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Playlist: Bookmarks

Valentine’s Day Codes

Teach your students about basic cryptography and code making.

Notice, Wonder: Fountain

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Notice, Wonder: Burton Island

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Holiday Emoji Story 🚚

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

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.

Van Gogh on Water

Oil paint floats on water and becomes a familiar scene.

Letters With Symmetry

Let’s group letters by their symmetry, then create symmetrical words, and then symmetrical sentences!

Crossing Every Bridge Exactly Once (aka Eulerian Paths)

How can you cross each bridge in this city exactly once?

Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles

Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?

Slow Motion Popcorn

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

Parts of Speech Party: Introduction (Check)

How many ways can we use “check” in a paragraph? And can your students spot when it’s a verb, or a noun, or an adjective?

Words Within Words: SCARECROW

How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?

Words Within Words: STUFFING

How many words are hiding inside STUFFING? More than you think.

Updating Old Questions: Pay Raise

For Teachers

How I’d update a low-level, overly engaging math question.

Robot Writing: Volcano

Read three pieces of writing from three different robots about the same beautiful painting of a volcano. Who wrote it best?

Robot Writing: The Bridge

One painting of a bridge. Three robots. Who wrote it best?

Squiggles Introduction

What do you see in this squiggle?

Squiggles Collection 1

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

Words Within Words: Intro (SOLDIER)

How many words can you find within SOLDIER? 20? 35? 50? Even more!?

Notice, Wonder: Silver Torch

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

An Olympic Sized Pool and 2 Liter Bottles (Episode 1)

How many 2 liter bottles could you fill up using the water in an olympic-sized pool?

Engagement Isn’t The Goal

For Teachers

While “engagement” is fun, it shouldn’t be our main goal.

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?

Writing Concept Attainment Lessons

For Teachers

In a Concept Attainment lesson, we give students examples and non-examples of a concept — without telling them what that concept is!

Mow A Lawn

How long would it take to mow a very large lawn with a push-mower?

Plant Adaptation Tournament

Who will win in a tournament of eight plants with Interesting adaptations!?

Tournament: 8 Wonders of the Solar System

Which location is the most wondrous place in the solar system?

Habitable Planets and Moons Tournament

Which object in the solar system is most habitable?

How Many Ways: Fraction Addition 234

How many different ways can you make this fraction addition statement true using only the digits one through nine?

How Many Ways: Fractions Divide Equals 2/3

One equation. Digits one through nine. How many ways can you make it work?

How Many Ways: Divide Fractions Equal 1/4

How many different ways can you make this fraction division math statement true using only the digits one through nine?

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: 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.

Not Like The Others: Rainforests

Which of these rainforests is not like the others?

Not Like The Others: Stars

How is each of these stars not like the others?

New Uses for a Paperclip

So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?

Tournament of Presidents

So who was the strangest of these eight presidents?

Anti-Checkers

Sure, anyone can win at checkers… but can you lose!?

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!

Notice, Wonder: Green Circles

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

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?

Notice, Wonder: An Orange Thing

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Measurement: An Elephant

What if I told you that an elephant weighed a back-breaking 176,000? Could you figure out the unit I’m using? But… how many corgis would that be?

Measurement: How Big is this Bathtub?

So, if I told you a bathtub holds 640 of water, which unit would make the most sense?

Addition: 3 Digits Plus 2 Digits (Multiple Solutions)

Typical practice problems don’t move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy. With this framework, you’ll see kids stop and really think about how to approach multi-digit addition.

Subtraction: 3 Digits Minus 2 Digits (Multiple Solutions)

Typical practice problems don’t move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy. With this framework, you’ll see kids stop and really think about how to approach multi-digit subtraction.

Word Ladders Introduction

You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.

Math Curiosity: A Pattern Packed Triangle

Pascal’s pattern-packed triangle is a potent puzzle for pupils to ponder.

Writing A Thanksgiving Letter

What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?

SCAMPER: Scaffolding Creativity

Asking students to “think creatively” won’t get you far. They won’t know how to start, they’ll get stuck with simple ideas, or they’ll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.

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!

Running A “Notice, Wonder” Lesson

For Teachers

Use these puzzling images to build a classroom culture that is comfortable with curiosity, ambiguity, and taking intellectual risks.

Numerator or Denominator: Which has more power in a fraction?

What do you do with students who already get their fraction operations? Give them a contrived project about recipes or pizza slices? Make them solve annoyingly hard practice problems? Please. Here, we get students thinking in a whole new way, pondering which has more power, the numerator or denominator.

Parentheses: How big of a change can they make!?

Two tiny parentheses. One expression. How big of a change can they make? Bigger than you think.

Depth and Complexity – An Introduction for Teachers

For Teachers

Depth and Complexity is the most powerful framework most teachers have never heard of. Here’s what it actually is — and isn’t.

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.

Not Like The Others: Planets

Which of these planets is not like others? Well, it sure looks simple at first. But each option could be the one that doesn’t fit in.

Notice, Wonder: Turbine

Your students will be surprised by the size of this turbine… and by what’s hanging from it!

Notice, Wonder: The Cliff

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Fraction Ordering Tournament

Which set of fractions would be the trickiest to order from least to greatest? Let’s have a tournament!

Writing A Story About Fraction Equivalence

When fractions take on a new denominator, it’s as if they’re wearing a disguise – same value, new look. So let’s write a story about fraction equivalence starring a fraction who needs to fit in with a new group.

Same Perimeter, Different Area For Rectangles

Can two rectangles have the same perimeter but… different areas!?

Undoing Multiplication With Division

Multiplication and division, natural foes, are constantly seeking to undo each other. Students will attempt to reverse the effects of multiplication by dividing once, twice, or even thrice!

Notice, Wonder: A Ship

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Run On or Not? – What’s In My Brain

Can your students spot the run-on sentences?

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!

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?

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?

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!

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?

The Resiliency Tournament

Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.

The Angles of a Triangle

Why tell a kid the rules of a triangle when they can discover them!?

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.)

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?

Propaganda and Logical Fallacies

Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.

Improving Presentations 4: The Big Day

How do you mentally (and emotionally) prepare yourself for the big day?

Improving Presentations 3: The Storyboard and Slides

It’s time to turn that outline into a storyboard and then some actual slides.

Improving Presentations 2: Planning The Outline

After watching some great presenters, let’s outline your presentation!

Improving Presentations 1: Watching The Greats

Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!

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?

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.

A Visual Guide To Dividing By Fractions

Have you ever wondered what it looks like to divide by a fraction, man?

Educational Valentines

Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!

Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs

Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.

Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 2

We’ll show students how to add more variety to their writing by starting sentences with a reason, a prepositional phrase, and a simile.

Math Curiosity: Palindromic Number Conjecture

Using this one weird trick, it seems that you can turn any number into a palindrome!

Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 1

‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.

The Game of 100

Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?

Math Curiosity: Collatz Conjecture

The Collatz Conjecture: start with any number and get to 1 using just two rules. It seems to always work…

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!

Multiple Perspectives in Primary

For Teachers

Even our youngest students can learn to think from multiple perspectives!