The bracketed tournament isn’t just for college basketball. Set up a tournament to determine best president, state, element, or literary character and challenge your students to make interesting judgements.
Differentiation TechniqueGet Specific with Criteria
Read The OverviewAdd Criteria to Improve "Evaluate" Questions
With some small changes, we can turn fluffy opinion questions into thought-provoking evaluation questions.
Specific Examples of “Get Specific with Criteria”
The Resiliency Tournament
I got to work with several groups of students (of many ages) and I tried out this task: building a tournament to decide who was the most resilient historical figure or fictional character? Kids came up with some amazing ideas.
Puzzlement Tournament
Perfect to wrap up the year: a four-round puzzlement tournament.
Reader Question: Unusual Animals
A reader asks how we can take the typical “look up facts online and then present with PowerPoint” task to an appropriate level of challenge.
Introducing “Criteria” To Students
Teaching our students to identify the criteria behind a decision will make them better decision makers and help them understand others’ points of views.
Climbing Bloom’s Taxonomy In Science
Science should be more than memorizing facts. Let’s spice it up and push our students from the doldrums of remembering to the soaring heights of evaluation. While it’s true that this will take longer than just following a textbook, we’re not just teaching facts, we’re equipping students with the ability to make well-informed judgements.
Evaluating Characters on a Graph
Here’s an idea to integrate two-dimensional graphing with deep character analysis. Use the right characters, and you’ve got an exciting debate on your hands. Plus, it leads to a beautiful product that’s perfect for Open House.