Graphic Organizers Are Not Final Products Ending with a Venn Diagram is like comparing two vacation spots… but never actually going on the vacation!
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!
Lunar Survival Skills We're supposed to rank fifteen items according to usefulness if we were stranded on the light-side of the moon. The items range from pistols to powdered milk. Some seem useful, but are actually worthless while others seem unnecessary on earth, but are actually vital when stuck on the moon. However, the structure of the activity as a website is not optimal. Let's improve this and make it an awesome problem–solving exercise for our class.
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.
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.
Matching Flowers and Pollinators How to add a couple of Analyze-level tasks to this Synthesize activity.
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!?
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.
Going Beyond “Define These Terms In Your Own Words” "Define these terms in your own words" may contain depth and complexity… but it's neither deep nor complex!
Sharpening Questions With some small changes, we can turn fluffy opinion questions into thought-provoking evaluation questions.
