Students took the classic song, Help!, and rewrote it to be about their collective summers.
Content Area: Language Arts
What could we do with this Wax Museum event?
How one might revamp a “Wax Museum” project into something that focuses more on thinking than product.
Adding Complexity to Parts of Speech
Here’s how you can add some spice to an otherwise dull study of parts of speech.
Words Within Words
So… how many words can you find that are made from the letters in the world “soldier”? There’s more than 10… more than 20… more than 50…
Rewriting a Sentence With Different Coordinating Conjunctions
The first unit in our writing program was always teaching the coordinating conjunctions. It always felt goofy teaching this to 6th graders – especially a gifted magnet class. I mean… do they really not know the difference between “and” and “but”?
Synonym Graphs
Use a two-dimensional scatter plot to dig into the nuances of several synonyms.
Creating Seemingly Unrelated Analogies
Want to encourage students to find unexpected connections across content? Here’s a quick framework based on the most important terms from both bits of content.
Finding the Fun in “It’s” vs “Its”
How do we differentiate a dull lesson like “its” vs “it’s”? I decided to push it to an extreme (and include some unexpected novelty).
The Resiliency Tournament
I got to work with several groups of students (of many ages) and I tried out this task: building a tournament to decide who was the most resilient historical figure or fictional character? Kids came up with some amazing ideas.
Puzzle: Word Pyramids
A fun, abstract vocab puzzle in which students can add one letter per line, forming a pyramid of words.
