Combining Depth and Complexity Prompts into a Generalization

Differentiation TechniqueThink Big! But Also Small.

Read The Overview: Moving Between the Specific and Abstract

When differentiating, it's helpful to note where on the "spectrum of abstraction" your content lies. Then, see what happens when you move that content to be more abstract or more specific. It often unlocks lots of new opportunities for thinking.

Exploring Circumference With Famous Circles

Remembering the formulae for area and circumference of a circle is often a challenge for students due to their surface similarities as well as the additional confusion of radius and diameter. I like to tackle them one at a time and give students a chance to explore the origin of each formula. Let's look at circumference today by utilizing some famous circles from around the world... and beyond!

Building Confidence in Speaking Skills

When preparing your students for standardized tests, those little standards labeled Speaking And Listening can easily slip by the wayside. And yet, is there any skill more important in landing a job, surviving social engagements, or being a successful leader than confident oral language skills? Teach your students to analyze great speeches to become better public speakers themselves.

Inductively Evaluate Website Reliability

Last time, we discussed a few ways to help students search Google. Google helps us find related websites, however its ranking system does not necessarily return the most reliable pages. The final step requires our human mind to make difficult decisions that computers can only approximate. Simply choosing the top result is not enough. We must teach our students to evaluate websites.

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.

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.

Concept Attainment: A Model for Inductive Thinking

The first grammar lesson in our reading program is titled "types of sentences." Nothing excites gifted 11 year olds less than watching me explain the difference between interrogative and declarative sentences. This year, rather than teach the lesson using direct instruction, I used another model of instruction: concept attainment.

All About Character Archetypes

Another example of "structure that increases creativity" is character archetypes. An archetype, according to Wikipedia, is "an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated." Let's use an inductive lesson to teach our students about these literary tools.