Playlist: Bookmarks
Halloween Emoji Story 🕷️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
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.
Greek and Latin Word Part Paths
How can we go from Biology to Immobile?
Parabolic Curve Art
Create mathematical art with curves that, well, aren’t curvy.
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.
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.
Fancier Figurative Language: Move the Simile
What if we started a sentence with the simile?
Introduction to Differentiation
For TeachersWhen differentiating, most teachers simply start in the wrong place!
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!
Writing About Art: The Scream
Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.
Art Lesson: One-Point Perspective
Let’s give our students an art history lesson while teaching them how to enhance their drawings using one-point perspective.
Art Lesson: Two-Point Perspective
Let’s get students’ art really popping with two-point perspective!
An Escher-Style Tessellation Project
Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!
Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
Story Starter: Amusement Park
Students use 12 random phrases to write a story that takes place in at an amusement park.
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
Math Curiosity: A Pattern Packed Triangle
Pascal’s pattern-packed triangle is a potent puzzle for pupils to ponder.
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.
Depth and Complexity – An Introduction for Teachers
For TeachersDepth and Complexity is the most powerful framework most teachers have never heard of. Here’s what it actually is — and isn’t.
Run On or Not? – What’s In My Brain
Can your students spot the run-on sentences?
Sets of Idioms
Why do we say ‘break a leg’? Five themed sets of idioms your students will actually remember.
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!
Math Curiosity: Magic Squares
Imagine a 3×3 square in which every row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. That’s a magic square!
Chomp
Chomp away at your opponent in this grid-based strategy game.
Col – A Strategy Game
The first person to run out of regions loses in this strategy game.
Game: Notakto
What if you only played Tic-Tac-Toe with Xs and you could play on multiple boards?
Dots and Boxes
Who can make the most boxes from dots in this strategy game?
Sprouts
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.
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?
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!
Fractals: Sierpinski’s Triangle
What if this triangle pattern just kept repeating… forever!?
Fractals: Koch Snowflake
You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!
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.
Propaganda and Logical Fallacies
Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
Depth and Complexity: 👄 Language of the Discipline
Imagine a construction worker who doesn’t know the name of a screwdriver or a doctor who can’t remember what to call your neck. It’s pretty hard to communicate well without knowing the 👄 Language of the Discipline!
Depth and Complexity: ❓ Unanswered Questions
This underutilized tool focuses students on what we don’t yet know and even what we can’t know.
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
Elements of The Fantasy Genre
Every fantasy story has patterns hiding underneath the magic. Once your students see the elements, they’ll spot them everywhere — and use them in their own writing.
“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.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Part 3
Your students’ sentences all start the same way. Here are three techniques that fix that overnight.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 2
We’ll show students how to add more variety to their writing by starting sentences with a reason, a prepositional phrase, and a simile.
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.
Teaching Empathy With Faberge Eggs
The story of the Fabergé Eggs is heartbreaking. It’s also the perfect way to build empathy in your classroom.
Teach Non-Fiction Writing Structure With Fractals
Did you ever notice that the structure of an essay is very similar to the structure of a paragraph? Hmm…
Common English Words From Other Languages
Bored with typical spelling studies? Let’s dig into the origins of common English words from other languages!
Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names
Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!
Better Stories Part 2: Types of Conflict
If your students’ stories are packed with endless ninja fights or arguments between frenemies, it’s time to expose them to a wider range of conflicts.
Better Stories Part 1: The Big Idea
We open our unit on narrative writing with a big idea: “structure increases creativity.” I show how this is true by bringing in examples from across all disciplines.