Playlist: Bookmarks
Two Animals Switch Biomes
What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?
What’s In My Brain: Italy vs Normandy
We’re looking at countries vs states (and other smaller regions).
Natural Disasters Tournament
Earthquake vs. hurricane. Tsunami vs. wildfire. Students set the criteria, argue their case, and crown a champion. Warning: it gets heated.
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
Plant Adaptation Tournament
Who will win in a tournament of eight plants with Interesting adaptations!?
Animal Adaptation Tournament
Which animal has the most interesting, most valuable, or strangest adaptations?
Not Like The Others: Natural Disasters
Four natural disasters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
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.
Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences
Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.
The Tournament of Biomes
Want to move beyond memorizing the characteristics of biomes? In this lesson, students work through a Tournament of Biomes, explaining which biome wins in each round (based on criteria you choose). In the end, they crown a 👑 Champion Biome!
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.
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.
Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator
Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.
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.
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!
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.