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Playlist: Bookmarks

Summer Activity Pack

A worksheet pack featuring writing prompts, a summer essay project, a science-based escape room activity, and image analysis prompts.

From Frantic Questions to Sensible Sequence

For Teachers

Why was I asking five, unrelated, low-level questions in a row?

When to Go Deeper? When to Just Move On?

For Teachers

When should teachers take the time to build an advanced version of something? And when should they just let students move along?

Improving Evaluative Questions

For Teachers

How to improve questions at the “evaluate” level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Lesson Makeovers: 3 Big Ideas

For Teachers

After looking at dozens of lessons folks sent in, I came up with three big ideas to address.

Engagement Isn’t The Goal

For Teachers

While “engagement” is fun, it shouldn’t be our main goal.

Brain Needs or Heart Needs

For Teachers

We think of gifted kids as only having academic needs, but – in their own words – they also have many needs of the heart.

Unexpected Intensities

For Teachers

Do you know a student who’s a little bit… intense?

Building “Not Like The Others” Tasks

For Teachers

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

Anti-Checkers

Sure, anyone can win at checkers… but can you lose!?

Why “Challenging” May Not Be The Right Goal

For Teachers

So many of us say, “I want to challenge my students!” But, would you want a job that you describe as “challenging”?

Content Imperatives

For Teachers

Learn to use the Content Imperatives, a set of five additional tools that work with Depth and Complexity.

Complex Task: Subjective Graphs

For Teachers

What would it be like if students graphed characters from stories? Historic leaders? Elements from the period table? Objects in space?

Difficult vs Complex Tasks

For Teachers

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

Who Asks The Questions? And Who Answers?

For Teachers

What would the pie chart look like for these three situations: the teacher asks the students, a student asks the teacher, or a student asks another student a question? I can tell you my pie chart would have been very lopsided.

Creating Sequences of Questions

For Teachers

High-level questions on their own simply aren’t enough. We must create sequences of questions!

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!

Cram

Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!

Developing Questions that Prompt Thinking in Math

For Teachers

Math is a particularly tricky subject for asking higher-level questions. Here are a couple of techniques I’ve used to prompt students to think, not merely calculate.

Game: Wild Tic Tac Toe

Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe, but both players can both play as both X and O throughout the whole game!

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!

Asynchrony (For Adults)

For Teachers

In some areas, a student may be shockingly advanced, while in others… surprisingly average. This is asynchrony in action.

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.

Math Game: Heaps

Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) subtraction game!

Not Like The Others: States of Matter

How is each of the states of matter not like the others?

Complex Task: What Would X Think of Y?

For Teachers

Here’s a simple task that will add complexity to any content from any grade level!

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.

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.

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.

Col – A Strategy Game

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

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.

Intellectual Intensity

Do you know someone who becomes a bit overexcited by ideas?