Bookmarks-31357 ＊ Byrdseed.TV

Holiday Shuffle – Day vs Date

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

St. Patrick and Other Legends

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

Tournament of Not-So-Famous Inventors

Which inventor and invention will win the tournament?

Domesticated Animals Tournament

Which domesticated animal will win the tournament?

Words Within Words: SCARECROW

How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?

Robot Writing: Acropolis

One painting of ruins. Three robots. Three pieces of writing. Who wrote it best?

Robot Writing: The Bridge

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

New Uses For A Pencil

So, what can a pencil be used for other than writing and drawing?

Lipogram: Rewrite “Twinkle, Twinkle”

What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?

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 of Ancient Inventions

Which of these inventions of the ancient world is most influential? Least useful today? Most taken-for-granted?

Writing in Pilish

Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?

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?

Writing About Art: The Scream

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

Notice, Wonder: Green Circles

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

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?

Math Curiosity: Ulam Spiral

What if we make a huge spiral of numbers and then highlight only the primes? Well, a bunch of weird patterns show up!

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.

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.

Paradox: Crocodile Dilemma

A crocodile makes a deal. But the deal creates a paradox. Can your students untangle a 2,000-year-old logic puzzle?

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?

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.)

A Donut Investigation

In this cross-curricular investigation, students will look into an intriguing question: do donuts or salads have more sugar? They’ll grapple with misleading information, bias, and use their math skills to create a visual representation of sugar in popular foods.

Math Curiosity: Waring’s Conjecture

So, can you write every odd (greater than 3) as the sum of three primes?

Climbing Bloom’s with Depth and Complexity