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Playlist: Bookmarks

Holiday Shuffle – Day vs Date

Wouldn’t some holidays be better on a certain day of the week? Should Thanksgiving have a set date?

Don’t Make A Mere Model!

For Teachers

This task is all about the product, but completely ignores how students will think.

Order, Chaos, and the Holiday Season

Let’s write a holiday song about order and chaos!

Words Within Words: STUFFING

How many words are hiding inside STUFFING? More than you think.

Path Cipher (Codes Part 4)

Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.

New Uses For An Aluminum Can

So, what CAN a CAN be used for other than storing liquids?

Zig Zag Cipher (Codes Part 3)

Let’s try a cipher that doesn’t substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.

Pig Pen Cipher (Codes Part 2)

Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!

Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)

Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!

Lipogram: Rewrite “Twinkle, Twinkle”

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

Phrases to Join a Discussion

Want your classroom discussions to go a bit more smoothly? Train students to use a few simple phrases and it’ll make all the difference in the world.

Looking Closely at Holiday Photos

Let’s write from multiple perspectives using an old timey holiday photo!

What’s In My Brain!? Japan vs Jamaica

Is it an island or an archipelago?

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!?

Investigating Population Changes

How have the ages of three countries’ populations changed from 1950 to 2020? And what problems might that create?

Introducing Universal Theme of Systems

So what could you do with a Universal Theme of Systems? Well, here’s an introduction that will get your students’ brains sweating.

Drawing Knots, Level 2

How to draw a more complex version of this twisty Henri Matisse knot!

Drawing Knots, Level 1

How to draw a simple version of this twisty Henri Matisse knot!

Writing About Art: The Scream

Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.

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?

Notice, Wonder: An Orange Thing

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Cram

Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!

An Escher-Style Tessellation Project

Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!

The Pros and Cons of Producers and Consumers

Sure, students might know the difference between a producer and a consumer… but have they considered how they feel about each other? What, in a producer’s opinion, are the pros and cons of a consumer?

Jotto

Who can guess the codeword first?

Math Curiosity: Klauber’s Triangle

In 1932, a leading authority on rattlesnakes, Laurence Klauber, discovered a startling pattern within a triangle of primes.

Not Like The Others: Countries

How is each of these four countries not like the others?

Math Curiosity: Ulam Spiral

What if we make a huge spiral of numbers and then highlight only the primes? Well, a bunch of weird patterns show up!

Game: Gomoku

Want to take Tic-Tac-Toe to the next level!? Imagine a 15×15 board. You must get five-in-a-row. You cannot get six-in-a-row. That’s Gomoku!

Notice, Wonder: Blood Falls

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Writing A Thanksgiving Letter

What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?

Ambiguous Sentences

Rather than just demand that students “write clearly,” we’ll explore the hazards of poorly written sentences… and maybe create one of our own!

Remixing A Holiday Poem

Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!

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?

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.

Invisible Power Can Have Visible Effects

Can you think of times when power is unseen, but we can clearly see its effects?

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!

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.

Paradox: The Barber’s Paradox

The barber shaves everybody who doesn’t themselves. So… does the barber shave himself?

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: 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?

Col – A Strategy Game

The first person to run out of regions loses in this strategy game.

Game: Notakto

What if you only played Tic-Tac-Toe with Xs and you could play on multiple boards?

Dots and Boxes

Who can make the most boxes from dots 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.)

Analyzing Movies’ Success

So should we make another movie in this series?

Investigating Cost of Living

Would you save money if you lived in Las Vegas and commuted every day to San Francisco?

Fractals: Koch Snowflake

You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!

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.

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.

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?

Improving Presentations 1: Watching The Greats

Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!

Depth and Complexity: ⚖️ Ethics

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

Percents and Credit Cards

Let’s buy something expensive with a credit card and then make only the minumum payments!

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.

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.

Reduce Anxiety: Square Breathing (Tool 1)

Reduce anxiety by breathing in a square pattern.

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!

The Game of 100

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

Teaching Empathy With Faberge Eggs

The story of the Fabergé Eggs is heartbreaking. It’s also the perfect way to build empathy in your classroom.

Furnishing A Hotel

Design and furnish hotel rooms on a budget. Real math, real constraints, real decisions. Then pitch your hotel to investors.

Introduction to Watercolor

For Teachers

A mosaic technique that makes watercolor approachable. Students walk away with something they’re proud of.

Math Project: What If I Bought Apple Stock Instead?

What if you had an original iPod and sold it compared to if you had bought the equivalent amount of Apple stock and sold that?

Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names

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