Playlist: Bookmarks
Greekymon Studies – Round 1
What might a creature named “Ursolunascope” be like?
Investigating Population Changes
How have the ages of three countries’ populations changed from 1950 to 2020? And what problems might that create?
Ultimate (or Inception) Tic Tac Toe
What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it?
Concept Attainment: Art
Can your students tell the difference between cubism and abstract art?
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?
Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
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.
Holiday vs Holiday (from a Mascot’s Perspective)
Want something to do during the holiday season that is both fun and involves thinking? Get students writing about what a snowman would think about Halloween or what a ghost would think about Thanksgiving.
Characters Dressed as Other Characters for Halloween
What if one character dressed up as another for Halloween? Would the Cat in the Hat pick Captain Jack Sparrow, because they’re both chaotic yet good-natured people? Would Elsa dress up as The Ice King since they are both lonely?
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.
Punctuation Power
In a sentence, punctuation may seem meek when compared to those mighty words, but punctuation has incredible power over the meaning of a sentence. Students will try re-punctuating sentences to find new meanings – without changing a single word!
Game: Order and Chaos
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe if both players could play as both Xs and Os!
Math Curiosity: Magic Squares
Imagine a 3×3 square in which every row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. That’s a magic square!
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?
Analyzing Movies’ Success
So should we make another movie in this series?
Investigating Cost of Living
Would you save money if you lived in Las Vegas and commuted every day to San Francisco?
Percents and Credit Cards
Let’s buy something expensive with a credit card and then make only the minumum payments!
Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity
Your students will use Depth and Complexity to note how a character’s main trait changes across a story.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 1
‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
Motivation and Moral Development
Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?
Writing Summaries in Haiku
Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.
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?
Intellectual Intensity
Do you know someone who becomes a bit overexcited by ideas?