Playlist: Bookmarks
Two Animals Switch Biomes
What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?
Van Gogh Self-Portrait Tournament
Who will win the tournament of Van Gogh self-portraits!?
Categorize and Re-Categorize Animals
Put these animals into groups. Then do it again. Then… do it one more time. How does re-re-grouping the same creatures reveal new patterns and give new insights?
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
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!?
Writing About Art: Impression, Sunrise
Look closely at Impression, Sunrise. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.
Earthquakes – Mixed Up Paragraph
Can you use the context clues to get these sentences about earthquakes back into the correct order?
Notice, Wonder: Witch’s Fingers
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Tournament of Ancient Inventions
Which of these inventions of the ancient world is most influential? Least useful today? Most taken-for-granted?
Tournament of Presidents
So who was the strangest of these eight presidents?
Unexpected Intensities
For TeachersDo you know a student who’s a little bit… intense?
Writing About Art: The Scream
Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.
Inferring With Art: A Couple
What’s going on in this room? There are shoes everywhere! Are those… oranges? Let’s make some inferences!
Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
Writing A Thanksgiving Letter
What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?
Evens and Odds – Addition and Subtraction
When we’re adding and subtracting, do evens make odds into evens? Do odds make evens odd? Which one has… more power!?
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.
Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences
Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.
Building Creative Analogies
We’ll take two seemingly unrelated pieces of content (say volcanoes and the human body) and then build analogies to connect the two ideas. In the end, students can create a skit, comic, or story relating the two concepts.
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.
Historic Social Media
How would people from history have interacted online? Students will develop a conversation online between people involved in the same event from history.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
An App For A Historical Figure
What kind of an app could have helped Abe Lincoln accomplish his goals?
Creating A Classroom Motto
Starting with specific examples of fantastic classroom behavior, your class will end up with one sentence summing up their expectations. It’s a classroom motto!
The Game of 100
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?
Teaching Empathy With Faberge Eggs
The story of the Fabergé Eggs is heartbreaking. It’s also the perfect way to build empathy in your classroom.
Engineering: Build A Bridge
Using real bridges as their starting point, students will construct bridges out of straws and paperclips.