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Playlist: Bookmarks

Fancier Figurative Language: Use the Opposite

Let’s start with “As cold as fire.”

Fancier Figurative Language: Move the Simile

What if we started a sentence with the simile?

Game: Wild Tic Tac Toe

Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe, but both players can both play as both X and O throughout the whole game!

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.

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?

Generalization: Change Leads to More Change

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

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!

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.

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.

Asking Questions That Make Students Think

For Teachers

Most classroom questions test memory. These questions test thinking. There’s a difference — and your students will feel it.

Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences

Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.

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

Can students spot similes vs metaphors?

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!

Sets of Idioms

Why do we say ‘break a leg’? Five themed sets of idioms your students will actually remember.

Calculators, Patterns, and Multiplying By Decimals

Before teaching students the procedure for multiplying with decimals, how much can they intuitively glean from a structured play session with calculators?

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?

Upgrading Compare and Contrast Writing

Upgrade compare and contrast writing with just a couple of key words.

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.

Finding The Volume of Laptops

How has the volume of laptops changed over time? You know you want to check out how huge those first versions were!

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.

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.

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: ⚖️ Ethics

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

Exploring Circumference With Famous Circles

Let’s find how the diameter and circumference of famous circles are related.

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.

Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs

Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.

Greekymon

Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.

Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche

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

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!

Impostor Syndrome

For Teachers

The student who breezes through school may hit a wall in college. Here’s why — and what to do about it now.

Better Stories Part 2: Types of Conflict

If your students’ stories are packed with endless ninja fights or arguments between frenemies, it’s time to expose them to a wider range of conflicts.

Better Stories Part 1: The Big Idea

We open our unit on narrative writing with a big idea: “structure increases creativity.” I show how this is true by bringing in examples from across all disciplines.