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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.

Holiday Shuffle – Day vs Date

Wouldn’t some holidays be better on a certain day of the week? Should Thanksgiving have a set date?

Tournament of Not-So-Famous Inventors

Which inventor and invention will win the tournament?

Comparing Characters’ Bedrooms

What item’s in a character’s bedroom would reflect their deepest desires? And what if they toured a similar character’s room?

Change A Story’s Genre

What if we rewrote a story’s climax into a totally different genre?

Letters With Symmetry

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

Updating Old Questions: Pay Raise

For Teachers

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

Depth and Complexity and Graphic Organizers

For Teachers

Let’s see a few examples of how Depth and Complexity slides nicely into any graphic organizer.

Graphic Organizers and Higher Order Thinking

For Teachers

A few quick tips on how to better use graphic organizers to support higher-order thinking.

Differentiate with Low Floors and High Ceilings

For Teachers

Stop starting at grade level and stretching up. Start high and scaffold down. It’s simpler, and it actually works.

An Olympic Sized Pool and Lots of Pasta (Episode 2)

How many pounds of pasta could you cook using the water in an olympic-sized pool?

Lesson Makeovers: 3 Big Ideas

For Teachers

After looking at dozens of lessons folks sent in, I came up with three big ideas to address.

Special Gifts with Special Requirements

Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!

Why I Don’t Use “Create” in Bloom’s Taxonomy

For Teachers

The word “Create” can mask low-level tasks. Here’s why I avoid using it in objectives.

Making Depth and Complexity Posters

Why buy premade posters when you can show off your students’ thinking about Depth and Complexity?

Complex Task: Subjective Graphs

For Teachers

What would it be like if students graphed characters from stories? Historic leaders? Elements from the period table? Objects in space?

Difficult vs Complex Tasks

For Teachers

What separates difficulty from complexity? And why do complex tasks lead to much more natural differentiation?

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?

Cram

Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!

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: Out To Eat

Students pick from 12 random phrases to create a story about an incident in a restaurant.

Story Starter: Amusement Park

Students use 12 random phrases to write a story that takes place in at an amusement park.

Math Game: Heaps

Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) subtraction game!

Remixing A Holiday Poem

Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!

Virtue or Vice?

Aristotle noted that positive traits and negative traits are often the same thing, but just in different amounts. The right amount is a virtue, but too much or too little and it’s a vice.

How Renewable Is That Resource?

Which resource is more renewable? And which is easier to find?

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.

Ghost

Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.

Col – A Strategy Game

The first person to run out of regions loses in this strategy game.

Dots and Boxes

Who can make the most boxes from dots in this strategy game?

Sprouts

Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.

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!

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.)

Jabberwocky and Context Clues

Context clues lessons can be a disaster. Here, we expose students to a delightful classic packed with nonsense words (“Jabberwocky”) and ask them to decipher the meanings and parts of speech. Then, it’s only natural for students to write their own nonsense poems.

Propaganda and Logical Fallacies

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

Create A Civilization: Calendars

Why 12 months? Why 30ish days? Why 7 days in a week? Your civilization could organize a year in any way you want!

Climbing Bloom’s with Depth and Complexity

For Teachers

Bloom’s tells you how high to aim. Depth and Complexity tells you where to look. Combine them and things get interesting.

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!

Educational Valentines

Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!

Motivation and Moral Development

Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?

The Game of 100

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