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Differentiation TechniqueFind The Controversy

Read The Overview: Find The Controversy in Any Topic

By leveraging a point of contention, we can get students interested in just about any topic. Yes, even boring old spelling has controversy we can exploit!

Specific Examples of “Find The Controversy”

Encourage Curiosity With Calculators

Encourage Curiosity With Calculators

It's easy to fall in love with chasing the newest technology to use in the classroom. But sometimes, the perfect tool is a plain old calculator. We'll be using this tool to develop curiosity about math.

Healthy Donuts!? Framing a Math Project with a Big Idea

Healthy Donuts!? Framing a Math Project with a Big Idea

Instead of jumping straight to calculations, what if we framed this math concept with a big idea?

Paradox: Ship of Theseus

Paradox: Ship of Theseus

Here's a fun thought experiment your students are sure to get a kick out of: when something is slowly replaced over time, is it still the same thing in the end?

Multiple Perspectives: Right And Wrong At The Same Time?

It's essential to teach our students to think flexibly and consider multiple points of view. Flexible thinking leads to product innovation, diplomacy between nations, and advances in science. School, however, often encourages students to settle into a "one right answer" mindset.

5 Visual Paradoxes To Blow Your Students’ Minds

We've seen some awesome logic paradoxes, now let's examine a few visual paradoxes that would make great mental warm-ups for your class! The penrose triangle, penrose stairs, impossible cube, the blivet, and the Möbius strip! Plus, download a powerpoint to share with your students.

Running A Curiosity Project

Merlin Mann stated that employees’ motivation increases when they get to “build a robot” once in a while. That is, do something creative beyond regular work. Can we do this at school? Offices have “casual Fridays,” can we have “curiosity Fridays?"

Ask Them Which Is Better

Moving from analysis to evaluation sure makes things more fun. Why? Check out these examples. Which would you rather answer?

Depth and Complexity: Ethics… In Math!?

The Ethics prompt of depth and complexity fits so easily into the humanities… but what about ethics in math?!

A Clock Math Project?

A reader wrote in, asking how to differentiate for a task like reading analog clocks. What to do with a student who has mastered this skill? What's a good math clock project?

3 More Paradoxes, Part III

Here are even more amazing paradoxes to baffle your students: Buridan's Bridge, the Bootstrap Paradox, and the Barber Paradox.

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