Group Investigation: Lessons Built on Curiosity John Dewey's Group Investigation is a favorite model of instruction of mine. It's simply built on curiosity!
Make A *Better* Calendar! The calendar is a source of fantastic factoring problems with many social studies add-ons. Why 12 months? Why 30 (or 31 or 28) days? Why are weeks 7 days long? Why don't they fit into the months (or the year!)? Why did we do this to ourselves!?
How long should we wait after asking a question? I might ask the best questions in the world, but if I don't give students even three seconds to think, those questions aren't doing their job. Here's what we know about Wait Time.
Four Types of Questions You Can Ask Asking questions is such a basic tool of teaching, yet how many of us have ever been taught to ask good questions? In this opening to a series about questioning, we'll explore how to get students asking each other questions.
Combining Depth and Complexity Prompts into a Generalization Let's start with a puzzlement, ask kids to generate an abstract statement, and then find evidence that their statement works across several different areas.
How To Introduce the Depth and Complexity Icons My biggest problem when implementing Depth and Complexity? I used them in a shallow and simple way!
Matching Flowers and Pollinators How to add a couple of Analyze-level tasks to this Synthesize activity.
Concept Formation: A Model for Inductive Thinking Here's are the steps for running an inductive lesson based on Hilda Taba's model of Concept Formation. Plus a sample lesson about the Nile River.
Introducing Ourselves With Depth and Complexity and Frames A go-to activity to introduce the prompts of depth and complexity to students while they also introduce themselves to their new classmates.
Introducing Universal Themes and Generalizations Generalizations, big ideas, abstractions, universal themes... they are designed to help our gifted students learn. However, what I didn't realize was that they would help me teach!
