TEKS ELA Standard: 2.7.E

massive snow drawings

uses bioluminescence to glow

Iceberg Simulator

Robin Eley paints Vermeer’s The Milkmaid

watch a seed grow into a plant

stop-motion animation

3D-Printed Zoetrope

creating faux-shadows on street

explains how you can use “light trapping” to catch all kinds

Art Using Space as a Background

Portraits With Globs of White Paint

Shredding Paper With Lego

Marble-Powered Music Machine

Mathematical Art Flip Book

How Chemistry Creates Really Big Bubbles

Mesmerizing Sand Patterns With Magnets

How Foley Artists Create Movie Sound Effects

Recursive Island

Vulcan Point Island is an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island

Dinosaur Optical Illusion

Why does this dinosaur keep looking at me…

Holiday Worksheets

Writing prompts, non-fiction analysis, and science topics related to Christmas and Hanukkah.

Order and Chaos Hide Inside Each Other

Chaos can contain order. Order can contain chaos! Is chaos ever truly random?

Power in Autumn

Autumn was once powerful because of the harvest. What gives Fall its power now?

Halloween Worksheets

Crosswords, image analysis, and writing prompts for Halloween!

Indirect Power – Lighthouse vs Magnetism

Students explore the idea of indirect power – which can be both visible (a lighthouse) or invisible (magnetism).

Power – Blue Whale vs Krill

Sure, a Blue Whale is huge. But does a tiny krill have more power?

Founding The Colonies

13 colonies activities including a word search and task cards packed with facts. Plus, students will create their own colony with a name, story, and map!

Hero or Not A Hero?

Students will determine what makes a hero a hero.

St. Patrick’s Day Worksheets

St. Patrick Day’s themed word searches, crossword puzzle, reverse crossword, transition writing practice, and a math puzzle.

Two Animals Switch Biomes

What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?

Lego Paper Shredder

Can you shred paper using just Lego?

Martial Arts in Space

Shaolin kung fu students as seen from a satellite.

Improving Shakespeare’s Repetition

Let’s help William Shakespeare with his use of repetition.

St. Patrick and Other Legends

How would real people feel about the legends that have been created about them?

A System Similar to a Cell

Which parts of a cell serve a similar job to the parts of a cruise ship, human body, computer, or other system?

Student Introductions With Depth, Complexity, and Frames: Level Two

Once students know the prompts of Depth and Complexity, let’s take them much higher up Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Emoji Stories 🏟️

Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?

Emoji Stories 🛥️

Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?

Greekymon Studies – Round 3

What might a creature named “Aquacornus Rex” be like?

Mother’s Day Cards

Let’s write the cleverest Mother’s Day cards you’ve ever seen!

Van Gogh on Water

Oil paint floats on water and becomes a familiar scene.

How to Reset Your Brain When You’re Flooded

Allison Edwards explains how changing your senses can reset your brain.

Slow Motion Popcorn

What surprises can you spot when a kernel pops in super slow-mo?

Compare and Create New Year’s Traditions

Hey! Our New Year traditions have a lot in common.

Cooking In Space

Watch astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti cook a meal in zero gravity on the International Space Station.

Frozen Bubble

What happens when you blow a bubble in below-freezing temperatures?

Lego Shadow Spinner

Watch this block of Lego cast three completely different shadows of three distinctly different objects! How’d he do it?

A Character’s Playlist

What playlist of songs best goes with a character’s change over time?

Squiggles Collection 3

Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?

Robot Writing: Orchestra

Read three pieces of writing from three different robots based on a beautiful painting and decide who wins!

Squiggles Collection 1

Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?

Create A Civ: Capital City

Every great capital is part geography, part human design. Research real ones, then build your own from scratch.

Looking Closely at Holiday Photos

Let’s write from multiple perspectives using an old timey holiday photo!

Thanksgiving Photo Writing

Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.

Stories with the Same Problems and Solutions

Have you ever noticed that some stories have awfully similar problems? What if we looked for the most unusual way of solving a repeating problem?

Back to School: Rewriting The Beatles’ “Help!”

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!?

Drawing Knots, Level 3

How to draw the final version of the twisty Henri Matisse knot!

Drawing Knots, Level 2

How to draw a more complex version of this twisty Henri Matisse knot!

Drawing Knots, Level 1

How to draw a simple version of this twisty Henri Matisse knot!

Parabolic Curve Art

Create mathematical art with curves that, well, aren’t curvy.

Writing About Art: Chōshi in Shimosha

Get your students writing some pretty darn impressive poetry based on Japan’s most famous artist.

Writing About Art: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

Look closely at Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.

Writing About Art: Twilight in the Wilderness

Look closely at Twilight in the Wilderness. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.

New Uses for a Paperclip

So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?

Create A Civilization: Currency

What type of currency will your civilization use? What symbols will be on it? Why are they significant?

Create A Civilization: Design A Flag

What makes for a good flag? What makes a bad flag?

Think Like A Historian

Here’s how effects be causes and causes can be effects!

Looping Grid Art

Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you’ll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!

Writing About Art: The Scream

Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.

Thinking With Art: Head Down

One artist, two paintings. Notice details, compare, synthesize, then find a parallel in another creator’s work.

Inferring With Art: A Man

What’s going on in this painting? Who is that guy? What’s his job? And where’s his other boot?

Inferring With Art: A Couple

What’s going on in this room? There are shoes everywhere! Are those… oranges? Let’s make some inferences!

Self Portraits: Text Art

What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?

Art Lesson: One-Point Perspective

Let’s give our students an art history lesson while teaching them how to enhance their drawings using one-point perspective.

Art Lesson: Two-Point Perspective

Let’s get students’ art really popping with two-point perspective!

An Escher-Style Tessellation Project

Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!

Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings

Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!

Self Portraits: Pointillism

Turn your students into a bunch of Monets with q-tips and some tempera paint.

The Pros and Cons of Producers and Consumers

Sure, students might know the difference between a producer and a consumer… but have they considered how they feel about each other? What, in a producer’s opinion, are the pros and cons of a consumer?

Writing Sample: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Shrinking)

A passage from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to use as a mentor text, discussion starter, or writing prompt.

Writing Sample: The Velveteen Rabbit (The Toys)

A passage from The Velveteen Rabbit to use as a mentor text, discussion starter, or writing prompt.

Holiday vs Holiday (from a Mascot’s Perspective)

Want something to do during the holiday season that is both fun and involves thinking? Get students writing about what a snowman would think about Halloween or what a ghost would think about Thanksgiving.

Characters Dressed as Other Characters for Halloween

What if one character dressed up as another for Halloween? Would the Cat in the Hat pick Captain Jack Sparrow, because they’re both chaotic yet good-natured people? Would Elsa dress up as The Ice King since they are both lonely?

Systems Are Made up of Other Systems

A clock is a system. So is a rainforest. So is your school. Once you see systems inside systems, you can’t unsee it.

Virtue or Vice?

Aristotle noted that positive traits and negative traits are often the same thing, but just in different amounts. The right amount is a virtue, but too much or too little and it’s a vice.

How Renewable Is That Resource?

Which resource is more renewable? And which is easier to find?

Investigating Christmas Trees

Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?

Student Introductions with Complexity and Frames

How have you changed over time? Students introduce themselves through the lens of change — and learn a Depth and Complexity tool in the process.

Student Introductions With Depth and Frames

Want to introduce the tools of Depth and Complexity and learn more about your students and introduce the Frame graphic organizer? Have I got the activity for you!

Col – A Strategy Game

The first person to run out of regions loses in this strategy game.

Game: Notakto

What if you only played Tic-Tac-Toe with Xs and you could play on multiple boards?

Dots and Boxes

Who can make the most boxes from dots in this strategy game?

Sprouts

Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.

Building Creative Analogies

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 Civilization: Calendars

Why 12 months? Why 30ish days? Why 7 days in a week? Your civilization could organize a year in any way you want!

Improving Presentations 1: Watching The Greats

Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!

Academic Love Letters

What if Kylo Ren wrote a love letter to Abe Lincoln or the Sahara Desert wrote one to the Moon?

Content Imperatives: Paradox

How can one idea pull in opposite directions, being both true and false or right and wrong at the same time? It’s time to explore Paradoxes!

Create A Civilization: The River

The Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Seine, the Thames, and now… your river!

Content Imperatives: Parallel

Get students thinking broadly by exploring similarities across multiple topics. Combine with Depth and Complexity for bonus points!

Create A Civilization Introduction

Your students build a civilization from scratch — rivers, flags, calendars, currency, government. Social studies, science, and writing woven into one year-long project.