Playlist: Bookmarks
Two Animals Switch Biomes
What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?
A System Similar to a Cell
Which parts of a cell serve a similar job to the parts of a cruise ship, human body, computer, or other system?
Factors and Codes (Episode 1)
Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.
Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles
Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?
Cooking In Space
Watch astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti cook a meal in zero gravity on the International Space Station.
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
Squiggles Collection 1
Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?
Pig Pen Cipher (Codes Part 2)
Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!
Looking Closely at Holiday Photos
Let’s write from multiple perspectives using an old timey holiday photo!
Thanksgiving Photo Writing
Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.
Animal Adaptation Tournament
Which animal has the most interesting, most valuable, or strangest adaptations?
Building Creative Confidence with the Torrance Tests
For TeachersHere are a bunch of ways to quickly practice creativity with your students for zero dollars.
Not Like The Others: Types of Rocks
Igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic — and one that doesn’t fit. But which one? Depends on your argument.
Not Like The Others: US States
How is each of these states not like the others?
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?
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: 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!
Addition: 3 Digits Plus 2 Digits (Multiple Solutions)
Typical practice problems don’t move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy. With this framework, you’ll see kids stop and really think about how to approach multi-digit addition.
Subtraction: 3 Digits Minus 2 Digits (Multiple Solutions)
Typical practice problems don’t move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy. With this framework, you’ll see kids stop and really think about how to approach multi-digit subtraction.
Ambiguous Sentences
Rather than just demand that students “write clearly,” we’ll explore the hazards of poorly written sentences… and maybe create one of our own!
Assessing Differentiation Strategies With Walkthroughs
For AdminHow do you know, when you’re walking through a class, whether the students are receiving appropriate work?
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.
Punctuation Power
In a sentence, punctuation may seem meek when compared to those mighty words, but punctuation has incredible power over the meaning of a sentence. Students will try re-punctuating sentences to find new meanings – without changing a single word!
Plurals: An Inductive Spelling Lesson
Plural nouns in English are deliciously fascinating. Yet most plural lessons are so dull! In this experience, students are given a pile of plurals and then inductively create groups and pull out rules and patterns.
Asking Questions That Make Students Think
For TeachersMost classroom questions test memory. These questions test thinking. There’s a difference — and your students will feel it.
Do Narrators Have Too Much Power?
Imagine being a character in a story. Are you worried that your story’s narrator may inaccurately describe you? What if they reveal something you wanted to be kept secret? Do narrators have too much power!?
Intersecting Angles and Streets
There can never be just one angle.
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!
Grouping Quadrilaterals In A Hierarchy
Can we classify quadrilaterals like we classify living things?
Lines, Line Segments, Rays, and Infinity!
A lesson about lines, line segments, and rays that avoids dull memorization. Instead, we ponder this delightful question: Which is longer, a ray or a line? Then, kids consider what these different geometric concepts would think about each other.
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.)
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.
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
Math Curiosity: Finding Primes
Prime numbers are unpredictable! How can we possibly find them all? An Ancient Greek mathematician found one way!
Persuasion and Packaging: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
How does a drink’s packaging affect us emotionally and logically?
Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator
Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
Ways to Start a Sentence – Part 3
Your students’ sentences all start the same way. Here are three techniques that fix that overnight.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 2
We’ll show students how to add more variety to their writing by starting sentences with a reason, a prepositional phrase, and a simile.
Writing Summaries in Haiku
Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.
Writing Clear Directions
Can you write directions so clear that a group of kids can put a toy together with no illustrations?
Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names
Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!