Five For Friday Easter Edition!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday!! 

Wow!! I blinked, and April was here! Then I blinked again, and now it's 1/2 way over. Does anyone else feel like that happens to you? Spring Break officially started yesterday, but my niece and I have a tradition to do lunch and a movie on Spring Break. (Her birthday is in March, and this is her present from me). This year, she decided she would rather go shopping and have lunch and ice cream. (She is MY niece after all!) So, she brought her birthday money and gift cards, and we headed out. I was excited too, because I had $40 in Max Rewards from Office Max and a save $10 off $40 coupon. 2 hours later in Office Max, and we walked out with $50 worth of merchandise for only $1.13!

Included in my haul were these goodies for me! I LOVE new pens...I bought them because I have about 1,000,000 papers to grade over break. Yet -- I'm blogging instead of grading.... I think I need more coffee! 

After shopping, lunch at Chipotle, more shopping and ice cream at Sweet Frog -- she was DONE. 

Does anyone else remember these? While in the Dollar Tree my niece and I found these! She had never had them, but my sister and I used to eat them ALL the time. I bought her some, and she and her sister LOVE them. 

All the pretty things........... 

Spring Break Organization  Project #1 complete! Thirty One party supplies and collection somewhat organized. Keep in mind...all those totes are FULL of Thirty One, and my everyday use stuff isn't even in there. My house looks like a Thirty One Catalog. I'm okay with that -- everything has a place, and a place for everything! So happy to get some of this organized! My goal is to do something productive each day -- but considering we only get Thursday-Monday off -- that will be HARD! 

Happy Spring! This is my newest Thirty One tote -- I'm in LOVE! 

I am doing a Jamberry Party from now until the end of the month! How CUTE are these Lolipop Chevron nails? Perfect for Easter!! 

Capacity!!! I love, love, LOVE teaching measurement! Hands on lessons EVERY day! Yes - I know it takes planning - but it's SO much fun! My kiddos LOVE measurement every year. Our state standards require my 3rd graders give the best estimates for capacity. I still teach customary conversions using the Measuring Monarch - because I believe that's a life skill, and I know the 4th grade teacher thanks me! This year, I have a VERY visual group. So, what better way to understand exactly how much is in a gallon than to dump it out! We picked a day that was over 80 degrees, and headed outside! It was amazing to see the kids faces as they got to DUMP water onto the blacktop. Of course I worked in the water cycle, as we saw how quickly the cup evaporated! 

The cup was so tiny! 

The pint wasn't much bigger-- the kids could quickly see this was about like spilling a full bottle of water. ( I was a proud teacher when they started having math talk without being prompted!! One of the kids said -- hey -that's about how much a bottle of water spilled looks like- remember when I spilled my bottle last week!) 

No - we weren't being mean making this child go far away from the rest-- he was dumping a Liter-- and since liters are only used in Europe - the kids said it should be away from the US Measurements. 

What a cool action shot -- every time the kids dumped water, the whole class screamed and cheered! Then, they would talk about how big/small the puddle was and how it compared -- WITHOUT being prompted! My hard work with Math Talk this year has paid off! 

Ahh...the gallon. This child had a look of pure joy on his face. Like he hadn't EVER gotten to just throw water for no good reason. :) 

Here's the anchor chart for the Measuring Monarch we made! 

Then, we wrapped up with small charts "I would use a ________ for" with all the measurements. The kids wrote their responses on sticky notes and added them to the posters. 

Measuring the Track: 

So - after capacity, we started measuring length. We have a pretty nice track (each lap is 1/8 of a mile) that wraps around our soccer field, and we had such an awful winter that we needed to get OUTSIDE. So -we took meter sticks and yard sticks, and set to measuring the track - "Goal to Goal" (length) and "Bench to Bench" (width). Then, we came back inside and converted our yards to feet and inches, and converted our meters to centimeters. 

 

 
 

 

100 Followers Giveaway....

So I posted a few weeks ago that I wanted to do a 100 Followers Giveaway!! Then, April happened! So, during Spring Break I will be gathering some items to attempt to do this!! If you are interested in donating to the giveaway, comment and let me know! :) 

My Favorite Math Lessons 2012-2013 part 1

Okay, so for the 2012-2013 school year, I taught math for 3 hours of my day. I had 3 classes (my homeroom, Ms. Bowles - check out her blog HERE and Ms. Hutsenpiller). This blog is dedicated to my ALL time favorite lessons that worked well. The really cool thing about departmentalizing is that I taught the first class from 10:00-11:00. If things didn't go perfectly, or the kiddos found something I didn't - I got to improve each time I taught. The students love this too, because I was always sharing what they came up with or discovered with the other two classes. Talk about peer validation! They loved hearing what other students did or said. I always incorporate concrete models and hands on practice into my lessons every chance I get. They are not only my favorite, but the kids favorite as well.

1.) Geoboards -- What did I NOT use geoboards for this year? I made up this workbook called "Geoboard Fun" based on every concept I could think of to use Geoboards for. I taught basically my whole 3rd grade geometry unit using geoboards! Why you might ask? They're GREAT! A perfect hands on tool that allows every child to create. I will give you some advice- make a "Geoboard Contract" for each child. Something to the effect of....."If I play with the rubber band, I lose Geoboard privileges." I actually had the students input, and they came up with some great rules. We wrote them on the board as a class, and everyone held up their right hand and repeated a "geoboard pledge" if you will. It went a little something like this: "I do solemnly swear, not to fling my rubber bands on purpose, and if I do, I lose my geoboard for the rest of the day." Out of 54 third graders, I took away 1 geoboard the whole year. The news spread like wildfire that day, and everyone knew I meant business. 
So, some concepts I used the geoboards for: flips, turns, slides, rotations, plane figures, symmetry, rays, angles, lines, line segments, perimeter, area, etc. etc. etc! Basically any geometry concept can be used on the geoboard. If your school doesn't have any, some square tiles/boards, and nails hammered into rows work perfectly!  However, my all time FAVORITE lesson, was using the geoboards for fractions! What a cool way for students to make the fraction themselves, count the area to make sure each section was equal, and explore equivalent fractions. I gave each student copies of a paper geoboard, and they had to draw their creations. Here is the background to the activity. Students were asked to create as many halves, fourths and eights on the geoboard as they could

:

Halves, Fourths, and Eighths

The secret to this activity is to realize that the geoboard has 16 squares. Therefore, a half has 8 squares, a fourth has 4 squares, and an eighth has 2 squares. Allow students to work in groups of 2 or 3. As each new fractional partition is made, it should be recorded on the geodot paper. Provide chart paper for a class display. As fractional partitions are made, they can be cut out and added to the class display.

You can check out the rest of the photos here:Geoboard Fractions

2. Measuring the Track:

Our school is blessed to have a FABULOUS gravel track that has a soccer field in the center, a baseball field, and a playground. So, when the measurement unit rolled around in the spring, we went EXPLORING! We had been measuring things all year (Standard and Metric), and we had been on the track all year. Put the two together, and you have instant success! First, I asked students to estimate the length of the track and the width of the track in both Meters and Yards. Then, we went outside and measured, to the nearest yard and to the nearest meter, in groups of 4. (This was actually an event that ALL students did together one afternoon - it seemed like recess to them!) Then, I had the students convert the standard measurements to feet and inches, and the metric measurements to centimeters and millimeters.

3. Camp Fair Shares - Introducing Division
This is an AIMS Division activity that I just LOVE. Students have cute bears they have to divide into the correct number of boats to get across the lake. We did this particular activity on Valentine's Day - so we actually used conversation candy hearts. I had students "build" the lake on their desk, and they really got into "transporting" the bears. It really opened up a discussion of fair shares, remainders, and other division math talk.