Playlist: Bookmarks
Writing Haiku in Primary
Your youngest students will learn to write Japanese Haiku poetry.
What’s In My Brain: Inventions vs Discovery
Two columns. One is an example, one isn’t. Can you figure out the hidden rule before the big reveal?
Words Within Words: February
How many words can you find within February?
Getting Specific With St. Patrick’s Day Writing
Let’s take a starting phrase about St. Patrick’s Day and get specific. No, even more specific!
Holiday Emoji Story ⛷️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Pluto – Mixed Up Paragraph
Can you use the context clues to get these sentences about Pluto back into the correct order?
Great Sloths – Mixed Up Paragraph
Can you use the context clues to get these sentences about great sloths back into the correct order?
The Moon – Mixed Up Paragraph
Can you use the context clues to get these sentences about The Moon back into the correct order?
Factors and Codes (Episode 1)
Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.
Parts of Speech Party – Gift
How many different ways can we use the word “gift” in a single paragraph? Let’s find out in this Parts of Speech Party!
Words Within Words: SCARECROW
How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?
Robot Writing: Volcano
Read three pieces of writing from three different robots about the same beautiful painting of a volcano. Who wrote it best?
Looking Closely at Holiday Photos
Let’s write from multiple perspectives using an old timey holiday photo!
Holiday Writing: Packing Crates
An old photograph. A holiday scene. Pick one object in the picture and write from its point of view.
Writing About Art: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
Look closely at Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.
How Many Will There Be? Desks
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
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?
Changing Coordinating Conjunctions
What happens when we switch out a “but” with a “so”? An “and” with a “for”? How can such tiny words make such big differences?
Fixing Shakespearean Run-Ons
Can your students help The Bard? We’ll fix five Shakespearean run-ons in three different ways.
Writing Technique: Contrast With Synonyms
A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be contrasting two ideas using synonyms.
Writing Technique: Opposite Adjectives
A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be using antonyms to describe the same topic!
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
Evens and Odds – Addition and Subtraction
When we’re adding and subtracting, do evens make odds into evens? Do odds make evens odd? Which one has… more power!?
What If There Were No Hundreds Place?
Imagine a world with no hundreds place. We’d have to call it ten tens instead. But then, what would we call the thousands place? How would we read 9999? What if we added one more?
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!
Parentheses: How big of a change can they make!?
Two tiny parentheses. One expression. How big of a change can they make? Bigger than you think.
Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences
Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.
Undoing Multiplication With Division
Multiplication and division, natural foes, are constantly seeking to undo each other. Students will attempt to reverse the effects of multiplication by dividing once, twice, or even thrice!
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!
Place Value (Beyond Base 10)
Place value is something we cover in elementary school. It seems simple, but I’d wager that very few adults really understand the topic. I sure didn’t until I worked with non-base-10 number systems in college. Your students can get a taste of this mind-boggling experience by imagining what it would be like if we didn’t have the number 9. What would each digit represent then?
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.)
Passive to Active Voice
In this lesson, students will not just fix passive sentences, but break active sentences as they learn to put the star of the sentence first.
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.
Climbing Bloom’s with Depth and Complexity
For TeachersBloom’s tells you how high to aim. Depth and Complexity tells you where to look. Combine them and things get interesting.
Math Curiosity: Finding Primes
Prime numbers are unpredictable! How can we possibly find them all? An Ancient Greek mathematician found one way!
Depth and Complexity: 🌻 Details
Get kids focusing on the small, but essential, details of a topic.
Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity
Anyone can say a character changed. Your students will prove it: four details from the beginning, four from the end, and the two traits those details point to.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs
Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.
Writing Summaries in Haiku
Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.