Playlist: Bookmarks
Two Animals Switch Biomes
What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?
Holiday Shuffle – Day vs Date
Wouldn’t some holidays be better on a certain day of the week? Should Thanksgiving have a set date?
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?
Change A Story’s Genre
What if we rewrote a story’s climax into a totally different genre?
Holiday Emoji Story 🎅
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Words Within Words: CORNMAZE
How many words can you find within CORNMAZE?
Emoji Stories 🏟️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Great Sloths – Mixed Up Paragraph
Can you use the context clues to get these sentences about great sloths back into the correct order?
Parts of Speech Party – Gift
How many different ways can we use the word “gift” in a single paragraph? Let’s find out in this Parts of Speech Party!
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
Words Within Words: SCARECROW
How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?
Words Within Words: CRANBERRY
How many words can you find within “cranberry”?
Words Within Words: STUFFING
How many words are hiding inside STUFFING? More than you think.
Robot Writing: Volcano
Read three pieces of writing from three different robots about the same beautiful painting of a volcano. Who wrote it best?
Robot Writing: Acropolis
One painting of ruins. Three robots. Three pieces of writing. Who wrote it best?
Robot Writing: The Bridge
One painting of a bridge. Three robots. Who wrote it best?
Squiggles Introduction
What do you see in this squiggle?
What If… Long Life?
What would the consequences be if all people lived much, much longer?
Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
Think Like a Disciplinarian (or an Expert!)
For TeachersHere’s how I got better at using the Think Like An Expert technique.
Thanksgiving Photo Writing
Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.
Writing About Art: Impression, Sunrise
Look closely at Impression, Sunrise. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.
Greek and Latin Word Part Paths
How can we go from Biology to Immobile?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Fancier Figurative Language: Move the Simile
What if we started a sentence with the simile?
Analyze Paragraphs: Cucumbers
Three paragraphs about cucumbers. They all cover the same topic — so what makes each one different? Now combine them into one super-paragraph.
Analyze Paragraphs: Wolverines
Three paragraphs about wolverines. They all cover the same topic — so what makes each one different? Now combine them into one super-paragraph.
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?
12 Phrases: The Zoo
Students use 12 random phrases to create a story that takes place at the zoo.
Story Starter: A Day At School
Students use 12 random phrases to create a story that takes place at school.
Story Starter: Amusement Park
Students use 12 random phrases to write a story that takes place in at an amusement park.
Story Starter: A Magical School
Students use 12 random phrases to create a story that takes place in at a magical school.
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
Writing A Thanksgiving Letter
What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?
Remixing A Holiday Poem
Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!
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.
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?
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.
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.
Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences
Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.
Not Like The Others: Charlotte’s Web
Four Charlotte’s Web characters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
What’s In My Brain: Cute Baby vs Fast Cheetah
Can students spot similes vs metaphors?
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.
Run On or Not? – What’s In My Brain
Can your students spot the run-on sentences?
Parts of Speech Party – Thanks
How many different ways can we use the word “thanks”? Let’s find out in this Parts of Speech Party!
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.
Describing Author’s Voice
What if… Edgar Allen Poe wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
Propaganda and Logical Fallacies
Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.
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.
Improving Presentations 1: Watching The Greats
Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!
Academic Love Letters
What if Kylo Ren wrote a love letter to Abe Lincoln or the Sahara Desert wrote one to the Moon?
Depth and Complexity: ❓ Unanswered Questions
This underutilized tool focuses students on what we don’t yet know and even what we can’t know.
Depth and Complexity: 🚦 Rules
Is there a consequence for not doing something? You may have found a rule!
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
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.
“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.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 1
‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.
Motivation and Moral Development
Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?
Writing Summaries in Haiku
Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.
Teach Non-Fiction Writing Structure With Fractals
Did you ever notice that the structure of an essay is very similar to the structure of a paragraph? Hmm…
Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche
We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.