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Playlist: Bookmarks

Holiday Shuffle – Day vs Date

Wouldn’t some holidays be better on a certain day of the week? Should Thanksgiving have a set date?

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?

A Character’s Playlist

What playlist of songs best goes with a character’s change over time?

What If… No Sleep?

What would the consequences be if no one had to sleep anymore?

Introducing Universal Theme of Change

Everything changes. But how does it change? Students brainstorm dozens of examples and boil them down to one big idea.

Introducing Universal Theme of Systems

So what could you do with a Universal Theme of Systems? Well, here’s an introduction that will get your students’ brains sweating.

Tournament: 8 Wonders of the Solar System

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

Self Portraits: Text Art

What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?

Generalization: Change Leads to More Change

Can you think of a time in your life when “Change lead to more change?”

Generalization: Systems Are Made up of Other Systems

A clock is a system. So is a rainforest. So is your school. Once you see systems inside systems, you can’t unsee it.

Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences

Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.

The Tournament of Biomes

Want to move beyond memorizing the characteristics of biomes? In this lesson, students work through a Tournament of Biomes, explaining which biome wins in each round (based on criteria you choose). In the end, they crown a 👑 Champion Biome!

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.

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?

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.

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!

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!

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.

Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity

Your students will use Depth and Complexity to note how a character’s main trait changes across a story.

Characters’ Talents and Multiple Intelligences

How do characters from novels line up with Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences?

Reduce Anxiety: 5 Question Rule

For Teachers

Adults can limit anxiety by implementing the Five Question Rule.

Greekymon

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

Motivation and Moral Development

Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?

Writing Summaries in Haiku

Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.

New Uses for Everyday Things

For Teachers

Here’s how Joelle Trayers gets even her youngest students ready to think in unexpected ways.

Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names

Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!

Intellectual Intensity

Do you know someone who becomes a bit overexcited by ideas?

Ethics In The Young Elementary Classroom

For Teachers

Can kindergartners discuss ethical issues? Yes. Here’s how to weave multiple-perspective problems throughout your curriculum.

Better Stories Part 4: Character Archetypes

Are students’ characters a bit flat? Archetypes give them a strong foundation on which to build their own characters as well as a tool to analyze existing stories.