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Playlist: Bookmarks

Not Like The Others: Flowers

Four flowers. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.

Student Introductions With Depth, Complexity, and Frames: Level Two

Once students know the prompts of Depth and Complexity, let’s take them much higher up Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Factors and Codes (Episode 1)

Let’s use factors to encode and decode words.

Bobbing for Apples

What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?

Lipogram: Rewrite “Twinkle, Twinkle”

What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?

Engagement Isn’t The Goal

For Teachers

While “engagement” is fun, it shouldn’t be our main goal.

From “Identify” to “Analyze” – Famous Structures

For Teachers

Rather than just learning about one structure, let’s climb Bloom’s and think more deeply.

Famous Structures

The Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House — group them, pick the best from each group, then design your own.

Sets of Idioms Related to Food

Five sets of five idioms, all related to food.

Writing in Pilish

Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?

Not Like The Others: US States

How is each of these states not like the others?

Not Like The Others: Branches of the US Government

How is each part of the United States Government not like the other parts?

New Uses for a Paperclip

So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?

Create A Civilization: Design A Flag

What makes for a good flag? What makes a bad flag?

How Many Will There Be? Pyramids

Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.

Complex Task: Subjective Graphs

For Teachers

What would it be like if students graphed characters from stories? Historic leaders? Elements from the period table? Objects in space?

Developing Questions that Prompt Thinking in Math

For Teachers

Math is a particularly tricky subject for asking higher-level questions. Here are a couple of techniques I’ve used to prompt students to think, not merely calculate.

Paradox: Rebuilding A Ship

What if we completely rebuild something slowly? What if we completely rebuild it all at once? Is it still the same thing?

Game: Number Scrabble

What if we played Tic-Tac-Toe with numbers and instead of three-in-a-row, we add up to 15? Well… then we’d have Number Scrabble!

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: 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!

Generalization: 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.

Complex Task: What Would X Think of Y?

For Teachers

Here’s a simple task that will add complexity to any content from any grade level!

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.

Disneyland Parking Structure Math Project

Your students will use estimation strategies to figure out how many parking spots are there in the parking structure at Disneyland? And you bet I reveal the real answer!

The Personalities of Rocks

What would an igneous rock be like? Would it get along with a sedimentary rock? Could they handle the hot personality of a metamorphic rock?

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.

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!

Math Curiosity: Four Squares

Every positive integer can be written as the sum of (at most) four perfect squares!

Math Curiosity: The Coloring Problem

No video gets me more email from students! How few colors can you use to color in any map so that no two, neighboring regions are the same color?

The Resiliency Tournament

Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.

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.

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?

Synonym Graphs

So, which is happiest: happy, joyful, or ecstatic? Which is most temporary?

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!

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.

Universal Themes

For Teachers

Universal Themes are an easy way to connect lessons, units, and content areas, even going across grade levels, and into students’ personal interests.

Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator

Your students will create a new flower, designed to attract a specific pollinator.

Discovering Pi With Sticky Notes

Pi is mysterious and strange! Why not let students discover it on their own?

Educational Valentines

Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!

Asynchrony: Developing At Different Rates (For Students)

For students! In some areas, a student may be shockingly advanced, while in others… surprisingly average. This is asynchrony in action.

The Game of 100

Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?

Writing Summaries in Haiku

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

New Uses for Everyday Things

For Teachers

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

Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names

Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!

Engineering: Build A Bridge

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