Playlist: Bookmarks
Writing About Art: The Scream
Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.
How Many Will There Be? Stairs
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
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?
Word Ladder: Fast to Race (4 step)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Measurement: How Big is this Bathtub?
So, if I told you a bathtub holds 640 of water, which unit would make the most sense?
How Many Will There Be? Triangles Within Triangles
A triangle splits and splits and splits again. How many will there be in step 20?
Math Curiosity: Klauber’s Triangle
In 1932, a leading authority on rattlesnakes, Laurence Klauber, discovered a startling pattern within a triangle of primes.
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?
Evens and Odds – Addition and Subtraction
When we’re adding and subtracting, do evens make odds into evens? Do odds make evens odd? Which one has… more power!?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Times
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Fraction Ordering Tournament
Which set of fractions would be the trickiest to order from least to greatest? Let’s have a tournament!
Same Perimeter, Different Area For Rectangles
Can two rectangles have the same perimeter but… different areas!?
Parts of Speech Party – Limit
How many different ways can we use the word “limit”? Let’s find out in this Parts of Speech Party!
Rounding Numbers (But Not To 10)
What could we possibly do to make rounding more interesting for students who already get it? In this series, students consider how they might round to values other than “the nearest 10.” How, for example, do we round to the nearest 9? 7? 15?
Why Is Our Calendar So Weird!?
Why are there 12 months? Why don’t weeks fit into months evenly? Why don’t weeks fit into the year evenly? What’s going on with the calendar!
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.
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?
Investigating Cost of Living
Would you save money if you lived in Las Vegas and commuted every day to San Francisco?
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: Finding Primes
Prime numbers are unpredictable! How can we possibly find them all? An Ancient Greek mathematician found one way!
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.