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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”

Halloween: Characters Dressed As Characters

What if characters from film or literature dress up like other characters based on some parallel such as: conflict, trait, accomplishment, etc.

What Did You (Not) Do During Summer Break?

Ask your students to write about their summer breaks, but remix their activities into a new genre or setting. Perhaps they vacationed at Hogwarts, Mordor, or Tatooine? Not interested in a writing assignment?

An Academic Twist on Valentines

Want to have some February fun? Let's merge the idea of "going together like milk and cookies" with curriculum to create Academic Valentine's Day cards!

Finding the Fun in “It’s” vs “Its”

How do we differentiate a dull lesson like "its" vs "it's"? I decided to push it to an extreme (and include some unexpected novelty).

Get Students Out Of Creative Ruts

Sometimes students need a little structure to force them into a more creative state of mind. Here are a few ideas for interesting writing prompts

Goldbach’s Conjecture

Our look at math conjectures continues with Goldbach's Conjecture, which states that all even integers greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes. Is this true for all cases? Another authentic, unsolved question.

Beyond “Describe How This Changed Over Time”

I want to go beyond just listing how a character changed. Let's get students thinking about that change!

Exploring Palindromes in ELA and Math

Palindromes are one of those fun ideas that some gifted kids just latch onto. We'll check out palindromic words, phrases, and even numbers in this article.

Think Like A Philosopher

Up near the top of Bloom’s taxonomy is “evaluating.” A great use of this level of thinking is to evaluate a character’s ethical choice. But we can go deeper! Let’s ask students to evaluate characters’ actions based on another character’s point of view. To add another layer, we’ll teach kids about philosophers and use their points of view as well.

Garden Path Sentences

Garden Path Sentences seem to begin one way, but quickly fall apart, forcing the reader to start over and interpret words in a new way. A simple example is: "The old man the boat."

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