Playlist: Bookmarks
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.
Racetrack – Race Around A Graph
How fast do you get your mathematical car going without crashing?
Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
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?
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!
Jotto
Who can guess the codeword first?
What If There Were No Hundreds Place?
Imagine a world with no hundreds place. We’d have to call it ten tens instead. But then, what would we call the thousands place? How would we read 9999? What if we added one more?
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.
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.
Chomp
Chomp away at your opponent in this grid-based strategy game.
Dots and Boxes
Who can make the most boxes from dots in this strategy game?
Showing A Character’s Trait
We tell students to ‘show, not tell’ — but that advice is useless until they experience the difference. This lesson makes it click.
Studying and Remixing “The Raven”
Ready to push kids beyond the boring, old ABAB rhyme scheme and into something a bit more complex?
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
How to Play Go
Ready to learn a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game? Let’s… Go!
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
The Game of 100
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?
Better Stories Part 5: Plot Structure
Ever read a student’s story that was just event after event after event and then a very sudden ending? They lack an understanding of a plot’s structure. With the help of Finding Nemo, I break down how to set up a well-structured plot.
Better Stories Part 2: Types of Conflict
If your students’ stories are packed with endless ninja fights or arguments between frenemies, it’s time to expose them to a wider range of conflicts.
Better Stories Part 3: Literary Themes
A typical student narrative includes plot and characters but lacks a larger idea to hold it all together. This is where a lesson on themes comes in…
Better Stories Part 1: The Big Idea
We open our unit on narrative writing with a big idea: “structure increases creativity.” I show how this is true by bringing in examples from across all disciplines.
Better Stories Part 4: Character Archetypes
Are students’ characters a bit flat? Archetypes give them a strong foundation on which to build their own characters as well as a tool to analyze existing stories.