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Playlist: Bookmarks

Regulating Our Emotions

Tools to help your young students regulate their emotions.

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.

Tournament of Mythological Creatures

Who will win the tournament of mythological creatures!?

Improving These Novel Study Questions

For Teachers

Let’s fix these nine, underdeveloped discussion questions!

Order, Chaos, and the Holiday Season

Let’s write a holiday song about order and chaos!

Crossing Every Bridge Exactly Once (aka Eulerian Paths)

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

How to Reset Your Brain When You’re Flooded

Allison Edwards explains how changing your senses can reset your brain.

What Happens In Your Brain When You’re Worried or Afraid

Allison Edwards explains how blood flow in your brain affects your decision-making

Bobbing for Apples

What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?

What If… Unreliable Water?

What would the consequences be if a town’s tap water became… unreliable?

Graphic Organizers and Higher Order Thinking

For Teachers

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

Thanksgiving Photo Writing

Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.

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!?

Making Depth and Complexity Posters

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

Not Like The Others: Mountains

Which of these mountains is not like the others?

Building “Not Like The Others” Tasks

For Teachers

A delightfully ambiguous framework that is quick to prepare, but can last forever!

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!

Difficult vs Complex Tasks

For Teachers

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

Complex Task: Academic Tournaments

For Teachers

Who would win in the Tournament of Least Useful Geometric Shapes or Bravest Shakespearean Characters? Create an academic tournament and watch your students’ brains sweat!

Story Starter: Amusement Park

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

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?

Holiday vs Holiday (from a Mascot’s Perspective)

Want something to do during the holiday season that is both fun and involves thinking? Get students writing about what a snowman would think about Halloween or what a ghost would think about Thanksgiving.

Asking Questions That Make Students Think

For Teachers

Most classroom questions test memory. These questions test thinking. There’s a difference — and your students will feel it.

Upgrade Research Questions With Depth and Complexity

Ever ask students to create research questions? Were their ideas a bit… blah? My own students had a very hard time writing questions they didn’t already know the answer to! This video is how I solved that problem: upgrade research questions with depth and complexity.

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!

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!

Col – A Strategy Game

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

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.)

Synonym Graphs

So, which is happiest: happy, joyful, or ecstatic? Which is most temporary?

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.

Differentiate With Frames Across Disciplines

For Teachers

One topic, four angles. The Frame graphic organizer gives every student a different way in — without you creating four different lessons.

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 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.

Introduction to Watercolor

For Teachers

A mosaic technique that makes watercolor approachable. Students walk away with something they’re proud of.

Engineering: Build A Bridge

Using real bridges as their starting point, students will construct bridges out of straws and paperclips.