This challenging problem and brainteaser gives first graders an opportunity to compose and decompose squares.

This is an instructional task related to deepening place-value concepts. The important piece of knowledge upon which students need to draw is that 10 tens is 1 hundred.

The objective of this lesson is to gain automaticity counting to 100 and to establish the importance of multiples of ten. The final goal of this lesson is for students to be able to count by tens and articulate the term for this.

This task involves solving equations with rational coefficients, and requires students to use the distributive law ("combine like terms"). The equation also provides opportunities for students to observe structure in the equation to find a quicker solution, as in the second solution presented.

This task presents a real world application of finite geometric series. The context can lead into several interesting follow-up questions and projects. Many drugs only become effective after the amount in the body builds up to a certain level. This can be modeled very well with geometric series.

In this activity, students construct their own pinhole camera to observe the behavior of light.

By signing up with your email address and clicking the yellow subscribe button, you will receive this great design thinking project that your students will love! It is part of a design thinking toolkit and includes a free design thinking project, an eBook, and a suite of assessments. You will also receive a weekly email with free, members-only access to the latest blog posts, videos, podcasts and resources to help you boost creativity and spark innovation in your classroom.

About This Guide
These guides are designed by the Global Digital
Citizen Foundation to help you gain a better
understanding of the 21st Century Fluencies and
how they work.
This guide contains a description of the stages of
Creativity Fluency, as well as a perspective on the skills
each stage develops and why they are important for
our students?and everyone?to learn.
We hope this information will help you with the
development of the Fluencies as you work to infuse
them into your students' learning experiences.

The power point will provide strategies and to add skills to our toolkits that can be used to help engage our students in the use of 21CC skills- one of the focuses this year is Critical Thinking.  The deBono’s Thinking Hat strategy is a great way to help us think differently and critically.  As well, teachers will find a Critical Thinking (Socratic/Scholarly Discussion) Rubric, 3 more various Critical Thinking rubrics, Critical Thinking Exit Slips, a deBonos thinking hat explanation, a deBonos Thinking Hats worksheet, a PMI (Plus-Minus-Interesting) document and activities associated with ctritical thinking.

About This Workbook
The activity pages in the Critical Thinking
Workbook are meant to be shared and explored.
Use it as an electronic document or as worksheets.
You can either print off the pages and use them as
activity sheets, or you can edit them directly right in
the document on your computer.
Enjoy these fun and challenging critical
thinking activities that will get every
student thinking critically!

Students practice crossing from one family to the next in counting forward with this concentration game.

This word problem requires students to create expressions to calculate gas milage for a vehicle.

One common mistake students make when dividing fractions using visuals is the confusion between remainder and the fractional part of a mixed number answer.

Students gain experience with the software/system design process, closely related to the engineering design process, to solve a problem. First, they learn about the Mars Curiosity rover and its mission, including the difficulties that engineers must consider and overcome to operate a rover remotely. Students observe a simulation of a robot being controlled remotely. These experiences guide discussion on how the design process is applied in these scenarios. The lesson culminates in a hands-on experience with the design process as students simulate the remote control of a rover. In the associated activity, students gain further experience with the design process by creating an Android application using App Inventor to control one aspect of a remotely controlled vehicle. (Note: The lesson requires a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education NXT base set.)

The purpose of this task is to introduce or reinforce the concept of a function, especially in a context where the function is not given by an explicit algebraic representation. Further, the last part of the task emphasizes the significance of one variable being a function of another variable in an immediately relevant real-life context.

Students pretend they are agricultural engineers during the colonial period and design a miniature plow that cuts through a "field" of soil. They are introduced to the engineering design process and learn of several famous historical figures who contributed to plow design.