Playlist: Bookmarks
Halloween Problems and Solutions
When we try to solve a problem, sometimes we end up creating new problems. Which lead to new solutions. Which lead to new problems.
New Uses For A Cardboard Tube
So, what can a cardboard tube be used for other than holding wrapping paper?
Words Within Words: COBWEB
How many words can you find within COBWEB?
What If… Long Life?
What would the consequences be if all people lived much, much longer?
Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
How Many Will There Be? Chip Off The Block
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
Famous Structures
The Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House — group them, pick the best from each group, then design your own.
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!?
Not Like The Others: US States
How is each of these states not like the others?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Think Like A Historian
Here’s how effects be causes and causes can be effects!
Analyze Characters Using Philosophy
What is the Brick Pig’s philosophy? How would he apply it to the characters in Harry Potter?
Writing About Art: The Scream
Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.
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!
Self Portraits: Text Art
What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?
Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
Not Like The Others: Natural Disasters
Four natural disasters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Game: Snakes
In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?
Notice, Wonder: A Long Line
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
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?
Intersecting Angles and Streets
There can never be just one angle.
Math Curiosity: Magic Squares
Imagine a 3×3 square in which every row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. That’s a magic square!
Math Curiosity: The Coloring Problem
No video gets me more email from students! How few colors can you use to color in any map so that no two, neighboring regions are the same color?
The Resiliency Tournament
Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.
More Specific than “Smart”
When students are told that they’re “smart”, what does this word actually mean to them? (Psst. It isn’t what we intended.)
Fractals: Sierpinski’s Triangle
What if this triangle pattern just kept repeating… forever!?
The Thinking Hats
So… do your students moan when forced to work in a group? Part of the problem is that lack the structure to work well with peers. Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats are a perfect tool to help with this problem.
A Donut Investigation
In this cross-curricular investigation, students will look into an intriguing question: do donuts or salads have more sugar? They’ll grapple with misleading information, bias, and use their math skills to create a visual representation of sugar in popular foods.
Showing A Character’s Trait
We tell students to ‘show, not tell’ — but that advice is useless until they experience the difference. This lesson makes it click.
Improving Presentations 1: Watching The Greats
Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!
Create A Civilization: The River
The Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Seine, the Thames, and now… your river!
Teaching Empathy With Faberge Eggs
The story of the Fabergé Eggs is heartbreaking. It’s also the perfect way to build empathy in your classroom.
A Grid-Based Fraction Project
You’ve got 60 spaces on a grid to create an amusement park, a house, a farm, or whatever you’d like. Divide it into seven pieces, order it by size, combine into two halves, and more in this fraction project.
Engineering: Build A Bridge
Using real bridges as their starting point, students will construct bridges out of straws and paperclips.