❮ Back to: All Differentiation Techniques

Differentiation TechniqueGet Ridiculous

Read The Overview: Get Ridiculous!

One technique for finding complexity in a topic is to look for the edge cases, the outliers, the really big or small versions.

Specific Examples of “Get Ridiculous”

Getting Ridiculous with Parts of Speech

Getting Ridiculous with Parts of Speech

Here's how you can add some spice to an otherwise dull study of parts of speech.

Could we fit 1,000 kids on the playground? 10,000?

Could we fit 1,000 kids on the playground? 10,000?

If your students can find the area of a square then, armed with Google Earth, they can also figure out how many students you could pack into your school's playground.

Thinking Like Producers About Consumers

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.

Just How Much Pasta Could I Cook…

Just How Much Pasta Could I Cook…

So, just how much pasta could I cook in an Olympic-sized pool?

Academic Love Letters

Academic Love Letters

We're going to take the Academic Valentine idea from earlier, and extend it into a full blown love letter – just in time for Valentine's Day!

Making Awful Graphs

Making Awful Graphs

Sometimes we can learn a lot by doing something the wrong way. Here are six ways your students can purposefully design awful, misleading graphs.

Fill ‘er up with Clam Chowder!

Fill ‘er up with Clam Chowder!

Sure gasoline seems expensive. Until you try to fill your car up with other liquids!

Writing in Pi-lish

Writing in Pi-lish

Here's the perfect constraint for March! Writing with the digits of Pi.

Thinking Like Equivalent Fractions

Thinking Like Equivalent Fractions

Go across disciplines by asking students to write a story about fraction equivalence.

Calculating the Volume of Laptops

Calculating the Volume of Laptops

So once your students can calculate volume… what do you have them do next? In this math project, kids will look up historic laptops, calculate their volumes, and note how technology has changed over time.