Playlist: Bookmarks
Contig
Roll three dice and combine them using any mathematical operation. But be strategic to maximize your points!
Comparing Characters’ Bedrooms
What item’s in a character’s bedroom would reflect their deepest desires? And what if they toured a similar character’s room?
Grouping Shapes by Parallel and Perpendicular Sides
Which shapes go together based on parallel and perpendicular lines?
Letters With Symmetry
Let’s group letters by their symmetry, then create symmetrical words, and then symmetrical sentences!
Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles
Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?
Squiggles Introduction
What do you see in this squiggle?
Stories with the Same Problems and Solutions
Have you ever noticed that some stories have awfully similar problems? What if we looked for the most unusual way of solving a repeating problem?
What’s the Pattern? Fraction Addition
Can your students figure out how to add fractions by looking for a pattern?
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?
Not Like The Others: US States
How is each of these states not like the others?
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!
Analyze Characters Using Philosophy
What is the Brick Pig’s philosophy? How would he apply it to the characters in Harry Potter?
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?
How Many Will There Be? Pyramids
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
Cram
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!
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!
Doubling Up Writing: Anadiplosis
Repeating words can be what you want, if what you want is an interesting effect. (Psst, that’s an example of anadiplosis!)
Game: Snakes
In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?
Math Curiosity: Klauber’s Triangle
In 1932, a leading authority on rattlesnakes, Laurence Klauber, discovered a startling pattern within a triangle of primes.
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
Virtue or Vice?
Aristotle noted that positive traits and negative traits are often the same thing, but just in different amounts. The right amount is a virtue, but too much or too little and it’s a vice.
What’s In My Brain: Trapezoids or Not?
Which are trapezoids and which are not?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Minus
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Game: Order and Chaos
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe if both players could play as both Xs and Os!
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.
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!
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?
Chomp
Chomp away at your opponent in this grid-based strategy game.
Col – A Strategy Game
The first person to run out of regions loses in this strategy game.
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.
What Would Poetry Think About Prose?
Poetry and Prose meet at a party. What would they say to each other? How would they feel about each other’s style?
Why Is Our Calendar So Weird!?
Why are there 12 months? Why don’t weeks fit into months evenly? Why don’t weeks fit into the year evenly? What’s going on with the calendar!
The Angles of a Triangle
Why tell a kid the rules of a triangle when they can discover them!?
Grouping Quadrilaterals In A Hierarchy
Can we classify quadrilaterals like we classify living things?
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.
Math Curiosity: Odds & Squares
Why does the sum of the first 5 odds also equal 5 squared?
Investigating Cost of Living
Would you save money if you lived in Las Vegas and commuted every day to San Francisco?
Doubling Dollars
Say you have a dollar. Say you can double that dollar each day: $1, $2, $4, and so on. How long will it take to reach… one million dollars? Not as long as you might think!
Propaganda and Logical Fallacies
Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.
Visualizing Fraction Multiplication
What does it look like to multiply fractions?
Fraction Puzzlers: Add and Subtract Fractions To Reach A Number
You only have six digits to form three fractions. Can you combine them to get to 0?
Create A Civilization Introduction
Your students build a civilization from scratch — rivers, flags, calendars, currency, government. Social studies, science, and writing woven into one year-long project.
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!
Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art
Create a pixelated icon that represents the essence of a character!
Literary Technique: Juxtaposition
Put a grumpy character next to a joyful one and they make each other stand out even more. Opposites are powerful!
Create A Creature
Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.
The Game of 100
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?
Furnishing A Hotel
Design and furnish hotel rooms on a budget. Real math, real constraints, real decisions. Then pitch your hotel to investors.