Playlist: Bookmarks
Holiday Emoji Story ☃️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Mother’s Day Cards
Let’s write the cleverest Mother’s Day cards you’ve ever seen!
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?
Categorize and Re-Categorize Animals
Put these animals into groups. Then do it again. Then… do it one more time. How does re-re-grouping the same creatures reveal new patterns and give new insights?
Washington, DC – Mixed Up Paragraph
These sentences about Washington, DC got scrambled. Can you put them back in order using nothing but context clues?
Plant Adaptation Tournament
Who will win in a tournament of eight plants with Interesting adaptations!?
Notice, Wonder: Vortices
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Not Like The Others: Types of Volcanoes
Which of these types of volcanoes is not like the others?
Fancier Figurative Language: Move the Simile
What if we started a sentence with the simile?
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?
Complex Task: Academic Tournaments
For TeachersWho would win in the Tournament of Least Useful Geometric Shapes or Bravest Shakespearean Characters? Create an academic tournament and watch your students’ brains sweat!
Not Like The Others: Natural Disasters
Four natural disasters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Jotto
Who can guess the codeword first?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Times
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Notice, Wonder: Michael
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Same Perimeter, Different Area For Rectangles
Can two rectangles have the same perimeter but… different areas!?
Upgrade Research Questions With Depth and Complexity
Ever ask students to create research questions? Were their ideas a bit… blah? My own students had a very hard time writing questions they didn’t already know the answer to! This video is how I solved that problem: upgrade research questions with depth and complexity.
Run On or Not? – What’s In My Brain
Can your students spot the run-on sentences?
Student Introductions with Complexity and Frames
How have you changed over time? Students introduce themselves through the lens of change — and learn a Depth and Complexity tool in the process.
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!
Why Is Our Calendar So Weird!?
Why are there 12 months? Why don’t weeks fit into months evenly? Why don’t weeks fit into the year evenly? What’s going on with the calendar!
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.
Investigating Cost of Living
Would you save money if you lived in Las Vegas and commuted every day to San Francisco?
Academic Love Letters
What if Kylo Ren wrote a love letter to Abe Lincoln or the Sahara Desert wrote one to the Moon?
Depth and Complexity: ⚖️ Ethics
Want to add drama to any topic? Use the Ethics prompt!
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?
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!
Create A Creature
Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.
Teach Non-Fiction Writing Structure With Fractals
Did you ever notice that the structure of an essay is very similar to the structure of a paragraph? Hmm…
Furnishing A Hotel
Design and furnish hotel rooms on a budget. Real math, real constraints, real decisions. Then pitch your hotel to investors.
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.