What’s New

Here’s what we’ve been working on recently. Lots of work on our Scope and Sequence so that Byrdseed.TV fits each grade in a coherent way.

August 2026

How Many Ways: Add to 50 re-recorded. The second challenge is now 52 instead of 70, so students find the same number of ways with a completely different set of pairs.

A Character’s Challenges and Changes now has videos. The primary version of Analyze Character Change: students follow one character first, next, and last, then decide whether they changed.

Systems Are Made Up of Other Systems refreshed. A new video replaces the old one, and the lesson now has a worksheet and a filled-in sample.

Professional development has its own track. If your account includes PD, there’s now a PD button beside your grade buttons. Click it and you get a PD module for the current stretch of the year, the same way lessons work. Click Lessons to go back.

How Many Ways: Multiply, Then Add to 22 now has its second video. Students who found every way to multiply then add to 22 get the follow-up, plus a worksheet and answer key.

How Many Will There Be? The Fence. A 2nd grade math challenge. Students count the pieces of wood in a fence that keeps growing, find the pattern, and use it to predict a fence they never drew. Three videos, a worksheet, and an answer key.

Power Can Be Visible or Invisible (Primary). The 2nd grade version of our older lesson on power. Students sort examples into power you can see and power you can’t, then argue which kind is stronger. Two worksheets included.

How Many Ways: Divide to 5 is now whole numbers. The old version used decimals, which most 5th graders haven’t been taught yet in the fall. Now students find every way to divide to 5, then change the answer to 6 and discover there are only four. The decimal version is still on the site for later in the year.

Idioms, five at a time. Our idiom videos are now 22 separate lessons instead of five long ones, so you can hand your class a single week’s worth. Food, animals, weather, money, numbers, and more. Find them under Vocabulary.

Too Much or Too Little of a Character Trait. Students look at a character’s best trait and ask what happens when they have too much of it, or not enough.

Art, Academic Tournaments, and Social Emotional are back. These three sections returned to the bottom of the library page.

For You tab keeps improving. Each module’s extra activities now show up on the page, and the description you read matches the grade you picked instead of the module as a whole.

July 2026

Analyze Character Change refreshed. Three new videos and a new worksheet replace the original. Students track what a character does, thinks, and says, then decide what actually changed. Recommended for 5th grade.

For You Tab updated. Recommendations now follow a Scope and Sequence across the school year based on your grade levels and school calendar. Each module opens with a short welcome video and a few extra activities that go with it. For You is also the first tab you see when you sign in. Still a work-in-progress!

Creating A Classroom Motto refreshed. Re-recorded videos with new sample mottos. Now recommended for 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade.

How Many Ways: Add to 50. A 2nd grade challenge: add two 2-digit numbers to make 50, never repeating a digit. Students find every answer, prove there are no more, then discover a sneaky set they almost certainly missed.

How Many Ways: Add to 170. A 3rd grade challenge: add two 2-digit numbers to make 170, using each digit only once. There are only four ways. Students hunt for all of them, then figure out why there aren’t any more.

Introducing Universal Themes. Six new kickoff lessons that open the year with the theme of Power, from a primary-grade introduction to frame-based intros for older students:

• Introducing Power (Primary)
• Frame Intro: Power (Primary)
• Frame Intro: Systems
• Frame Intro: Order
• Frame Intro: Change
• Frame Intro: Power

Introducing Systems. A three-part introduction to the universal theme of Systems for 3rd grade: sort machines and animals, find the pattern, then put a big idea about systems to the test.

Author’s Voice. Two new reading lessons to determine (and use) an author’s voice.

• Beatrix Potter and Rudyard Kipling
• Charles Dickens and Jack London

Universal Theme: Order & Chaos

• Order & Chaos: The Snowflake A snowflake follows one strict rule, yet no two have ever matched. Students decide: is that order, or chaos?
• Order & Chaos: The Shuffle. Shuffling a deck follows exact steps to make the cards random. So is shuffling order, or chaos?

Reading Activities

• Changing A Plot’s Order Rearrange a story’s events and see what breaks
• Shrinking A Summary Squeeze a summary from five sentences to three to one, then do a summary that misses the point.
• Summarize In Haiku Boil a story down to seventeen syllables
• Summarize In Haiku: Power An upgraded haiku challenge which ends with a poem about a story’s transfer of power.
• Personification: The River In Wind in the Willows, Mole encounters a river with a lot of personality.

June 2026

New “How Many Ways?” math challenges. Students find every way to hit a target. One problem, but many right answers.

Bad Graphs. Students spot what makes a graph misleading, then build a sneaky one themselves. New this month: Teacher Votes (a class vote where the bars lie) and Boulder Throwing (a line plot that hides the truth).

5th Grade Math Lessons.

• Find The Smallest Fraction
• A Decimal Rounding Surprise
• How Many Ways: A Remainder of 5

Grade badges now match your state. Lesson cards show grade levels for the standards you teach: Common Core, Texas, Kentucky, Alabama, or Indiana.

Broken Calculator: Comparing Decimals. A calculator that compares decimals by counting digits. Students figure out the bug, predict when it slips up, then fix each comparison.

Power: Queen Bee vs. Hive Our Power theme worksheet is now a full video lesson.

Building curriculum alignment. We’re connecting our content to the units and modules you use in class. Please tell us which programs you use so we know what to focus on!

May 2026

More states’ standards. Browse lessons by Kentucky, Alabama, and Indiana standards, alongside Common Core and Texas. Pick your state and see every lesson matched to it.

15 new Universal Theme worksheets. Fresh printables for Change, Systems, and Order & Chaos. Each hands students two examples, asks which better shows the big idea, then has them defend their pick with evidence.

Rebus Puzzles worksheets. Students decode picture-and-word puzzles. Ready to hand out.

April 2026

Math apps rebuilt. Goldbach, Collatz, and Palindromes are faster, cleaner, and now include step-by-step animations and useful tips.

More Broken Calculator videos. Three new ones: 2-Digit Addition, 2-Digit Subtraction, and Multiplication Cross Product. Students figure out what’s wrong with the calculator, then duplicate its mistakes.

Find grade-level activities faster. Grade badges on each activity match the grades you teach. Plus, we added standards to 373 worksheets, puzzlements, and other resources.

Redesigned Lipogram app. Students rewrite text without a forbidden letter. The app now catches mistakes in real time, looks cleaner, and filters out words you don’t want in the classroom.

March 2026

For You Tab. The home page now features a tab with recommendations customized to your profile.

Tell Your Story kit. Four new videos for GT coordinators. How to explain your program to parents, teachers, and administrators. Includes a ready-to-use “We Do Not / Instead We” worksheet.

Puzzlement Links archive. Three years of weekly puzzlement links, searchable in one place. That puzzle about black holes you remember from last October? It’s probably there.

Accessibility improvements. Screen reader support, keyboard navigation, and skip links across the site. We completed a full WCAG 2.1 AA audit and fixed what needed fixing. If your district asks about accessibility, we have the documentation.

New lesson: What’s In My Brain: Primary Sources. Students work through examples and non-examples to figure out the difference between primary and secondary sources.

February 2026

139 new printable worksheets. Emoji Stories, Words Within Words, What’s In My Brain, New Uses For, and Parts of Speech Party. All downloadable and ready to hand to students.

Improved 62 Not Like The Others activities. Stars, planets, volcanoes, rivers, presidents, countries, and more. Each one fact-checked, with printable PDFs added.

New Buying Guide For Districts. One page with everything a coordinator needs: how it works, what teachers get, pricing, and how to start a pilot. See it here.

Group pricing calculator. Type in how many schools you have. See the price. That simple. See it here.

January 2026

Welcome quiz. New visitors get a quick quiz that figures out what you teach and what you’re looking for, then points you to the right starting place.

Coordinator help videos. Three new videos: how to track teacher usage, how to roll out Byrdseed.TV to your team, and how to use it for professional development.