Playlist: Bookmarks
Crossing Every Bridge Exactly Once (aka Eulerian Paths)
How can you cross each bridge in this city exactly once?
Van Gogh Self-Portrait Tournament
Who will win the tournament of Van Gogh self-portraits!?
Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
Looking Closely at Holiday Photos
Let’s write from multiple perspectives using an old timey holiday photo!
Special Gifts with Special Requirements
Your special friends sure have some unique gift needs!
Not Like The Others: US National Parks
Four US national parks. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Chess Variant: Monster Chess
What if you had really weak chess pieces, but you could always move twice?
Not Like The Others: Penguins
Four penguins. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.
Microchess (Chess Variant)
What if we played chess on a board that’s only 4×5?
Not Like The Others: Stars
How is each of these stars not like the others?
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?
Inferring With Art: A Man
What’s going on in this painting? Who is that guy? What’s his job? And where’s his other boot?
Inferring With Art: Two Women
What are these two women up to? What’s that thing she’s holding? Let’s make some inferences!
Self Portraits: Text Art
What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?
Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
Remixing A Holiday Poem
Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!
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.
Create Your Own Operation
The commutative and associative properties are a whole lot more interesting when you apply them to a mathematical operation that you created!
The Resiliency Tournament
Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.
What Does it Cost to Fill a Car with Other Liquids
Is gas actually that expensive? What if we filled a car up with… orange juice?
Investigating Cost of Living
Would you save money if you lived in Las Vegas and commuted every day to San Francisco?
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: Primes and Squares
Can any perfect square be written as the sum of two primes?
A Nutrition-Based Math Project
Let’s create a parody ad attacking a surprisingly calorie-rich meal.
Motivation and Moral Development
Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?
Creating A Classroom Motto
Starting with specific examples of fantastic classroom behavior, your class will end up with one sentence summing up their expectations. It’s a classroom motto!