What Makes An Antagonist Effective? It's really fun to take an already good sequence, tweak it, and get something even better!
Think Like An Anthropologist to Make Inferences Like all HM comprehension skills, "Making Inferences" appears yearly beginning in kindergarten, so I know my 6th graders have practiced, and may well have mastered, the skill. To differentiate, I turned to the model of "Thinking Like a Disciplinarian."
The Tragedy of the Commons Imagine that we all share a common resource, but no one is really in charge. How do we maintain order without an authority? This is a fantastically fuzzy situation for students to dig into.
Is Your Writing Process This Fun? Teaching our students to prewrite, write, and rewrite is a difficult process. Much like getting students to show their work in math, process writing is a challenge for gifted students who work intuitively and are annoyed by artificial processes. What better motivation is there than the chance to point out someone else's errors AND be rewarded for it?
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.
The Mysterious Benedict Society – Book Study Ideas After it was recommended dozens of times, I finally read The Mysterious Benedict Society and I wish I had read it sooner!
Think Like A Psychologist Looking to help your students go deeper into any content area? One technique is to teach them to "Think Like A Disciplinarian." This idea, part of the Depth and Complexity Framework, teaches students to analyze ideas from the point of view of a specific profession or discipline.
Free Verse from A Particular Point of View My go-to writing task is a free verse poem written from a particular perspective. I learned this idea from my boss, Sandi, who learned it from Joan Franklin Smutny (I think!). You can use ANYTHING as your prompt. A piece of art works well to introduce the idea, but you can move to writing once […]
Symbolism and Pixel Art Symbolism, a mainstay of literature discussion, seems too abstract and ephemeral to teach to younger students. However, with a well-constructed lesson, students will quickly get the hang of symbolic representation. We'll finish this unit up with some great pixel-art and computer painting.
Picture Books and Stories for Introducing Depth and Complexity Three picture books that I've used (or would use) to introduce Depth and Complexity to students of any age.
