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Playlist: Bookmarks

Tournament of Mythological Creatures

Who will win the tournament of mythological creatures!?

Factors and Codes: First Names (Episode 2)

Scrambled up somewhere in 161,000 is a first name. Can you find it!?

Factors and Codes (Episode 1)

Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.

Words Within Words: ORNAMENT

How many words can you find within ORNAMENT?

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: STUFFING

How many words are hiding inside STUFFING? More than you think.

The Heaviest Pumpkin

How heavy is the world’s heaviest pumpkin when measured in Mr. Byrds?

Path Cipher (Codes Part 4)

Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.

Squiggles Introduction

What do you see in this squiggle?

Squiggles Collection 1

Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?

Zig Zag Cipher (Codes Part 3)

Let’s try a cipher that doesn’t substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.

Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)

Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!

Think Like An Author: Hemingway vs Dickens

What if your students rewrote Dickens in the style of Hemingway and vice versa?

Word Pyramids

Start with a one letter word, add another letter, then add another. How tall can you make the pyramid?

An Olympic Sized Pool and Lots of Pasta (Episode 2)

How many pounds of pasta could you cook using the water in an olympic-sized pool?

An Olympic Sized Pool and 2 Liter Bottles (Episode 1)

How many 2 liter bottles could you fill up using the water in an olympic-sized pool?

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.

Looking Closely at Holiday Photos

Let’s write from multiple perspectives using an old timey holiday photo!

Back to School: Rewriting The Beatles’ “Help!”

Can your students come up with a one-syllable word to sum up their time away from school? And then rewrite The Beatles’ song Help!?

Racetrack – Race Around A Graph

How fast do you get your mathematical car going without crashing?

Words Within Words: LEOPARD

How many words can you find within “leopard”?

Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game

Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?

Microchess (Chess Variant)

What if we played chess on a board that’s only 4×5?

Tournament: 8 Wonders of the Solar System

Which location is the most wondrous place in the solar system?

Animal Adaptation Tournament

Which animal has the most interesting, most valuable, or strangest adaptations?

New Uses for a Paperclip

So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?

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.

How Many Will There Be? Sliced Circles

Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.

How Many Will There Be? Desks

Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.

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?

Cram

Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!

Developing Questions that Prompt Thinking in Math

For Teachers

Math is a particularly tricky subject for asking higher-level questions. Here are a couple of techniques I’ve used to prompt students to think, not merely calculate.

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!

Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings

Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!

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?

Measurement: How Old Is Mr. Byrd?

What if I told you that I’m 341,640 old? Could you figure out what unit I’m using? Hint: it’s not years!

Game: Snakes

In this grid-based strategy game, who will be the last to add to the snake?

How Many Will There Be? Triangles Within Triangles

A triangle splits and splits and splits again. How many will there be in step 20?

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!

Think Like A Philosopher

What would Socrates have thought if he watched Frozen?

Remixing A Holiday Poem

Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!

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!?

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!

Running A “Notice, Wonder” Lesson

For Teachers

Use these puzzling images to build a classroom culture that is comfortable with curiosity, ambiguity, and taking intellectual risks.

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!

Asking Questions That Make Students Think

For Teachers

Most classroom questions test memory. These questions test thinking. There’s a difference — and your students will feel it.

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.

The Personalities of Rocks

What would an igneous rock be like? Would it get along with a sedimentary rock? Could they handle the hot personality of a metamorphic rock?

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: 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?

Game: Notakto

What if you only played Tic-Tac-Toe with Xs and you could play on multiple boards?

Sprouts

Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.

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.)

What Does it Cost to Fill a Car with Other Liquids

Is gas actually that expensive? What if we filled a car up with… orange juice?

Investigating Cost of Living

Would you save money if you lived in Las Vegas and commuted every day to San Francisco?

Fractals: Sierpinski’s Triangle

What if this triangle pattern just kept repeating… forever!?

Fractals: Koch Snowflake

You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!

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.

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.

Create A Civilization: Calendars

Why 12 months? Why 30ish days? Why 7 days in a week? Your civilization could organize a year in any way you want!

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: From Hunter Gatherers to Farmers

What happens when your civilization suddenly has a surplus of food? Think of the possibilities!

Create A Civilization: The River

The Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Seine, the Thames, and now… your river!

Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator

Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.

How Many Students Can Fit On The Playground?

So… just how many kids could we cram onto the playground?

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.

Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 1

‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.

The Game of 100

Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?

Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche

We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.

Writing Clear Directions

Can you write directions so clear that a group of kids can put a toy together with no illustrations?

Better Stories Part 5: Plot Structure

Ever read a student’s story that was just event after event after event and then a very sudden ending? They lack an understanding of a plot’s structure. With the help of Finding Nemo, I break down how to set up a well-structured plot.

Engineering: Build A Bridge

Using real bridges as their starting point, students will construct bridges out of straws and paperclips.

Better Stories Part 2: Types of Conflict

If your students’ stories are packed with endless ninja fights or arguments between frenemies, it’s time to expose them to a wider range of conflicts.

Better Stories Part 3: Literary Themes

A typical student narrative includes plot and characters but lacks a larger idea to hold it all together. This is where a lesson on themes comes in…

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.