Playlist: Bookmarks
Squiggles Introduction
What do you see in this squiggle?
Differentiate with Low Floors and High Ceilings
For TeachersStop starting at grade level and stretching up. Start high and scaffold down. It’s simpler, and it actually works.
Random Emoji Prompt Generator
Click up an interesting, visual writing prompt suitable for any grade or purpose.
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.
Categorize and Re-Categorize Animals
Put these animals into groups. Then do it again. Then… do it one more time. How does re-re-grouping the same creatures reveal new patterns and give new insights?
Olympics: Medals by Population
Do big countries always have the most medals? Which smaller countries rank surprisingly high in the Olympics?
Olympics: Winter vs Summer Medal Count
Which country has a great balance between their summer and winter Olympic medals?
Racetrack – Race Around A Graph
How fast do you get your mathematical car going without crashing?
Notice, Wonder: Bloom
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Parts of Speech Tournament
Which part of speech is most useful? Interesting? Strange?
How Many Ways: Fraction Addition 234
How many different ways can you make this fraction addition statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Writing in Pilish
Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?
Not Like The Others: Types of Rocks
Igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic — and one that doesn’t fit. But which one? Depends on your argument.
Not Like The Others: US States
How is each of these states not like the others?
Antonym Paths
Does the antonym of an antonym bring us back to the same meaning?
Ultimate (or Inception) Tic Tac Toe
What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it?
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!
Word Ladder: Two to Six (6-steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Word Ladder – Cold to Cool (5-Steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Word Ladder: Fast to Race (4 step)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Inferring With Art: Two Women
What are these two women up to? What’s that thing she’s holding? Let’s make some inferences!
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.
Subtraction: 3 Digits Minus 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 subtraction.
Not Like The Others: States of Matter
How is each of the states of matter not like the others?
Word Ladders Introduction
You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.
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?
Evens and Odds – Addition and Subtraction
When we’re adding and subtracting, do evens make odds into evens? Do odds make evens odd? Which one has… more power!?
What If There Were No Hundreds Place?
Imagine a world with no hundreds place. We’d have to call it ten tens instead. But then, what would we call the thousands place? How would we read 9999? What if we added one more?
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!
Plurals: An Inductive Spelling Lesson
Plural nouns in English are deliciously fascinating. Yet most plural lessons are so dull! In this experience, students are given a pile of plurals and then inductively create groups and pull out rules and patterns.
How Renewable Is That Resource?
Which resource is more renewable? And which is easier to find?
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.
What’s In My Brain: Trapezoids or Not?
Which are trapezoids and which are not?
Notice, Wonder: Forest
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
How Many Ways: Times Equals Minus
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Times
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: Order of Operations 1
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
How Many Ways: 2 Digits ÷ 1 Digit = 1 Digit
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Advanced Alliteration and Consonance
When students learn about alliteration, it’s hard to steer them away from goofy tongue-twisters. Certainly, there must be more powerful and practical ways of using alliteration. In this lesson, I draw on delicious examples from Shakespeare to show how a very advanced writer used alliteration. Then, I break those ideas down so students can try them out.
Fraction Ordering Tournament
Which set of fractions would be the trickiest to order from least to greatest? Let’s have a tournament!
Run On or Not? – What’s In My Brain
Can your students spot the run-on sentences?
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: Magic Squares
Imagine a 3×3 square in which every row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. That’s a magic square!
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?
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!
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.)
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
Math Curiosity: Primes and Squares
Can any perfect square be written as the sum of two primes?
What Do Mean and Median Mean?
When will mean and median give us different results?
Math Curiosity: Finding Primes
Prime numbers are unpredictable! How can we possibly find them all? An Ancient Greek mathematician found one way!
Math Curiosity: Twin Primes
What do you call two prime numbers who are very close together?
Depth and Complexity: 📈 Trends
Has something been changing recently? What might be causing that? What are the effects?
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: ❓ Unanswered Questions
This underutilized tool focuses students on what we don’t yet know and even what we can’t know.
Depth and Complexity: ⚖️ Ethics
Want to add drama to any topic? Use the Ethics prompt!
Depth and Complexity: 🚦 Rules
Is there a consequence for not doing something? You may have found a rule!
Depth and Complexity: 🏛️ Big Idea
Let’s get students thinking big and focusing on more abstract ideas.
Depth and Complexity: 📚 Across Disciplines
No topic is an island! With the 📚 Across Disciplines prompt, students note connections within and across multiple fields.
Depth and Complexity: ⏳ Change Over Time
Want to get students thinking about how a topic has changed or might change in the future? The ⏳ Change Over Time thinking tool is just what you need!
Depth and Complexity: 👓 Multiple Perspectives
Every topic looks different depending on who’s looking. This prompt teaches students to see through someone else’s eyes.
Depth and Complexity: Patterns
Can your students spot anything that repeats? Or that has stopped repeating?
Depth and Complexity: 🌻 Details
Get kids focusing on the small, but essential, details of a topic.
Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity
Your students will use Depth and Complexity to note how a character’s main trait changes across a story.
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.
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
How to Play Go
Ready to learn a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game? Let’s… Go!
Analyze and Create Misleading Graphs
Let’s make some intentionally bad graphs to learn how to spot poorly made graphs.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Part 3
Your students’ sentences all start the same way. Here are three techniques that fix that overnight.
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.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 1
‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
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?
Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names
Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!