Playlist: Bookmarks
Getting Specific With St. Patrick’s Day Writing
Let’s take a starting phrase about St. Patrick’s Day and get specific. No, even more specific!
Halloween Emoji Story 🕷️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
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.
Mother’s Day Cards
Let’s write the cleverest Mother’s Day cards you’ve ever seen!
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Beta
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Alpha
Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?
Parts of Speech Party – Care
How many different ways can we use the word “care”? Let’s find out in this Parts of Speech Party!
Parts of Speech Party – Change
How many different ways can we use the word “change”? Let’s find out in this Parts of Speech Party!
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?
The Heaviest Pumpkin
How heavy is the world’s heaviest pumpkin when measured in Mr. Byrds?
Path Cipher (Codes Part 4)
Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.
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!
Thanksgiving Photo Writing
Starting with an old-timey photo, students will write from a particular item’s point of view.
Cram
Try this a simple (but surprisingly strategic) grid-filling game!
Word Ladder: Fast to Race (4 step)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Self Portraits: Text Art
What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?
An Escher-Style Tessellation Project
Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!
Self Portraits Part One: Line Drawings
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
Writing A Thanksgiving Letter
What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?
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!
Writing A Story About Fraction Equivalence
When fractions take on a new denominator, it’s as if they’re wearing a disguise – same value, new look. So let’s write a story about fraction equivalence starring a fraction who needs to fit in with a new group.
Student Introductions with Complexity and Frames
How have you changed over time? Students introduce themselves through the lens of change — and learn a Depth and Complexity tool in the process.
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: Magic Squares
Imagine a 3×3 square in which every row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. That’s a magic square!
Synonym Graphs
So, which is happiest: happy, joyful, or ecstatic? Which is most temporary?
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.
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
“Its Big Day” – A Children’s Story About Its and It’s
Let’s spice up a typically dull lesson about the difference between “its” and “it’s” by asking students to write a children’s story about the adventures of a critter named It.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 2
We’ll show students how to add more variety to their writing by starting sentences with a reason, a prepositional phrase, and a simile.
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
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.