Playlist: Bookmarks
Hero or Not A Hero?
Students will determine what makes a hero a hero.
Comparing Characters’ Bedrooms
What item’s in a character’s bedroom would reflect their deepest desires? And what if they toured a similar character’s room?
Go Beyond “Identify Figurative Language”
For TeachersSo students can identify a simile, metaphor, and hyperbole. What next?
Hydromagnaphone (Greek and Latin)
What on earth is a Hydromagnaphone? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.
Factors and Codes (Episode 1)
Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.
Letters With Symmetry
Let’s group letters by their symmetry, then create symmetrical words, and then symmetrical sentences!
Parts of Speech Party: Introduction (Check)
How many ways can we use “check” in a paragraph? And can your students spot when it’s a verb, or a noun, or an adjective?
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
Updating Old Questions: Conflict and Character Change
For TeachersI update an old question about conflict and character change in the story Hatchet.
The Heaviest Pumpkin
How heavy is the world’s heaviest pumpkin when measured in Mr. Byrds?
Robot Writing: The Bridge
One painting of a bridge. Three robots. Who wrote it best?
Robot Writing: Orchestra
Read three pieces of writing from three different robots based on a beautiful painting and decide who wins!
An Olympic Sized Pool and 2 Liter Bottles (Episode 1)
How many 2 liter bottles could you fill up using the water in an olympic-sized pool?
Phrases to Join a Discussion
Want your classroom discussions to go a bit more smoothly? Train students to use a few simple phrases and it’ll make all the difference in the world.
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
Thanksgiving Photo Writing
Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.
What’s the Pattern? Fraction Addition
Can your students figure out how to add fractions by looking for a pattern?
Analyze Suffixes: -ly, -less, and -ful
What exactly does adding -less do to a word?
Writing About Art: Impression, Sunrise
Look closely at Impression, Sunrise. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.
Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
Parts of Speech Tournament
Which part of speech is most useful? Interesting? Strange?
How Many Ways: Fraction Subtraction 234
How many different ways can you make this fraction subtraction statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Fraction Addition 234
How many different ways can you make this fraction addition statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Multiply Fractions Equal 1/4
One equation. Digits one through nine. How many ways can you make it work?
Writing in Pilish
Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?
Writing About Art: Twilight in the Wilderness
Look closely at Twilight in the Wilderness. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Antonym Paths
Does the antonym of an antonym bring us back to the same meaning?
Building “Not Like The Others” Tasks
For TeachersA delightfully ambiguous framework that is quick to prepare, but can last forever!
Analyze Characters Using Philosophy
What is the Brick Pig’s philosophy? How would he apply it to the characters in Harry Potter?
Ultimate (or Inception) Tic Tac Toe
What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it?
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!?
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?
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.
Doubling Up Writing: Anadiplosis
Repeating words can be what you want, if what you want is an interesting effect. (Psst, that’s an example of anadiplosis!)
Fixing Shakespearean Run-Ons
Can your students help The Bard? We’ll fix five Shakespearean run-ons in three different ways.
Writing Technique: 3 Dependent Clauses
A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be writing sentences with three dependent clauses.
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!
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?
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!
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.
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?
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?
SCAMPER: Scaffolding Creativity
Asking students to “think creatively” won’t get you far. They won’t know how to start, they’ll get stuck with simple ideas, or they’ll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.
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!
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!
Numerator or Denominator: Which has more power in a fraction?
What do you do with students who already get their fraction operations? Give them a contrived project about recipes or pizza slices? Make them solve annoyingly hard practice problems? Please. Here, we get students thinking in a whole new way, pondering which has more power, the numerator or denominator.
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.
What’s In My Brain: Trapezoids or Not?
Which are trapezoids and which are not?
Not Like The Others: Charlotte’s Web
Four Charlotte’s Web characters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
How Many Ways: Fraction Equivalence
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Minus
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
What’s In My Brain: Cute Baby vs Fast Cheetah
Can students spot similes vs metaphors?
Writing A Story About Fraction Equivalence
When fractions take on a new denominator, it’s as if they’re wearing a disguise – same value, new look. So let’s write a story about fraction equivalence starring a fraction who needs to fit in with a new group.
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.
What’s In My Brain – Independent vs Dependent
These clauses are sorted into two groups. What’s the rule? No definitions given — just examples.
Complex or Compound – What’s In My Brain
Can your class spot the complex sentences vs compound sentences?
Investigating Christmas Trees
Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?
Calculators, Patterns, and Multiplying By Decimals
Before teaching students the procedure for multiplying with decimals, how much can they intuitively glean from a structured play session with calculators?
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!
Rounding Numbers (But Not To 10)
What could we possibly do to make rounding more interesting for students who already get it? In this series, students consider how they might round to values other than “the nearest 10.” How, for example, do we round to the nearest 9? 7? 15?
Pronouns With Too Many Antecedents
What happens when a pronoun could refer to more than one noun? Big problems!
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!
The Resiliency Tournament
Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.
Grouping Quadrilaterals In A Hierarchy
Can we classify quadrilaterals like we classify living things?
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.)
Finding The Volume of Laptops
How has the volume of laptops changed over time? You know you want to check out how huge those first versions were!
Synonym Graphs
So, which is happiest: happy, joyful, or ecstatic? Which is most temporary?
Doubling Dollars
Say you have a dollar. Say you can double that dollar each day: $1, $2, $4, and so on. How long will it take to reach… one million dollars? Not as long as you might think!
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.
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.
Jabberwocky and Context Clues
Context clues lessons can be a disaster. Here, we expose students to a delightful classic packed with nonsense words (“Jabberwocky”) and ask them to decipher the meanings and parts of speech. Then, it’s only natural for students to write their own nonsense poems.
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.
Improving Presentations 1: Watching The Greats
Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
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?
“Its Big Day” – A Children’s Story About Its and It’s
Let’s spice up a typically dull lesson about the difference between “its” and “it’s” by asking students to write a children’s story about the adventures of a critter named It.
Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs
Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.
How Many Students Can Fit On The Playground?
So… just how many kids could we cram onto the playground?
An App For A Historical Figure
What kind of an app could have helped Abe Lincoln accomplish his goals?
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 1
‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
Writing Summaries in Haiku
Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.
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.
Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche
We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.
An Inductive Exploration Of Geometry
For TeachersWith inductive thinking, students will work from parts to whole, discovering big ideas along the way!
Writing Clear Directions
Can you write directions so clear that a group of kids can put a toy together with no illustrations?