Here come the holidays! How can we use the upcoming festivities to enhance students’ thinking?

One idea is to write a persuasive essay about one holiday from the point of view of another holiday’s “mascot.” For example, what would the Easter Bunny think about Christmas, how would Santa feel about Valentine’s Day, and what would a Turkey have to say about St. Patrick’s Day?

Not interested in a persuasive writing lesson? The goal here is to increase complexity, so following that theme, you could also create propaganda posters and achieve the same effect in a different way.

Find more information at Byrdseed.

Howard Gardner himself explains: ‘Multiple intelligences’ are not ‘learning styles’

Do you have students who are stuck for ideas to spice up a written narrative or might have come down with a bad case of writer’s block? Here are a couple suggestions that might help:

• Check out National Geographic’s tumblr blog where a different archived photo is posted each day. These make great visual prompts for story starters.
• Here’s a great Flickr blog that accomplishes the same thing.

• Prompts: Begin or End
  First, read Joelle Trayers’ explanation of how she used backwards writing prompts with her young students.
  You can give students the choice to end a narrative with a prompt, such as the (very) short story “Knock”. The entire story reads:
  
                  “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…”
  
  That’s it…the whole story. You could also use proverbs, idioms, or other sayings as the beginning or ending point of class narratives.

If any of these worked for you in your classroom, I’d love to hear how they turn out!

Halloween is right around the corner! Want to bring out some higher-level thinking skills in your students while celebrating the season? Have them design a character dressed as a character and explain the connection!
http://www.byrdseed.com/halloween-characters-dressed-as-characters/?icn=srs

It even works with our little ones!
http://notjustchildsplay.blogspot.com/2012/10/characters-in-costume.html

I thought today would be the perfect day to pass this along. It’s going to be indoor recess today…what a perfect day to play Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe!

Caution: You’re going to want to play against the kids. You’ve been warned!
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-toe/