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Playlist: Bookmarks

That Quote’s Not Quite Right: Albert Einstein

When I see a quote, I often think, “That’s not quite right!”

Two Animals Switch Biomes

What if a capybara and a kangaroo rat switched homes? Would their adaptations be helpful at all?

Improving Shakespeare’s Repetition

Let’s help William Shakespeare with his use of repetition.

St. Patrick and Other Legends

How would real people feel about the legends that have been created about them?

Types of Energy Tournament

Which type of energy will win the tournament!?

Polar Weather Report

The North Pole hits -40°. The South Pole hits -60°. Calculate the averages, graph the data, and deliver your polar weather report.

Updating Old Questions: Pay Raise

For Teachers

How I’d update a low-level, overly engaging math question.

A Halloween Costume Gone Wrong

Let’s go roller skating in a Halloween costume! What could possibly go wrong?

Robot Writing: Volcano

Read three pieces of writing from three different robots about the same beautiful painting of a volcano. Who wrote it best?

Robot Writing: The Bridge

One painting of a bridge. Three robots. Who wrote it best?

What If… Long Life?

What would the consequences be if all people lived much, much longer?

Think Like An Author: Hemingway vs Dickens

What if your students rewrote Dickens in the style of Hemingway and vice versa?

From Summary to Synthesis

For Teachers

Here’s how you can move from merely “summarizing a text” to a high-level task that culminates in synthesis.

Thanksgiving Photo Writing

Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.

Discussing An Important Decision from History

How would people with two different perspectives discuss a decision from history?

Investigating Population Changes

How have the ages of three countries’ populations changed from 1950 to 2020? And what problems might that create?

Plant Adaptation Tournament

Who will win in a tournament of eight plants with Interesting adaptations!?

Tournament: 8 Wonders of the Solar System

Which location is the most wondrous place in the solar system?

Animal Adaptation Tournament

Which animal has the most interesting, most valuable, or strangest adaptations?

Fancier Figurative Language: Use the Opposite

Let’s start with “As cold as fire.”

Writing About Art: The Scream

Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.

How Many Will There Be? Sliced Circles

Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.

Analyze Paragraphs: Baseball

Three paragraphs about baseball. They all cover the same topic — so what makes each one different? Now combine them into one super-paragraph.

Complex Task: Subjective Graphs

For Teachers

What would it be like if students graphed characters from stories? Historic leaders? Elements from the period table? Objects in space?

Difficult vs Complex Tasks

For Teachers

What separates difficulty from complexity? And why do complex tasks lead to much more natural differentiation?

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?

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.

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?

Story Starter: Out To Eat

Students pick from 12 random phrases to create a story about an incident in a restaurant.

Think Like A Philosopher

What would Socrates have thought if he watched Frozen?

Writing A Thanksgiving Letter

What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?

Virtue or Vice?

Aristotle noted that positive traits and negative traits are often the same thing, but just in different amounts. The right amount is a virtue, but too much or too little and it’s a vice.

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!

Asking Questions That Make Students Think

For Teachers

Most classroom questions test memory. These questions test thinking. There’s a difference — and your students will feel it.

Improving Wait Time

For Teachers

How much time do your students get to think after a question? Probably not enough. Here’s how to fix that.

Advanced Alliteration and Consonance

When students learn about alliteration, it’s hard to steer them away from goofy tongue-twisters. Certainly, there must be more powerful and practical ways of using alliteration. In this lesson, I draw on delicious examples from Shakespeare to show how a very advanced writer used alliteration. Then, I break those ideas down so students can try them out.

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!?

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.

Exponents – How Low Can They Go?

Using exponent patterns, can students predict what the 0th power will be?

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!

Deducing the Area of Triangles

Using patterns, students try to deduce where that area formula came from.

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.

Propaganda and Logical Fallacies

Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.

A Caffeine Investigation – Part 1

So… just how much caffeine can you have before you end up in the ER?

What Do Mean and Median Mean?

When will mean and median give us different results?

Improving Presentations 1: Watching The Greats

Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!

Studying and Remixing “The Raven”

Ready to push kids beyond the boring, old ABAB rhyme scheme and into something a bit more complex?

Persuasion and Packaging: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

How does a drink’s packaging affect us emotionally and logically?

Percents and Credit Cards

Let’s buy something expensive with a credit card and then make only the minumum payments!

Exploring Circumference With Famous Circles

Let’s find how the diameter and circumference of famous circles are related.

Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art

Create a pixelated icon that represents the essence of a character!

Greekymon

Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.

A Nutrition-Based Math Project

Let’s create a parody ad attacking a surprisingly calorie-rich meal.

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!

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?

Math Project: What If I Bought Apple Stock Instead?

What if you had an original iPod and sold it compared to if you had bought the equivalent amount of Apple stock and sold that?