Playlist: 5th Grade Enrichment
Dinosaur Optical Illusion
Why does this dinosaur keep looking at me…
Two Animals Switch Biomes
What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?
Characters’ Faults Can Also Be Strengths
Strength and weakness are often two sides of the same coin. Students will explore how a character’s flaw can be a benefit.
Notice, Wonder: Brooklyn
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles
Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?
A Character’s Playlist
What playlist of songs best goes with a character’s change over time?
Thanksgiving Photo Writing
Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.
Plant Adaptation Tournament
Who will win in a tournament of eight plants with Interesting adaptations!?
Exploration Technology Tournament
Which of these pieces of exploration technology is most important? Most underrated? Most long-lasting?
Animal Adaptation Tournament
Which animal has the most interesting, most valuable, or strangest adaptations?
A Lunar Survival Mission
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?
Game: Number Scrabble
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!
Story Starter: Amusement Park
Students use 12 random phrases to write a story that takes place in at an amusement park.
How Many Ways: Times Equals Minus
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
The Tournament of Biomes
Want to move beyond memorizing the characteristics of biomes? In this lesson, students work through a Tournament of Biomes, explaining which biome wins in each round (based on criteria you choose). In the end, they crown a 👑 Champion Biome!
Finding The Volume of Laptops
How has the volume of laptops changed over time? You know you want to check out how huge those first versions were!
Describing Author’s Voice
What if… Edgar Allen Poe wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
What Do Mean and Median Mean?
When will mean and median give us different results?
Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator
Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.
Elements of The Fantasy Genre
Every fantasy story has patterns hiding underneath the magic. Once your students see the elements, they’ll spot them everywhere — and use them in their own writing.
Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art
Create a pixelated icon that represents the essence of a character!
A Nutrition-Based Math Project
Let’s create a parody ad attacking a surprisingly calorie-rich meal.
Math Curiosity: Collatz Conjecture
The Collatz Conjecture: start with any number and get to 1 using just two rules. It seems to always work…
Furnishing A Hotel
Design and furnish hotel rooms on a budget. Real math, real constraints, real decisions. Then pitch your hotel to investors.
Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche
We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.