Why are my best biologists just restating facts we already know?
Content Area: Science
Updating Old Questions: The Planets’ Order
Oops! I just asked my students to put the planets in order! Here’s what I could do differently…
Updating Old Questions: Volcano from Two Perspectives
Just because we have two perspectives doesn’t mean we have a great question!
Climbing Blooms With A Science Lesson
How I’d push a mere science demonstration to higher level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Upgrading A Research Report
So many “research reports” are really just “regurgitation re-writes.” Here’s one way to take a research report to a much more interesting level.
Thinking Like Producers About Consumers
Here’s how I’d use ethics and multiple perspectives to get students thinking about producers, consumers, and decomposers in new and interesting ways.
The Marshmallow Challenge
A fantastic fuzzy problem to start the year. Students use pasta and tape to try to get a marshmallow up as high as possible.
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.
Creating A New Creature
We’re not doing a fluffy art project here. Kids are developing a realistic, made up creature that could have actually lived in a particular biome.
Reader Question: Unusual Animals
A reader asks how we can take the typical “look up facts online and then present with PowerPoint” task to an appropriate level of challenge.