Playlist: Bookmarks
Contig
Roll three dice and combine them using any mathematical operation. But be strategic to maximize your points!
Crossing Every Bridge Exactly Once (aka Eulerian Paths)
How can you cross each bridge in this city exactly once?
Parts of Speech Party: Introduction (Check)
How many ways can we use “check” in a paragraph? And can your students spot when it’s a verb, or a noun, or an adjective?
Pig Pen Cipher (Codes Part 2)
Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!
Word Pyramids
Start with a one letter word, add another letter, then add another. How tall can you make the pyramid?
Word Pyramid: D to ASIDE
One letter. Add another. And another. How tall can you build the pyramid before you run out of words?
Word Pyramid: M to CAMPUS
Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?
Lipogram: Rewrite “Mary Had A Little Lamb”
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
Lipogram: Rewrite “Twinkle, Twinkle”
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
Lesson Makeovers: 3 Big Ideas
For TeachersAfter looking at dozens of lessons folks sent in, I came up with three big ideas to address.
Discussing An Important Decision from History
How would people with two different perspectives discuss a decision from history?
Introducing Universal Theme of Power
So what could you do with a Universal Theme of Power? Well, here’s an introduction that will get your students’ brains sweating.
Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
Greek and Latin Word Part Paths
How can we go from Biology to Immobile?
Tournament of Ancient Inventions
Which of these inventions of the ancient world is most influential? Least useful today? Most taken-for-granted?
Antonym Paths
Does the antonym of an antonym bring us back to the same meaning?
Writing About Art: The Scream
Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.
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?
Not Like The Others: States of Matter
How is each of the states of matter not like the others?
Not Like The Others: Countries
How is each of these four countries not like the others?
Math Curiosity: A Pattern Packed Triangle
Pascal’s pattern-packed triangle is a potent puzzle for pupils to ponder.
Remixing A Holiday Poem
Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!
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!
What If There Were No Hundreds Place?
Imagine a world with no hundreds place. We’d have to call it ten tens instead. But then, what would we call the thousands place? How would we read 9999? What if we added one more?
Parentheses: How big of a change can they make!?
Two tiny parentheses. One expression. How big of a change can they make? Bigger than you think.
Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences
Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.
The Tournament of Biomes
Want to move beyond memorizing the characteristics of biomes? In this lesson, students work through a Tournament of Biomes, explaining which biome wins in each round (based on criteria you choose). In the end, they crown a 👑 Champion Biome!
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!?
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?
The Resiliency Tournament
Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.
Analyzing Movies’ Success
So should we make another movie in this series?
Describing Author’s Voice
What if… Edgar Allen Poe wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
Fractals: Sierpinski’s Triangle
What if this triangle pattern just kept repeating… forever!?
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.
A Caffeine Investigation – Part 2
What do people know about the amount of caffeine in common beverages?
A Caffeine Investigation – Part 1
So… just how much caffeine can you have before you end up in the ER?
Content Imperatives: Parallel
Get students thinking broadly by exploring similarities across multiple topics. Combine with Depth and Complexity for bonus points!
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
Depth and Complexity: 🌻 Details
Get kids focusing on the small, but essential, details of a topic.
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.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
A Nutrition-Based Math Project
Let’s create a parody ad attacking a surprisingly calorie-rich meal.
Writing Summaries in Haiku
Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.
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.
Intellectual Intensity
Do you know someone who becomes a bit overexcited by ideas?
Better Stories Part 3: Literary Themes
A typical student narrative includes plot and characters but lacks a larger idea to hold it all together. This is where a lesson on themes comes in…
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.