← Back to all of your playlists

Playlist: Bookmarks

Idioms About Names

Five idioms related to names.

Idioms About Bites

Five idioms related to bites.

Idioms About the Greeks and Romans

Five idioms related to the Greeks and Romans.

Idioms About Mouths

Five idioms related to mouths.

Idioms About Water

Five idioms related to water.

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?

Idiom Tasks

Four fantastically terrific tasks for a weekly idiom study.

Analyzing Conflict with the Content Imperatives

How to go deep into conflict using the Content Imperatives.

Analyze Characters Using Philosophy

What is the Brick Pig’s philosophy? How would he apply it to the characters in Harry Potter?

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?

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?

Change Leads to More Change

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

Order Can Be Natural or Constructed

When is order natural and when is it designed by people?

Problems Lead to New Rules, Which Lead to New Problems

Problems create rules. Rules create new problems. Can you trace the cycle in history, stories, and your own life?

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.

Invisible Power Can Have Visible Effects

Can you think of times when power is unseen, but we can clearly see its effects?

SCAMPER: Scaffolding Creativity

Asking students to “think creatively” won’t get you far. They won’t know how to start, they’ll get stuck with simple ideas, or they’ll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.

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!

Not Like The Others: Charlotte’s Web

Four Charlotte’s Web characters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.

Do Narrators Have Too Much Power?

Imagine being a character in a story. Are you worried that your story’s narrator may inaccurately describe you? What if they reveal something you wanted to be kept secret? Do narrators have too much power!?

What’s In My Brain: Cute Baby vs Fast Cheetah

Can students spot similes vs metaphors?

What Would Poetry Think About Prose?

Poetry and Prose meet at a party. What would they say to each other? How would they feel about each other’s style?

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.

Describing Author’s Voice

What if… Edgar Allen Poe wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?

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.

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.

Academic Love Letters

What if Kylo Ren wrote a love letter to Abe Lincoln or the Sahara Desert wrote one to the Moon?

Create A Civilization: The River

The Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Seine, the Thames, and now… your river!

Content Imperatives: Convergence

Add complexity by considering how multiple factors 🔄 Converge within one topic.

Content Imperatives: Contribuition

Pull on one thread and watch the whole topic move. Contribution asks: what single factor is quietly shaping everything else?

Content Imperatives: Origin

Take students back to the beginning by using the Content Imperative ⏺️ Origin.

Depth and Complexity: 📈 Trends

Has something been changing recently? What might be causing that? What are the effects?

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: ⚖️ Ethics

Want to add drama to any topic? Use the Ethics prompt!

Depth and Complexity: 🚦 Rules

Is there a consequence for not doing something? You may have found a rule!

Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea

Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.

Depth and Complexity: ⏳ Change Over Time

Want to get students thinking about how a topic has changed or might change in the future? The ⏳ Change Over Time thinking tool is just what you need!

Depth and Complexity: 👓 Multiple Perspectives

Every topic looks different depending on who’s looking. This prompt teaches students to see through someone else’s eyes.

Depth and Complexity: Patterns

Can your students spot anything that repeats? Or that has stopped repeating?

Depth and Complexity: 🌻 Details

Get kids focusing on the small, but essential, details of a topic.

Differentiate With Frames Across Disciplines

For Teachers

One topic, four angles. The Frame graphic organizer gives every student a different way in — without you creating four different lessons.

Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity

Anyone can say a character changed. Your students will prove it: four details from the beginning, four from the end, and the two traits those details point to.

Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art

Create a pixelated icon that represents the essence of a character!

Literary Technique: Juxtaposition

Put a grumpy character next to a joyful one and they make each other stand out even more. Opposites are powerful!

Writing Summaries in Haiku

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

Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche

We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.

Teaching Criticism

For Teachers

Ask students to go beyond “I don’t like it” and form critical opinions based on a set of criteria. Students can produce written arguments or turn their opinion into oral presentations.

New Uses for Everyday Things

For Teachers

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

Engineering: Build A Bridge

Using real bridges as their starting point, students will construct bridges out of straws and paperclips.

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.