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When to Go Deeper? When to Just Move On?

For Teachers

When should teachers take the time to build an advanced version of something? And when should they just let students move along?

Moving Students from “On-Level” to “Advanced” in Writing

For Teachers

What separates our on-level writers from our advanced writers?

Squiggles Introduction

What do you see in this squiggle?

Zig Zag Cipher (Codes Part 3)

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

Pig Pen Cipher (Codes Part 2)

Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!

Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)

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

Differentiate with Low Floors and High Ceilings

For Teachers

Stop starting at grade level and stretching up. Start high and scaffold down. It’s simpler, and it actually works.

Aim High, Scaffold Down in Math

For Teachers

A high level of thinking in math also requires the support of thoughtful scaffolding.

Making Depth and Complexity Posters

Why buy premade posters when you can show off your students’ thinking about Depth and Complexity?

Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game

Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?

Rethinking Extension Menus

For Teachers

Is creating nine, two-sentence tasks really an effective way to differentiate?

Building Creative Confidence with the Torrance Tests

For Teachers

Here are a bunch of ways to quickly practice creativity with your students for zero dollars.

New Uses for a Paperclip

So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?

Introduction to Differentiation

For Teachers

When differentiating, most teachers simply start in the wrong place!

Why “Challenging” May Not Be The Right Goal

For Teachers

So many of us say, “I want to challenge my students!” But, would you want a job that you describe as “challenging”?

Writing Differentiated Lesson Objectives

For Teachers

My early lessons didn’t even have objectives, let alone good objectives! Here’s how to build four-part, differentiated lesson objectives.

Creating Sequences of Questions

For Teachers

High-level questions on their own simply aren’t enough. We must create sequences of questions!

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.

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.

Jotto

Who can guess the codeword first?

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?

Depth and Complexity – An Introduction for Teachers

For Teachers

Depth and Complexity is the most powerful framework most teachers have never heard of. Here’s what it actually is — and isn’t.

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?

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.

Climbing Bloom’s with Depth and Complexity

For Teachers

Bloom’s tells you how high to aim. Depth and Complexity tells you where to look. Combine them and things get interesting.

Create A Creature

Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.

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.

Teaching Criticism

For Teachers

Ask students to go beyond “I don’t like it” and form critical opinions based on a set of criteria. Students can produce written arguments or turn their opinion into oral presentations.

Impostor Syndrome

For Teachers

The student who breezes through school may hit a wall in college. Here’s why — and what to do about it now.