Benjamin H Kolis: 5 books

What is a game? You might think of cards and dice, computers, or sports. You might even think of music or theater as games. But what about Science? Games have rules, players, and objectives, but, maybe most importantly, games are fun. People play games because they think they are “fun,” and sometimes...

Brainball:Teaching Inquiry and Social Studies as a Team Sport is an attempt to clarify that not only is social studies a game, but that it is one of the most useful and powerful games that teachers and students will ever play. Games are the doing of theory, and maybe it would be a good idea to start doing social studies in every social studies classroom.

Higher-order thinking questions (and their answers) are considered by many to be the holy grail of teaching. Teachers know when students “get it”, but the question remains “How do you teach students to think explicitly and intentionally?” This book uses a series of diagrams to make thinking...

Inquiry is becoming more and more an area of interest in education. This book attempts to explain why music inquiry makes sense, what pieces are required to do music inquiry effectively (the knowledge, skills and dispositions) and then provides how to teach music inquiry in a series of day-by-day lesson plans.

This volume of the Brainball series gives the theater classroom teacher an intentional, sequenced process for creating inclusive theatre pedagogy that maximizes students’ learning. In addition, the Brainball technique offers concrete forms of meaningful assessment applicable to the theater classroom,...