Playlist: Bookmarks
Not Like The Others: Cephalopods
Four cephalopods. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
What’s In My Brain: Austin vs Los Angeles
We’re looking at capital cities.
New Uses For A Cardboard Tube
So, what can a cardboard tube be used for other than holding wrapping paper?
Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles
Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?
What’s In My Brain!? Japan vs Jamaica
Is it an island or an archipelago?
Racetrack – Race Around A Graph
How fast do you get your mathematical car going without crashing?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Ultimate (or Inception) Tic Tac Toe
What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it?
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: Fast to Race (4 step)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
The Pros and Cons of Producers and Consumers
Sure, students might know the difference between a producer and a consumer… but have they considered how they feel about each other? What, in a producer’s opinion, are the pros and cons of a consumer?
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
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?
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.
Chomp
Chomp away at your opponent in this grid-based strategy game.
Game: Notakto
What if you only played Tic-Tac-Toe with Xs and you could play on multiple boards?
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.
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.
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.
A Caffeine Investigation – Part 1
So… just how much caffeine can you have before you end up in the ER?
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
Create A Creature
Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
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!
The Game of 100
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?
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!