Playlist: Bookmarks
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?
Cooking In Space
Watch astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti cook a meal in zero gravity on the International Space Station.
Words Within Words: Intro (SOLDIER)
How many words can you find within SOLDIER? 20? 35? 50? Even more!?
An Olympic Sized Pool and Jet Fuel (Episode 3)
How many times could you fill up a jet plane using the fuel that would fit in an olympic-sized pool?
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?
Find The Pattern: Multiply Fractions
What if you set the stage for students to discover how to multiply fractions?
Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
Greek and Latin Word Part Paths
How can we go from Biology to Immobile?
How Many Ways: Fraction Addition 234
How many different ways can you make this fraction addition statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Story Starter: Out To Eat
Students pick from 12 random phrases to create a story about an incident in a restaurant.
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.
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!?
What If There Were No Hundreds Place?
Imagine a world with no hundreds place. We’d have to call it ten tens instead. But then, what would we call the thousands place? How would we read 9999? What if we added one more?
Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences
Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.
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!
Sets of Idioms
Why do we say ‘break a leg’? Five themed sets of idioms your students will actually remember.
Calculators, Patterns, and Multiplying By Decimals
Before teaching students the procedure for multiplying with decimals, how much can they intuitively glean from a structured play session with calculators?
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!
The Resiliency Tournament
Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.
Upgrading Compare and Contrast Writing
Upgrade compare and contrast writing with just a couple of key words.
Analyzing Movies’ Success
So should we make another movie in this series?
Describing Author’s Voice
What if… Edgar Allen Poe wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
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.
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
Depth and Complexity: 🌻 Details
Get kids focusing on the small, but essential, details of a topic.
Visualizing Fraction Multiplication
What does it look like to multiply fractions?
Fraction Puzzlers: Add and Subtract Fractions To Reach A Number
You only have six digits to form three fractions. Can you combine them to get to 0?
How Many Students Can Fit On The Playground?
So… just how many kids could we cram onto the playground?
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
Motivation and Moral Development
Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?
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!
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.
Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names
Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!