Playlist: Bookmarks
Idioms About Names
Five idioms related to names.
Idioms About Bites
Five idioms related to bites.
Idioms About the Greeks and Romans
Five idioms related to the Greeks and Romans.
Idioms About Mouths
Five idioms related to mouths.
Idioms About Water
Five idioms related to water.
Polar Weather Report
The North Pole hits -40°. The South Pole hits -60°. Calculate the averages, graph the data, and deliver your polar weather report.
Words Within Words: ORNAMENT
How many words can you find within ORNAMENT?
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
The Heaviest Pumpkin
How heavy is the world’s heaviest pumpkin when measured in Mr. Byrds?
Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
Words Within Words: Intro (SOLDIER)
How many words can you find within SOLDIER? 20? 35? 50? Even more!?
Word Pyramids
Start with a one letter word, add another letter, then add another. How tall can you make the pyramid?
Lipogram: Rewrite “Twinkle, Twinkle”
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
Geometry Image: Steigerwald
What odd and interesting shapes can your students find in this geometric image?
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
What’s In My Brain!? Walnut vs Clouds
Let’s look at living vs non-living things.
Concept Attainment: Hornet vs Tiger
Can your class spot the vertebrates vs invertebrates?
Olympics: Medals by Population
Do big countries always have the most medals? Which smaller countries rank surprisingly high in the Olympics?
Olympics: Winter vs Summer Medal Count
Which country has a great balance between their summer and winter Olympic medals?
Not Like The Others: Penguins
Four penguins. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Not Like The Others: Microorganisms
Four microorganisms. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Notice, Wonder: Craters
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Notice, Wonder: Vortices
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Word Pyramid: I to LIONS
Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?
Greek and Latin Word Part Paths
How can we go from Biology to Immobile?
Habitable Planets and Moons Tournament
Which object in the solar system is most habitable?
Writing in Pilish
Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?
Not Like The Others: Types of Volcanoes
Which of these types of volcanoes is not like the others?
Not Like The Others: Deserts
Which of these deserts is not like the others?
Not Like The Others: Stars
How is each of these stars not like the others?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Create A Civilization: Design A Flag
What makes for a good flag? What makes a bad flag?
Analyze Characters Using Philosophy
What is the Brick Pig’s philosophy? How would he apply it to the characters in Harry Potter?
Writing About Art: The Scream
Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.
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?
Word Ladder: Two to Six (6-steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Word Ladder – Cold to Cool (5-Steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Measurement: An Elephant
What if I told you that an elephant weighed a back-breaking 176,000? Could you figure out the unit I’m using? But… how many corgis would that be?
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.
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!
Writing Seuss Style Poetry
Sure, Dr. Seuss wrote for young students, but can older students analyze his writing and learn to mimic his style? THEN, they can produce Seuss-style poetry about any topic: Ancient China, the electromagnetic spectrum, Pride and Prejudice, and (yes) fraction division!
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!
Not Like The Others: Planets
Which of these planets is not like others? Well, it sure looks simple at first. But each option could be the one that doesn’t fit in.
Notice, Wonder: Electronics
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
What’s In My Brain: Cute Baby vs Fast Cheetah
Can students spot similes vs metaphors?
Writing A Story About Fraction Equivalence
When fractions take on a new denominator, it’s as if they’re wearing a disguise – same value, new look. So let’s write a story about fraction equivalence starring a fraction who needs to fit in with a new group.
Undoing Multiplication With Division
Multiplication and division, natural foes, are constantly seeking to undo each other. Students will attempt to reverse the effects of multiplication by dividing once, twice, or even thrice!
Investigating Christmas Trees
Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?
Exponents – How Low Can They Go?
Using exponent patterns, can students predict what the 0th power will be?
Rounding Numbers (But Not To 10)
What could we possibly do to make rounding more interesting for students who already get it? In this series, students consider how they might round to values other than “the nearest 10.” How, for example, do we round to the nearest 9? 7? 15?
Paradox: Crocodile Dilemma
A crocodile makes a deal. But the deal creates a paradox. Can your students untangle a 2,000-year-old logic puzzle?
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?
The Angles of a Triangle
Why tell a kid the rules of a triangle when they can discover them!?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
Persuasion and Packaging: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
How does a drink’s packaging affect us emotionally and logically?
Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator
Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.
Discovering Pi With Sticky Notes
Pi is mysterious and strange! Why not let students discover it on their own?
“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.
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!
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.
Writing Summaries in Haiku
Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.
Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche
We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.
Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names
Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!
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.
Better Stories Part 4: Character Archetypes
Are students’ characters a bit flat? Archetypes give them a strong foundation on which to build their own characters as well as a tool to analyze existing stories.