Playlist: Bookmarks
Holiday Shuffle – Day vs Date
Wouldn’t some holidays be better on a certain day of the week? Should Thanksgiving have a set date?
New Uses For A Cardboard Tube
So, what can a cardboard tube be used for other than holding wrapping paper?
Changing Baby Names
You won’t believe how fascinating it is to watch a map of the most popular baby names by US state.
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?
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
Olympics: Winter vs Summer Medal Count
Which country has a great balance between their summer and winter Olympic medals?
Racetrack – Race Around A Graph
How fast do you get your mathematical car going without crashing?
Mow A Lawn
How long would it take to mow a very large lawn with a push-mower?
Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
Precipitation Tournament
Eight types of precipitation battle it out in this tournament.
Cram
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!
Inferring With Art: A Couple
What’s going on in this room? There are shoes everywhere! Are those… oranges? Let’s make some inferences!
Inferring With Art: Two Women
What are these two women up to? What’s that thing she’s holding? Let’s make some inferences!
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!
Self Portraits: Text Art
What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?
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?
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.
Game: Snakes
In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?
Jotto
Who can guess the codeword first?
Math Game: Heaps
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) subtraction game!
Disneyland Parking Structure Math Project
Your students will use estimation strategies to figure out how many parking spots are there in the parking structure at Disneyland? And you bet I reveal the real answer!
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.
How Many Ways: Order of Operations 1
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
The Tournament of Biomes
Want to move beyond memorizing the characteristics of biomes? In this lesson, students work through a Tournament of Biomes, explaining which biome wins in each round (based on criteria you choose). In the end, they crown a 👑 Champion Biome!
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.
Bulls and Cows
How quickly can you break the numeric code?
Ghost
Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.
Calculators, Patterns, and Multiplying By Decimals
Before teaching students the procedure for multiplying with decimals, how much can they intuitively glean from a structured play session with calculators?
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?
Col – A Strategy Game
The first person to run out of regions loses in this strategy game.
Sprouts
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.
Analyzing Movies’ Success
So should we make another movie in this series?
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!
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.
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs
Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
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.
Writing Clear Directions
Can you write directions so clear that a group of kids can put a toy together with no illustrations?