Playlist: Bookmarks
Halloween Problems and Solutions
When we try to solve a problem, sometimes we end up creating new problems. Which lead to new solutions. Which lead to new problems.
Holiday Emoji Story 🎅
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
Words Within Words: ORNAMENT
How many words can you find within ORNAMENT?
Path Cipher (Codes Part 4)
Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.
Squiggles Collection 1
Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?
Random Emoji Prompt Generator
Click up an interesting, visual writing prompt suitable for any grade or purpose.
How Many Will There Be? Squares in Squares
Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
Stories with the Same Problems and Solutions
Have you ever noticed that some stories have awfully similar problems? What if we looked for the most unusual way of solving a repeating problem?
Olympics: Medals by Population
Do big countries always have the most medals? Which smaller countries rank surprisingly high in the Olympics?
New Uses for a Paperclip
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Looping Grid Art
Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you’ll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!
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?
Word Ladder: Band to Sing (4 Steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
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?
Writing Seuss Style Poetry
Sure, Dr. Seuss wrote for young students, but can older students analyze his writing and learn to mimic his style? THEN, they can produce Seuss-style poetry about any topic: Ancient China, the electromagnetic spectrum, Pride and Prejudice, and (yes) fraction division!
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.
How Many Ways: Fraction Equivalence
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
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?
Analyzing Movies’ Success
So should we make another movie in this series?
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.
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.
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs
Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.
Furnishing A Hotel
Design and furnish hotel rooms on a budget. Real math, real constraints, real decisions. Then pitch your hotel to investors.