Cross Curricular

Concentric Circles – Getting Students to Think Bigger (and Smaller!)

This differentiation technique is called "Concentric Circles". You use it to move students up and down the ladder of abstraction, applying a single idea in multiple contexts.

Beware “Real World Problems”

Why I stopped looking for “real world” problems and started aiming for “interesting.” The real world is often tedious and annoying. Interesting never is!

Fluency: Asking For (Way) More Than One Answer

Being able to generate many possible answers is key to high-level thinking. So why don't we ask students to do it more often?

An Academic Twist on Valentines

Want to have some February fun? Let's merge the idea of "going together like milk and cookies" with curriculum to create Academic Valentine's Day cards!

Running A Curiosity Project

Merlin Mann stated that employees’ motivation increases when they get to “build a robot” once in a while. That is, do something creative beyond regular work. Can we do this at school? Offices have “casual Fridays,” can we have “curiosity Fridays?"

Thinking Hats and Lunar Survival Skills

How Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats helped me solve a problem with my favorite group discussion task.

First Levels: Sentence Starters

As silly as it may sound, providing sentence stems or "fill in the blanks" can give your kids the scaffold they need to achieve a higher level of success.

Synthesize: Make A Change, Explain The Effect

I love the term "Synthesize" from the classic Bloom's Taxonomy, but it can be hard to know exactly what it looks like. My favorite "Synthesize Recipe" is to ask students to make a change to existing content and then explain the effects of that change to me.

Introducing “Criteria” To Students

Teaching our students to identify the criteria behind a decision will make them better decision makers and help them understand others' points of views.

Evaluate with Academic Tournaments

The bracketed tournament isn't just for college basketball. Set up a tournament to determine best president, state, element, or literary character and challenge your students to make interesting judgements.

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