TEKS ELA Standard: 2.11.B.i

Any Shape With Just One Cut

Octopus Walks on Two Tentacles

ice bike with circular saws for wheels

Impossibly High House of Cards

Domino Chain Takes 10,000 Steps

inside your 704lb pumpkin

Impossible Balanced Rock Structures

Lego Certified Professional

tiny, no-staples, photocopy-able book

Omni-Directional Sidewinder Forklift

a square-wheeled tricycle

Apple Harvesting Machine

the “Bird Behavior” category

Omnidirectional Bike With Ball Wheels

human slinkies

LEGO-compatible stubs

building a delightful miniature scene

built out of LEGO

60,000 magnetic spheres

Lego Firewood Factory

delightful robot fighters

Newton’s Cradle

marble racing on tracks

optical-illusion sculptures

self-leveling pool table

creating faux-shadows on street

a 3D staircase

one piece of rolled-up paper

working Lego car

toss leftover tea in -40°C

cube-shaped watermelons

miniature marble music machine

Shredding Paper With Lego

Pineapple Disintegration

Wood Bending Machine

Marble-Powered Music Machine

Hair Dryer Kinetic Art

Mesmerizing Sand Patterns With Magnets

Marble Course All Around the Backyard

Making a Chain Link From a Red-Hot Rod

William Tell Overture on Glass Bottles

Introducing Order and Chaos

Introduce Order by exploring “written” vs “unwritten” rules.

Categorize and Re-Categorize Animals

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?

Famous Structures

The Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House — group them, pick the best from each group, then design your own.

Order Can Be Natural or Constructed

When is order natural and when is it designed by people?

Teach Non-Fiction Writing Structure With Fractals

Did you ever notice that the structure of an essay is very similar to the structure of a paragraph? Hmm…

Better Stories Part 1: The Big Idea

We open our unit on narrative writing with a big idea: “structure increases creativity.” I show how this is true by bringing in examples from across all disciplines.