Let’s create an MC Escher-style tessellation art (and math) project with nothing more than an index card, a marker, and paper.
Differentiation TechniqueEmbed A Classic
Read The OverviewEmbed A Classic
An easy way to spice up any lesson is to remove the god-awful samples and replace them with selections from great works of art, music, film, tv shows, and historic moments. You get the added bonus of exposing students to new ideas.
Specific Examples of “Embed A Classic”
Using Art to Practice Reading
When you’re teaching a reading skill, can you replace some of those dull sample texts with glorious artwork?
Using a Classic in Math!?
According to Costello, 7 × 13 = 28. In fact, watch him prove it…
A Classic: “Who’s On First” and 21st Century Kids
My 21st century 12-year-olds absolutely died watching Abbot and Costello’s “Who’s On First” skit. And we got a great homophone activity out of it too.
Remix the Song “Help!”
Students took the classic song, Help!, and rewrote it to be about their collective summers.
Enrichment Must Prompt Thinking
Enrichment is not merely about doing fun things. It should never be just a project-of-the-week. It must be about getting students thinking in new and interesting ways. Here’s how!
Start A Lesson With A Music Video
I love collecting intriguing images and videos – things that stop me in my tracks and pique my curiosity. I always figure that if it fascinates me, students would probably be interested also. Often, these visuals work as wonderful hooks for a lesson you need to teach.
Studying Ambiguous Sentences
This type of sentence has great possibilities for classroom application because of its two different interpretations. It’s a perfect tool to: demonstrate careful reading, showcase the need for editing while writing, and encourage creativity and divergent thinking.
Jabberwocky, Parts of Speech, and Context Clues
Let’s see how we can use a classic piece of poetry to enhance a lesson on parts of speech or context clues. This provides exposure to a great work and also increases the complexity of a typical task.
Classic Halloween Stories
With Halloween approaching, it’s a great time to expose students to some spooky classics. Lucky for us, many of these stories are in the public domain and freely available in many formats.
Classic Paintings for your Classroom
Exposing students to great pieces of art is an easy way to enhance a lesson, provide a visual way to practice a skill, and educate our students beyond the prescribed curriculum. Here’s a list of works that you can easily grab and use in your class.
Using A Classic: Charlie Chaplin
Integrating a classic is a great way to pump up an otherwise simple lesson. It seems like a black and white movie is the last thing a kid would want to see, but classics are classics for a reason!
A Holiday-Themed Shakespearean Sonnet
Now we’re going to create our own holiday-themed Shakespearean Sonnet. To add complexity (and help our students get started!), we’ll write from the point of view of a specific holiday decoration, tradition, or character.
Differentiating “Compare & Contrast” with Classics
Here’s how I differentiated the reading skill of “Compare & Contrast” for my students, who have been successfully comparing and contrasting since kindergarten. Students investigated artists, developed a haiku, and learned how to shade with pencils.
Compare and Contrast Movie Trailers Over Time
Here’s a movie made in 1977, and its trailer is barely watchable! In fact, it almost made me not want to watch Star Wars, a movie I know almost by heart. Perhaps we’re onto something interesting for our students to analyze.
Differentiating Comprehension Skills: Noting Details
By 6th grade, our reading program’s comprehension skills have become a bit basic for most of my gifted students. I’ve been working on increasing the depth and complexity of these skills. In this case, “Noting Details” has become “Explicit Vs. Implicit Details.”
Adding The Beatles to a Lesson on Cause and Effect
For my students, simply teaching a direct instruction lesson about cause and effect is a recipe for boredom and behavior problems. My solution involved bringing in a little help from The Beatles.
Oz, Paragraphy, and Systems of Sentences
I combined my utility Paragraphy with Project Gutenberg, The Differentiator, and The Wizard Of Oz to create a differentiated lesson about how to order sentences within a paragraph for gifted students.
The Original Puzzlement: A Zoetrope
As teachers, I spend a ton of time searching for inspiration to enliven my lessons. But sometimes, inspiration hits as soon as you leave the desk and books behind. Friday my wife and I took a trip to Disneyland and saw this unbelievable (literally, it seems like magic) intersection of art & technology.
Writing a Song to Respond to Literature
As I walked around the room with my guitar, groups of students raised their hands, asking “Can you come check ours!?” I approached and sang the lyrics they had written, strumming along to check their rhythm. My students were writing songs as a novel way of responding to literature. Literary Response as Song In my […]