Playlist: Bookmarks
Back to School: Rewriting The Beatles’ “Help!”
Can your students come up with a one-syllable word to sum up their time away from school? And then rewrite The Beatles’ song Help!?
Olympics: Winter vs Summer Medal Count
Which country has a great balance between their summer and winter Olympic medals?
Mow A Lawn
How long would it take to mow a very large lawn with a push-mower?
Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
Writing in Pilish
Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?
Create A Civilization: Design A Flag
What makes for a good flag? What makes a bad flag?
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?
Addition: 3 Digits Plus 2 Digits (Multiple Solutions)
Typical practice problems don’t move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy. With this framework, you’ll see kids stop and really think about how to approach multi-digit addition.
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.
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?
Math Curiosity: Goldbach’s Conjecture
Can any even number be written as the sum of two primes? Goldbach thought so, but we haven’t proven it… yet!
Notice, Wonder: A River
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Notice, Wonder: The Cliff
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
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!?
Notice, Wonder: Michael
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Notice, Wonder: Etna
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Game: Order and Chaos
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe if both players could play as both Xs and Os!
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.
Notice, Wonder: A Ship
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Paradox: The Barber’s Paradox
The barber shaves everybody who doesn’t themselves. So… does the barber shave himself?
Sets of Idioms
Why do we say ‘break a leg’? Five themed sets of idioms your students will actually remember.
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!
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: Magic Squares
Imagine a 3×3 square in which every row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. That’s a magic square!
Col – A Strategy Game
The first person to run out of regions loses in this strategy game.
The Resiliency Tournament
Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.
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.)
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?
The Thinking Hats
So… do your students moan when forced to work in a group? Part of the problem is that lack the structure to work well with peers. Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats are a perfect tool to help with this problem.
Improving Presentations 4: The Big Day
How do you mentally (and emotionally) prepare yourself for the big day?
Improving Presentations 3: The Storyboard and Slides
It’s time to turn that outline into a storyboard and then some actual slides.
Improving Presentations 2: Planning The Outline
After watching some great presenters, let’s outline your presentation!
Improving Presentations 1: Watching The Greats
Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!
Persuasion and Packaging: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
How does a drink’s packaging affect us emotionally and logically?
Inductively Analyze Website Reliability
For TeachersRather than giving students rules to apply to websites, let them analyze websites to create rules.
Historic Social Media
How would people from history have interacted online? Students will develop a conversation online between people involved in the same event from history.
Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art
Create a pixelated icon that represents the essence of a character!
Characters’ Talents and Multiple Intelligences
How do characters from novels line up with Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences?
Literary Technique: Juxtaposition
Put a grumpy character next to a joyful one and they make each other stand out even more. Opposites are powerful!
Create A Creature
Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.
An App For A Historical Figure
What kind of an app could have helped Abe Lincoln accomplish his goals?
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
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!
A Grid-Based Fraction Project
You’ve got 60 spaces on a grid to create an amusement park, a house, a farm, or whatever you’d like. Divide it into seven pieces, order it by size, combine into two halves, and more in this fraction project.
Common English Words From Other Languages
Bored with typical spelling studies? Let’s dig into the origins of common English words from other languages!
New Uses for Everyday Things
For TeachersHere’s how Joelle Trayers gets even her youngest students ready to think in unexpected ways.