Playlist: Bookmarks
Tournament of Mythological Creatures
Who will win the tournament of mythological creatures!?
Holiday Emoji Story ⛷️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Holiday Emoji Story ☃️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Greekymon Studies – Round 1
What might a creature named “Ursolunascope” be like?
Factors and Codes (Episode 1)
Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.
Van Gogh Self-Portrait Tournament
Who will win the tournament of Van Gogh self-portraits!?
Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles
Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?
Path Cipher (Codes Part 4)
Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.
Zig Zag Cipher (Codes Part 3)
Let’s try a cipher that doesn’t substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.
Pig Pen Cipher (Codes Part 2)
Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!
Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
An Olympic Sized Pool and Jet Fuel (Episode 3)
How many times could you fill up a jet plane using the fuel that would fit in an olympic-sized pool?
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
Not Like The Others: US National Parks
Four US national parks. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Olympics: Medals by Population
Do big countries always have the most medals? Which smaller countries rank surprisingly high in the Olympics?
Greek and Latin Word Part Paths
How can we go from Biology to Immobile?
Habitable Planets and Moons Tournament
Which object in the solar system is most habitable?
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?
Measurement: How Old Is Mr. Byrd?
What if I told you that I’m 341,640 old? Could you figure out what unit I’m using? Hint: it’s not years!
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.
Remixing A Holiday Poem
Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!
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.
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.
Same Perimeter, Different Area For Rectangles
Can two rectangles have the same perimeter but… different areas!?
Investigating Christmas Trees
Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?
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!
Doubling Dollars
Say you have a dollar. Say you can double that dollar each day: $1, $2, $4, and so on. How long will it take to reach… one million dollars? Not as long as you might think!
The Thinking Hats
So… do your students moan when forced to work in a group? Part of the problem is that lack the structure to work well with peers. Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats are a perfect tool to help with this problem.
A Donut Investigation
In this cross-curricular investigation, students will look into an intriguing question: do donuts or salads have more sugar? They’ll grapple with misleading information, bias, and use their math skills to create a visual representation of sugar in popular foods.
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!
Math Curiosity: Primes and Squares
Can any perfect square be written as the sum of two primes?
Studying and Remixing “The Raven”
Ready to push kids beyond the boring, old ABAB rhyme scheme and into something a bit more complex?
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?
Exploring Circumference With Famous Circles
Let’s find how the diameter and circumference of famous circles are related.
How Many Students Can Fit On The Playground?
So… just how many kids could we cram onto the playground?
Create A Creature
Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
A Nutrition-Based Math Project
Let’s create a parody ad attacking a surprisingly calorie-rich meal.
Furnishing A Hotel
Design and furnish hotel rooms on a budget. Real math, real constraints, real decisions. Then pitch your hotel to investors.
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.
Math Project: What If I Bought Apple Stock Instead?
What if you had an original iPod and sold it compared to if you had bought the equivalent amount of Apple stock and sold that?