Playlist: Bookmarks
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.
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.
Not Like The Others: Flowers
Four flowers. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Plexidemokinesis (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Plexidemokinesis? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.
Psycholunaphase (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Psycholunaphase? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent the creature, device, or spell it describes.
Hydromagnaphone (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Hydromagnaphone? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.
Geosynth (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Geosynth? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.
Thermocryptograph (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Thermocryptograph? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.
Aquamorphotron (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Aquamorphotron? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.
Chronosonarium (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Chronosonarium? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.
Pyrostasis (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Pyrostasis? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.
Greekymon Studies – Round 3
What might a creature named “Aquacornus Rex” be like?
Greekymon Studies – Round 2
What might a creature named “Hypermnemonicus” be like?
Greekymon Studies – Round 1
What might a creature named “Ursolunascope” be like?
Factors and Codes: First Names (Episode 2)
Scrambled up somewhere in 161,000 is a first name. Can you find it!?
Factors and Codes (Episode 1)
Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.
Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles
Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Theta
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Eta
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Zeta
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Epsilon
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Delta
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Gamma
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Beta
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Alpha
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
Words Within Words: SCARECROW
How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?
The Heaviest Pumpkin
How heavy is the world’s heaviest pumpkin when measured in Mr. Byrds?
Path Cipher (Codes Part 4)
Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.
Zig Zag Cipher (Codes Part 3)
Let’s try a cipher that doesn’t substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.
Pig Pen Cipher (Codes Part 2)
Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!
Word Pyramids
Start with a one letter word, add another letter, then add another. How tall can you make the pyramid?
Idiom Tasks
Four fantastically terrific tasks for a weekly idiom study.
Prefixes and Suffixes in Other Languages
Let’s go beyond merely memorizing word parts and instead analyze across languages. How do other languages make a word the opposite?
Lipogram: Rewrite “Mary Had A Little Lamb”
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
Lipogram: Rewrite “Twinkle, Twinkle”
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
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.
Phrases to Join a Discussion
Want your classroom discussions to go a bit more smoothly? Train students to use a few simple phrases and it’ll make all the difference in the world.
Holiday Writing: Packing Crates
An old photograph. A holiday scene. Pick one object in the picture and write from its point of view.
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
Not Like The Others: US National Parks
Four US national parks. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
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?
What’s the Pattern? Fraction Addition
Can your students figure out how to add fractions by looking for a pattern?
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!?
Find The Pattern: Multiply Fractions
What if you set the stage for students to discover how to multiply fractions?
Sets of Idioms Related to Food
Five sets of five idioms, all related to food.
Writing in Pilish
Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Antonym Paths
Does the antonym of an antonym bring us back to the same meaning?
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!
Analyze Paragraphs: Cucumbers
Three paragraphs about cucumbers. They all cover the same topic — so what makes each one different? Now combine them into one super-paragraph.
Analyze Paragraphs: Wolverines
Three paragraphs about wolverines. They all cover the same topic — so what makes each one different? Now combine them into one super-paragraph.
Fractions: Decompose and Recompose
What if we took a fraction apart, then took those pieces apart, then recombined them, and then recombined those, arriving back to the original fraction?
Word Ladder: Work to Hard (4 Steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Word Ladder: Fast to Race (4 step)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Word Ladder: Kid to Old (5-steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Word Ladder – Tea to Hot (5-steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
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?
Measurement: A Long Movie
What if I told you a movie was a whopping 0.017 long? Could you figure out the unit I’m using? This lesson packs in strange measurements of time as well as tiny decimals.
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
Writing A Thanksgiving Letter
What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?
What If There Were No Hundreds Place?
Imagine a world with no hundreds place. We’d have to call it ten tens instead. But then, what would we call the thousands place? How would we read 9999? What if we added one more?
Writing Seuss Style Poetry
Sure, Dr. Seuss wrote for young students, but can older students analyze his writing and learn to mimic his style? THEN, they can produce Seuss-style poetry about any topic: Ancient China, the electromagnetic spectrum, Pride and Prejudice, and (yes) fraction division!
Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences
Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.
Not Like The Others: Charlotte’s Web
Four Charlotte’s Web characters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
What’s In My Brain: Cute Baby vs Fast Cheetah
Can students spot similes vs metaphors?
Same Perimeter, Different Area For Rectangles
Can two rectangles have the same perimeter but… different areas!?
Sets of Idioms
Why do we say ‘break a leg’? Five themed sets of idioms your students will actually remember.
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!
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?
Place Value (Beyond Base 10)
Place value is something we cover in elementary school. It seems simple, but I’d wager that very few adults really understand the topic. I sure didn’t until I worked with non-base-10 number systems in college. Your students can get a taste of this mind-boggling experience by imagining what it would be like if we didn’t have the number 9. What would each digit represent then?
Grouping Quadrilaterals In A Hierarchy
Can we classify quadrilaterals like we classify living things?
Investigating Cost of Living
Would you save money if you lived in Las Vegas and commuted every day to San Francisco?
Doubling Dollars
Say you have a dollar. Say you can double that dollar each day: $1, $2, $4, and so on. How long will it take to reach… one million dollars? Not as long as you might think!
Fractals: Sierpinski’s Triangle
What if this triangle pattern just kept repeating… forever!?
Propaganda and Logical Fallacies
Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.
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.
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
Math Curiosity: Waring’s Conjecture
So, can you write every odd (greater than 3) as the sum of three primes?
A Caffeine Investigation – Part 3
Caffeine is everywhere. But what are the ads really saying? Analyze the claims, then create your own public service announcement.
A Caffeine Investigation – Part 2
What do people know about the amount of caffeine in common beverages?
A Caffeine Investigation – Part 1
So… just how much caffeine can you have before you end up in the ER?
Math Curiosity: Primes and Squares
Can any perfect square be written as the sum of two primes?
Math Curiosity: Finding Primes
Prime numbers are unpredictable! How can we possibly find them all? An Ancient Greek mathematician found one way!
Math Curiosity: Twin Primes
What do you call two prime numbers who are very close together?
Persuasion and Packaging: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
How does a drink’s packaging affect us emotionally and logically?
Visualizing Fraction Multiplication
What does it look like to multiply fractions?
Fraction Puzzlers: Add and Subtract Fractions To Reach A Number
You only have six digits to form three fractions. Can you combine them to get to 0?
Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity
Your students will use Depth and Complexity to note how a character’s main trait changes across a story.
A Visual Guide To Dividing By Fractions
Have you ever wondered what it looks like to divide by a fraction, man?
Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator
Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.
Discovering Pi With Sticky Notes
Pi is mysterious and strange! Why not let students discover it on their own?
Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art
Create a pixelated icon that represents the essence of a character!
Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs
Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.
Math Curiosity: Palindromic Number Conjecture
Using this one weird trick, it seems that you can turn any number into a palindrome!
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.
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.
Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche
We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.
Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names
Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!