Playlist: Czapczyk
New Uses For A Cardboard Tube
So, what can a cardboard tube be used for other than holding wrapping paper?
What’s In My Brain: Narwhal vs Penguin
We’re looking at the arctic vs the antarctic.
Math Curiosity: Magic Triangles
Can you make each side of this triangle add up to 9 using the digits 1-6?
Compare and Create New Year’s Traditions
Hey! Our New Year traditions have a lot in common.
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
The Heaviest Pumpkin
How heavy is the world’s heaviest pumpkin when measured in Mr. Byrds?
Think Like An Author: Hemingway vs Dickens
What if your students rewrote Dickens in the style of Hemingway and vice versa?
Idioms About Fire
Five sets of idioms related to fire!
Fizz Buzz: A Counting and Divisibility Game
Ready for a tricky counting and divisibility game?
Word Ladder: Kid to Old (5-steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
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?
How Many Ways: Times Equals Minus
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
Bulls and Cows
How quickly can you break the numeric code?
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.
Rounding Numbers (But Not To 10)
What could we possibly do to make rounding more interesting for students who already get it? In this series, students consider how they might round to values other than “the nearest 10.” How, for example, do we round to the nearest 9? 7? 15?
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!
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.
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.
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.
A Caffeine Investigation – Part 1
So… just how much caffeine can you have before you end up in the ER?
The Game of 100
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?