Playlist: Bookmarks
Tournament of Mythological Creatures
Who will win the tournament of mythological creatures!?
Student Introductions With Depth, Complexity, and Frames: Level Two
Once students know the prompts of Depth and Complexity, let’s take them much higher up Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Emoji Stories 🤖
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Emoji Stories 🐻
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Emoji Stories 🏰
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Factors and Codes (Episode 1)
Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.
Random Emoji Prompt Generator
Click up an interesting, visual writing prompt suitable for any grade or purpose.
Exploration Technology Tournament
Which of these pieces of exploration technology is most important? Most underrated? Most long-lasting?
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!
Writing A Thanksgiving Letter
What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?
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?
Evens and Odds – Addition and Subtraction
When we’re adding and subtracting, do evens make odds into evens? Do odds make evens odd? Which one has… more power!?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Propaganda and Logical Fallacies
Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.
Academic Love Letters
What if Kylo Ren wrote a love letter to Abe Lincoln or the Sahara Desert wrote one to the Moon?
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.
Discovering Pi With Sticky Notes
Pi is mysterious and strange! Why not let students discover it on their own?
Running A Curiosity Based Research Project
Skip the assigned topics. Let students research what they’re genuinely curious about — here’s how to structure it so it actually works.
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.
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.