Check out this collection of challenge materials for fun, easy, and engaging ways to get your students learning!

There are new challenges every month so keep checking back! Be sure to explore past Creative Challenges as well!

In this multi-day activity, students explore environments, ecosystems, energy flow and organism interactions by creating a scale model biodome, following the steps of the engineering design process. The Procedure section provides activity instructions for Biodomes unit, lessons 2-6, as students work through Parts 1-6 to develop their model biodome. Subjects include energy flow and food chains, basic needs of plants and animals, and the importance of decomposers. Students consider why a solid understanding of one's environment and the interdependence of an ecosystem can inform the choices we make and the way we engineer our own communities. This activity can be conducted as either a very structured or open-ended design.

Students will be able to understand how heredity affects agricultural decisions regarding wanted traits in animals, and will understand that DNA contains genes which carry traits from generation to generation.

DrawTogether is a growing, evolving show/newsletter/community/space for kids and grown-ups who want to draw, get creative, curious and connect with the world around us.

Sign up to start receiving the free DrawTogether newsletter once a week, usually on Fridays: videos, podcasts, activities and other heart/art fun for kids.

Explore the site and find lots of fun ideas of how to create awesome things!

What is Genius Hour? Genius Hour is a set amount of time for students to create projects based on their passions and interests, research a deeper level of their passion, and finally present on their own learning.

How We Introduced Genius Hour:
1. Show Pep talk video and introduce Genius Hour (see link)
2. Start with what is your passion? – that is all (Students think first then add a post-it telling me their passion)
3. How can we turn your passion into a project? Students write ideas and conference with me.
4. Once they all have projects, the time is their own. One hour every 6 day cycle to work on project. (Can be more than one project; if they finish the first, they come up with another)
5. The less rules the better (mine have to present at a Genius Fair (like a science fair) and have visuals for their table when done their project

Grades 1, 2 and 3 inferencing text, creating questions, connecting text to self, text and world. Attached is the guide.

This lesson supports creativity because the students are encourage to create their own book report using the many options provided in Powtoon. The students made the presentations reflect their personal tastes and their interpretations of the story.

The goal of my 21 Century Learning project was for students to use collaboration and communication into preparing a showcase of their learning for parents, administration and each other. The showcase would also include some technological components of their learning by using iPad tools. Twice in the school year, students prepared a showcase of their learning. They assembled their showcase of their learning and presented it in a mock interview to peers. They then presented their showcases to parents. There was a combination of paper, project, and digital samples of learning. The students followed a script which is included. Students used the Reproducibles from the book Self-Assessment and Goal Setting to guide the self-selection of their learning samples.

My goal was for students to be able to co-create criteria for self-assessment in a variety of subject areas.

My grade five students were asked to recall what they had learned about co-constructing criteria this year, and then develop a lesson plan for interns. This is their plan, with links to criteria and assessments developed and used this year

Grade 5 students completed the choice board after learning about three topics in social studies. Students had to complete one activity from each column of the choice board to demonstrate their understanding of the topic while using creative thinking to complete each activity. Students’ completed work was then assessed using the rubric found below.

Students used Educreations to create a short mini lesson on how to divide 3 digit by 1 digit numbers. Educreations is a recordable whiteboard app. It records voice, handwriting and also allows the user to insert pictures to produce personal video lessons that students can share online. Their lessons are stored online and can be accessed by students on any computer or Ipad. Students began independently to work out a plan deciding what the script would be and what “props” and/or pictures would be used in the mini lesson. They then recorded their mini lesson using the Educreations app.

As students learn about the creation of biodomes, they are introduced to the steps of the engineering design process, including guidelines for brainstorming. Students learn how engineers are involved in the design and construction of biodomes and use brainstorming to come up with ideas for possible biodome designs. This lesson is part of a series of six lessons in which students use their growing understanding of various environments and the engineering design process, to design and create their own model biodome ecosystems.

Students in our grade one class find this culminating project a lot of fun as we talk about all the different ways that many recycled materials can be used to create other things that are useful or just plain fun to build! Many of the students create things with the help of the parents, but we ask that the ideas for what to build are supplied by the students themselves, of course parents do like to help with the construction phase in most cases. We have the students come up with the ideas for what they would like to build at school, often using the construction sheet as a guideline to take home for the building
process.

This choice board offers students and families a menu of options for some fun summer learning. There are some attached documents to support the choice board. Have fun! 

The three Grade 2 classes at OES were divided into small groups, to produce a video of the services offered by the Jim Kook Recreation Complex in Outlook, Sk. Each group was given an area of the recplex that provides a recreational service to the community. These included curling rink, bowling alley, archery, etc. Students began with an activity to describe their specific area. Teachers had provided a screen shot within each area for eatery student. Students were then given the opportunity to practice taking video with the iPad. The next step was to visit the recplex and have each child video their specific screen shot. This was planned around an afternoon of Bowling and Skating for the Grade Two students. Each group was pulled from their activity to shoot their video. At a later date, students were given the opportunity to edit and voice over their video footage. This worked well when all the students were doing an art activity with one teacher, and the other two teachers were able to pull the students in small groups to do the editing.

Project-based learning, or PBL, challenges students to design and engage in more authentic, extended, and complex learning. But while PBL is a trusted strategy for increasing student engagement and learning, it's not easy to orchestrate. There are tons of moving pieces, and if you're doing it right, students will be engaging in a variety of interest-driven projects all with various needs and on different schedules. So how do you manage it all? Tech can be a huge help. This list gathers some useful productivity and organization tools that can help both teachers and students keep track of, finish, and assess projects. There are also a few tools designed specifically for PBL, as well as plug-and-play PBL experiences.

The Wonderment is an ambitious global community that aims for public good through student engagement. Kids will love the creative challenges that force them to look, listen, think, and create. Sharing and seeing submissions from around the world builds understanding and empathy.

Students can search things that they want to make, people that they want to meet, topics they want to learn about, and changes they want to make in their lives and the world.

Free resources for students grades 1-12.