Playlist: Bookmarks
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?
Factors and Codes (Episode 1)
Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.
A Halloween Costume Gone Wrong
Let’s go roller skating in a Halloween costume! What could possibly go wrong?
Robot Writing: The Bridge
One painting of a bridge. Three robots. Who wrote it best?
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.
Animal Adaptation Tournament
Which animal has the most interesting, most valuable, or strangest adaptations?
Not Like The Others: Snakes of the Rainforest
Four rainforest snakes. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Difficult vs Complex Tasks
For TeachersWhat separates difficulty from complexity? And why do complex tasks lead to much more natural differentiation?
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: Text Art
What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?
Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
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!
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?
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!
Upgrade Research Questions With Depth and Complexity
Ever ask students to create research questions? Were their ideas a bit… blah? My own students had a very hard time writing questions they didn’t already know the answer to! This video is how I solved that problem: upgrade research questions with depth and complexity.
Investigating Christmas Trees
Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?
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?
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.)
The Thinking Hats
So… do your students moan when forced to work in a group? Part of the problem is that lack the structure to work well with peers. Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats are a perfect tool to help with this problem.
A Donut Investigation
In this cross-curricular investigation, students will look into an intriguing question: do donuts or salads have more sugar? They’ll grapple with misleading information, bias, and use their math skills to create a visual representation of sugar in popular foods.
A Caffeine Investigation – Part 1
So… just how much caffeine can you have before you end up in the ER?
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.
“Its Big Day” – A Children’s Story About Its and It’s
Let’s spice up a typically dull lesson about the difference between “its” and “it’s” by asking students to write a children’s story about the adventures of a critter named It.
Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs
Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.
How Many Students Can Fit On The Playground?
So… just how many kids could we cram onto the playground?
Create A Creature
Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.
An App For A Historical Figure
What kind of an app could have helped Abe Lincoln accomplish his goals?
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!
Furnishing A Hotel
Design and furnish hotel rooms on a budget. Real math, real constraints, real decisions. Then pitch your hotel to investors.
A Grid-Based Fraction Project
You’ve got 60 spaces on a grid to create an amusement park, a house, a farm, or whatever you’d like. Divide it into seven pieces, order it by size, combine into two halves, and more in this fraction project.
Engineering: Build A Bridge
Using real bridges as their starting point, students will construct bridges out of straws and paperclips.