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?
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?
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
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.
Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!
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? 🤯
Let's make valentines with an educational twist!
Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.
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!
How quickly can you break the code with Bulls and Cows?
Who can guess the other person's codeword first? This game practices inducting thinking and encourages the development of a strategy.
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?
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
What if this triangle pattern just kept repeating… forever!?
You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe if both players could play as both Xs and Os!
Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.
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 do you see in this squiggle?
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Dots and Boxes.
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.
Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you'll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!
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!
What's going on in this painting? Who is that guy? What's his job? And where's his other boot?
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Col!
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Chomp!
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!?
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
What if you only played Tic-Tac-Toe with Xs and you could play on multiple boards?
Let's encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
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?
Ready to learn a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game? Let's… go!
Nothing like a paradox to get your kids brains exploding 🤯! This one starts with five simple words: "This statement is a lie."
What are these two women up to? What's that thing she's holding? Let's make some inferences!
How fast do you get your mathematical car going without crashing?
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 🤯
What if we completely rebuild something slowly? What if we completely rebuild it all at once? Is it still the same thing?
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) subtraction game!
How to draw a simple version of this twisty Henri Matisse knot!
Students will work their brain in several ways, noticing details, comparing, synthesizing, and finally identifying a parallel. All with one artist's work!
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.
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!
Students start with the same squiggle and then draw on it, turning it into whatever they think it might be.
What if we turned a tooth brush into a robot… that could do art?
Turn your students into a bunch of Monets with q-tips and some tempera paint.
Let's give our students an art history lesson while teaching them how to enhance their drawings using one-point perspective.
The barber shaves everybody who doesn't themselves. So... does the barber shave himself?
Here's how you can draw The Penrose Triangle, an example of an impossible shape.
Now let's try the Path Cipher - a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.
What's going on in this room? There are shoes everywhere! Are those… oranges? Let's make some inferences!
Students will be working with examples and non-examples to deduce the topic of cubism.
Let's get students' art really popping with two-point perspective!
So, what can a pencil be used for other than writing and drawing?
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
Let's try a cipher that doesn't substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.
What if we played chess on a board that's only 4Ă—5?
What if you had really weak chess pieces, but you could always move twice?
Tired of boring ol' chess? Then you need to try FOUR PLAYER chess!
Nothing could possibly go wrong with a love potion on the loose!
So, what CAN a CAN be used for other than storing liquids?
How to draw a more complex version of this twisty Henri Matisse knot!
Students start with the same squiggle and then draw on it, turning it into whatever they think it might be.
So, what can a chair be used for other than, you know, sitting in?
What would the consequences be if no one had to sleep anymore?
What surprises can you spot when a kernel pops in super slow-mo?
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.
Watch astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti cook a meal in zero gravity on the International Space Station.
Romeo and Juliet in just about five minutes.
What happens when you blow a bubble in below-freezing temperatures?
What would the consequences be if a town's tap water became… unreliable?
What if one player had, say, 32 pawns?
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 side played with THREE QUEENS and the other had SEVEN KNIGHTS!? What if?
What would the consequences be if all people lived much, much longer?
It's Hamlet in just about five minutes!
Who will win the tournament of Van Gogh self-portraits!?
Shakespeare's Much Ado summarized in just five minutes!
An animated summary of Shakespeare's utterly ridiculous "Twelfth Night."
You won't believe how fascinating it is to watch a map of the most popular baby names by US state.
Various desserts melt in surprisingly different ways.
Watch this block of Lego cast three completely different shadows of three distinctly different objects! How'd he do it?