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Playlist: Bookmarks

Crossing Every Bridge Exactly Once (aka Eulerian Paths)

How can you cross each bridge in this city exactly once?

Parabolic Curve Art

Create mathematical art with curves that, well, aren’t curvy.

Writing in Pilish

Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?

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.

Not Like The Others: Snakes of the Rainforest

Four rainforest snakes. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.

New Uses for a Paperclip

So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?

Looping Grid Art

Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you’ll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!

How Many Will There Be? Pyramids

Give kids a taste of a sequence, let them build an understanding, and then see how far their predictions can take them.

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?

Fractions: Decompose and Recompose

What if we took a fraction apart, then took those pieces apart, then recombined them, and then recombined those, arriving back to the original fraction?

Not Like The Others: Natural Disasters

Four natural disasters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.

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!

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?

Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences

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

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?

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?

Why Is Our Calendar So Weird!?

Why are there 12 months? Why don’t weeks fit into months evenly? Why don’t weeks fit into the year evenly? What’s going on with the calendar!

Grouping Quadrilaterals In A Hierarchy

Can we classify quadrilaterals like we classify living things?

Fractals: Koch Snowflake

You could keep zooming in on this snowflake forever!

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.

Create A Civilization: The River

The Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Seine, the Thames, and now… your river!

Visualizing Fraction Multiplication

What does it look like to multiply fractions?

Fraction Puzzlers: Add and Subtract Fractions To Reach A Number

You only have six digits to form three fractions. Can you combine them to get to 0?

Elements of The Fantasy Genre

Every fantasy story has patterns hiding underneath the magic. Once your students see the elements, they’ll spot them everywhere — and use them in their own writing.

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.

Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art

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

An App For A Historical Figure

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

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!

An Inductive Exploration Of Geometry

For Teachers

With inductive thinking, students will work from parts to whole, discovering big ideas along the way!

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.