Playlist: Bookmarks
Words Within Words: Chocolate
How many words can you find within Chocolate?
Slow Motion Popcorn
What surprises can you spot when a kernel pops in super slow-mo?
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
New Uses For A Chair
So, what can a chair be used for other than, you know, sitting in?
Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
Tournament: 8 Wonders of the Solar System
Which location is the most wondrous place in the solar system?
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?
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?
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.
Math Curiosity: A Pattern Packed Triangle
Pascal’s pattern-packed triangle is a potent puzzle for pupils to ponder.
Writing A Thanksgiving Letter
What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?
What’s In My Brain: Trapezoids or Not?
Which are trapezoids and which are not?
Not Like The Others: Planets
Which of these planets is not like others? Well, it sure looks simple at first. But each option could be the one that doesn’t fit in.
How Many Ways: Times Equals Minus
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Investigating Christmas Trees
Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?
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?
Create A Civilization: Calendars
Why 12 months? Why 30ish days? Why 7 days in a week? Your civilization could organize a year in any way you want!
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
Universal Themes
For TeachersUniversal Themes are an easy way to connect lessons, units, and content areas, even going across grade levels, and into students’ personal interests.
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
Create A Civilization Introduction
Your students build a civilization from scratch — rivers, flags, calendars, currency, government. Social studies, science, and writing woven into one year-long project.
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!
Better Stories Part 5: Plot Structure
Ever read a student’s story that was just event after event after event and then a very sudden ending? They lack an understanding of a plot’s structure. With the help of Finding Nemo, I break down how to set up a well-structured plot.