I often see this question on language arts and social studies worksheets: “Put these events in order.” Yes, it’s low-level, but the real problem is that it’s a one-off. Let’s make a sequence of questions about the order of events.
All Of MyExamples
Browse By Technique
Hundreds of example lessons organized by differentiation techniques. Or browse by content area below!
🐛 Fuzzy Problems
Fuzzy problems are ambiguous. They are missing data. They have lots of right answers, but (more importantly) they also have wrong answers.
🚫 Anti-Techniques
These are ideas I used to believe that now I think aren't actually so great. Oops!
💥 Get Ridiculous
Avoid boring examples and go for the outliers! Everything's more interesting when you're working with unexpected examples.
🎥 Embed A Classic
Take out a boring sample and embed great art, music, film, tv shows, and other classics into your lessons.
🔃 Think Big! But Also Small.
Get your students' thinking moving from specific to the abstract and then back again.
🪄 Change, Then Explain!
My favorite way to reach "synthesize" - ask students to make a change and then explain the effects of that change.
🤭 Find The Controversy
Every topic has some juicy controversy. Leverage it! Look for ambiguity, disagreements, dilemmas, and discrepancies in any topic.
❓ Ask Better Questions
I received surprisingly little training on how to ask questions, considering how many darn questions I asked!
Browse By Content Area
All Of My Examples
Updating Old Questions: Addition With Missing Pieces
How can I go beyond asking 20 variations of 622 + 77 = ___?
A Better Analyze Step for Caesar vs Alexander
A big ol’ table that looks like comparing, but it’s really more about remembering.
Updating Old Questions: Name That Genre!
What can we do once students correctly identify a story’s genre?
Updating Old Questions: Identify Figurative Language
What do we do after a student can identify the type of figurative language?
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!
Making Categories of Famous Structures
A task about famous structures that stops at the bottom of Bloom’s.
Updating Old Questions: Context Clues
Most context clue worksheets have incredibly low expectations.
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.