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Playlist: Bookmarks

Tournament of Mythological Creatures

Who will win the tournament of mythological creatures!?

A System Similar to a Cell

Which parts of a cell serve a similar job to the parts of a cruise ship, human body, computer, or other system?

Order, Chaos, and the Holiday Season

Let’s write a holiday song about order and chaos!

Words Within Words: ORNAMENT

How many words can you find within ORNAMENT?

Squiggles Collection 3

Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?

Squiggles Introduction

What do you see in this squiggle?

Squiggles Collection 2

Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?

How Many Will There Be? Chip Off The Block

Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.

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?

Thanksgiving Photo Writing

Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.

Famous Structures

The Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House — group them, pick the best from each group, then design your own.

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!?

Mow A Lawn

How long would it take to mow a very large lawn with a push-mower?

Plant Adaptation Tournament

Who will win in a tournament of eight plants with Interesting adaptations!?

Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game

Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?

Tournament of Ancient Inventions

Which of these inventions of the ancient world is most influential? Least useful today? Most taken-for-granted?

Not Like The Others: Rainforests

Which of these rainforests is not like the others?

Not Like The Others: Birds of the Tropical Rainforest

Which of these four birds is not like the others?

New Uses for a Paperclip

So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?

Looping Grid Art

Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you’ll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!

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?

Inferring With Art: A Man

What’s going on in this painting? Who is that guy? What’s his job? And where’s his other boot?

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!

Self Portraits: Text Art

What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?

Art Lesson: Two-Point Perspective

Let’s get students’ art really popping with two-point perspective!

An Escher-Style Tessellation Project

Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!

Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings

Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!

Self Portraits: Pointillism

Turn your students into a bunch of Monets with q-tips and some tempera paint.

The Pros and Cons of Producers and Consumers

Sure, students might know the difference between a producer and a consumer… but have they considered how they feel about each other? What, in a producer’s opinion, are the pros and cons of a consumer?

Game: Snakes

In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?

Jotto

Who can guess the codeword first?

Not Like The Others: States of Matter

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

Word Ladders Introduction

You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.

Game: Gomoku

Want to take Tic-Tac-Toe to the next level!? Imagine a 15×15 board. You must get five-in-a-row. You cannot get six-in-a-row. That’s Gomoku!

Math Curiosity: A Pattern Packed Triangle

Pascal’s pattern-packed triangle is a potent puzzle for pupils to ponder.

Remixing A Holiday Poem

Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!

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?

Generalization: Systems Are Made up of Other Systems

A clock is a system. So is a rainforest. So is your school. Once you see systems inside systems, you can’t unsee it.

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.

Disneyland Parking Structure Math Project

Your students will use estimation strategies to figure out how many parking spots are there in the parking structure at Disneyland? And you bet I reveal the real answer!

How Renewable Is That Resource?

Which resource is more renewable? And which is easier to find?

Create A Civilization: A Change In Government

It’s a great moment for your civilization! Power is moving from the hands of a few to a more democratic government.

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!

The Personalities of Rocks

What would an igneous rock be like? Would it get along with a sedimentary rock? Could they handle the hot personality of a metamorphic rock?

Game: Order and Chaos

Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe if both players could play as both Xs and Os!

Intersecting Angles and Streets

There can never be just one angle.

Student Introductions With Depth and Frames

Want to introduce the tools of Depth and Complexity and learn more about your students and introduce the Frame graphic organizer? Have I got the activity for you!

Paradox: The Liar’s Paradox

Nothing like a paradox to get your kids brains exploding 🤯! This one starts with five simple words: “This statement is a lie.”

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!

Col – A Strategy Game

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

Game: Notakto

What if you only played Tic-Tac-Toe with Xs and you could play on multiple boards?

Dots and Boxes

Who can make the most boxes from dots in this strategy game?

Sprouts

Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.

The Resiliency Tournament

Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.

More Specific than “Smart”

When students are told that they’re “smart”, what does this word actually mean to them? (Psst. It isn’t what we intended.)

Synonym Graphs

So, which is happiest: happy, joyful, or ecstatic? Which is most temporary?

Fractals: Koch Snowflake

You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!

Jabberwocky and Context Clues

Context clues lessons can be a disaster. Here, we expose students to a delightful classic packed with nonsense words (“Jabberwocky”) and ask them to decipher the meanings and parts of speech. Then, it’s only natural for students to write their own nonsense poems.

Propaganda and Logical Fallacies

Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.

Universal Themes

For Teachers

Universal Themes are an easy way to connect lessons, units, and content areas, even going across grade levels, and into students’ personal interests.

Create A Civilization: The River

The Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Seine, the Thames, and now… your river!

Depth and Complexity: ⚖️ Ethics

Want to add drama to any topic? Use the Ethics prompt!

Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea

Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.

Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator

Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.

How to Play Go

Ready to learn a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game? Let’s… Go!

Create A Creature

Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.

Asynchrony: Developing At Different Rates (For Students)

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

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?

Introduction to Watercolor

For Teachers

A mosaic technique that makes watercolor approachable. Students walk away with something they’re proud of.

Intellectual Intensity

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