a familiar scene.
It's Hamlet in just about five minutes!
Hey! Our New Year traditions have a lot in common.
An animated summary of Shakespeare's utterly ridiculous "Twelfth Night."
Watch this block of Lego cast three completely different shadows of three distinctly different objects! How'd he do it?
Various desserts melt in surprisingly different ways.
Shakespeare's Much Ado summarized in just five minutes!