Playlist: Elementary Highlights
Main Idea and Details
Young students can use this big idea organizer to identify the main idea and support it with details.
Power and Traditions
We compare the power of traditions shared by millions with smaller traditions shared by perhaps just one family.
Adding and Subtracting Fruit
Use super cute fruit to introduce algebraic thinking to your young math students.
Back to School Math Worksheets
In these math problems, the solution is already given. But another number is missing!
A Character’s Challenges and Changes
Your 1st and 2nd graders will analyze how a character responded to a challenge.
Words Within Words: CORNMAZE
How many words can you find within CORNMAZE?
Emoji Stories 👁️
Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?
How to Reset Your Brain When You’re Flooded
Allison Edwards explains how changing your senses can reset your brain.
Lipogram: Rewrite “Mary Had A Little Lamb”
What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?
How Many Will There Be? Desks
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?
Word Ladder: Band to Sing (4 Steps)
COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?
Measurement: How Old Is Mr. Byrd?
What if I told you that I’m 341,640 old? Could you figure out what unit I’m using? Hint: it’s not years!
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.
Story Starter: A Magical School
Students use 12 random phrases to create a story that takes place in at a magical school.
Writing A Thanksgiving Letter
What if an inanimate object could express thanks for a special person in your life? What would it write?
SCAMPER: Scaffolding Creativity
Asking students to “think creatively” won’t get you far. They won’t know how to start, they’ll get stuck with simple ideas, or they’ll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.
How Many Ways: Times Equals Times
How many different ways can you make this math statement true using only the digits one through nine?
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.
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?
Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction
Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.
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?