← Back to all of your playlists

Playlist: Bookmarks

Discussing An Important Decision from History

How would people with two different perspectives discuss a decision from history?

Chess Variant: Monster Chess

What if you had really weak chess pieces, but you could always move twice?

Microchess (Chess Variant)

What if we played chess on a board that’s only 4×5?

Writing About Art: Chōshi in Shimosha

Get your students writing some pretty darn impressive poetry based on Japan’s most famous artist.

Writing About Art: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

Look closely at Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.

Writing About Art: Twilight in the Wilderness

Look closely at Twilight in the Wilderness. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.

Not Like The Others: US States

How is each of these states not like the others?

Writing About Art: The Scream

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

Writing Differentiated Lesson Objectives

For Teachers

My early lessons didn’t even have objectives, let alone good objectives! Here’s how to build four-part, differentiated lesson objectives.

Who Asks The Questions? And Who Answers?

For Teachers

What would the pie chart look like for these three situations: the teacher asks the students, a student asks the teacher, or a student asks another student a question? I can tell you my pie chart would have been very lopsided.

Self Portraits: Text Art

What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?

Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings

Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!

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?

Not Like The Others: States of Matter

How is each of the states of matter not like the others?

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?

Virtue or Vice?

Aristotle noted that positive traits and negative traits are often the same thing, but just in different amounts. The right amount is a virtue, but too much or too little and it’s a vice.

Writing Seuss Style Poetry

Sure, Dr. Seuss wrote for young students, but can older students analyze his writing and learn to mimic his style? THEN, they can produce Seuss-style poetry about any topic: Ancient China, the electromagnetic spectrum, Pride and Prejudice, and (yes) fraction division!

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!?

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?

Undoing Multiplication With Division

Multiplication and division, natural foes, are constantly seeking to undo each other. Students will attempt to reverse the effects of multiplication by dividing once, twice, or even thrice!

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.

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.

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.

Math Curiosity: Primes and Squares

Can any perfect square be written as the sum of two primes?

Climbing Bloom’s with Depth and Complexity

For Teachers

Bloom’s tells you how high to aim. Depth and Complexity tells you where to look. Combine them and things get interesting.

Math Curiosity: Finding Primes

Prime numbers are unpredictable! How can we possibly find them all? An Ancient Greek mathematician found one way!

Academic Love Letters

What if Kylo Ren wrote a love letter to Abe Lincoln or the Sahara Desert wrote one to the Moon?

Depth and Complexity: 🚦 Rules

Is there a consequence for not doing something? You may have found a rule!

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.

Creating A Realistic Flower and Pollinator

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

Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art

Create a pixelated icon that represents the essence of a character!

Literary Technique: Juxtaposition

Put a grumpy character next to a joyful one and they make each other stand out even more. Opposites are powerful!

An App For A Historical Figure

What kind of an app could have helped Abe Lincoln accomplish his goals?

Motivation and Moral Development

Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?

Response to Lit: An Inductive Approach

For Teachers

Here’s how one teacher uses inductive thinking to help students respond to literature.

Add Layers To Direct Instruction

For Teachers

Take direction instruction beyond a monotonous practice of the same skill over and over.

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.

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.