Week 6- Math Coach Visit & OREOs

This week during morning meeting we had share time on Tuesday and Thursday. We had lots of creepy critters brought in but I think that's because the kids know how much I love bugs! Avery decided to show the class a magic trick.



Our new math coach, Mrs. Hamlet came in to do a lesson with my math classes. She had the kids up moving to model division.



Then they talked about dividing with fractions. If you had 4 pizzas and you wanted to divide them by 1/3, how many equal pieces would you have? She taught them how to draw pictures to find the answer.



The teachers had duty free lunch this week. I must say that the 5th grade teachers were spoiled by two wonderful parents! They brought us all lunch, a cookie cake, and a little prize for each of us. They had a table set up with a table cloth, cups and ice, drinks, and our food. It was a relaxing lunch and we really loved it.



At the end of the week we completed our OREO project. The kids stacked OREO cookies. Since our parents are so amazing each student had their own pack of cookies to use. They had two chances to make their stack as tall as possible. Once you let go of a cookie you couldn't touch it again. Check out some of these stacks!









I had the kids use the scientific method for this project. They had to write a hypothesis, steps they had to follow, and record the results. Then we used math to calculate their average and the class average.



Then we used the cream from the cookies to make sculptures!













STUDENTS: What was your average OREO stack? Was this easier or harder than you thought it would be? Did you like doing this? Why?

Week 5- Place Value Poster Walk and Properties of Addition

This week in math we were learning about the properties of addition. Last year my math coach shared this sheet with me so we used dice to practice the different properties.



The kids always love it when I break out my dice collection. I have a bit of an obsession and I have quite a stash of dice.





I've been testing out some whole brain teaching in my classroom as well so we came up with hand motions to go with each of the addition properties. We are going to record them and I'll post them for you to see next week.

I also use a lot of songs in my classroom and I had been looking for a math song to signal to the students it was time to start math. So I found this song and shared it with my students. I think they liked it.


To end the week we did our place value poster scoot. Have you ever tried a scoot? It can be done with many things but let me tell you how we did it. Each student turned in a place value poster. So instead of presenting each poster to the class I had the students place their poster on their desk.



I played the math song and after about 30 seconds I said scoot. Each student then rotated to the next desk to view the next poster.



This way they got to move around the room and see every poster.





STUDENTS: We have been talking about Habit 1: Be Proactive. What is something you can do to be proactive?

Week 4- Energy Fun, Math Board, Daily Data, & Eating Bugs

This week I taught my class 2 more Wordtoons. They learned how to draw a fish from the word fish. They also drew a UFO from the word UFO. Take a look at some of their work.




This week I also taught the kids several new math games and let them play with them. Each person got to choose one of the games I taught to test.



Double Shutter





Cirplexed






Qwirkle- I only found two mistakes and that's pretty good for the first time with this game. I think this one is a little more challenging.



Q-bitz



Can you tell I like games from Mindware? The kids loved them as well. So I picked a few students to use a new app on my iPad and create a Gami to explain which games they liked the best. Check out a few of our new Gamis! Like the app and want to use it with your students? It is called Tellagami.




This week during Morning Meeting I shared this book and we talked about some of the insects people eat.



Then I pulled out the crick-ettes and most of my students ate one.



Some of them thought there were pretty good.


Others were completely grossed out!



I've had a few people asking about my Math Synergy board so I thought I'd post a few pictures of what we've done since school started. You can see the number of the day, which was 14 in this picture.




The kids take the number and draw as many arrays that they can with 14 tiles. This helps them to determine if the number is prime or composite.



I also added this chart for today's number. We write the number as a fraction, equivalent fractions, decimal, percent, and ratios. We have a part to whole and part to part ratio.

 

We also complete our Daily Data notebook on Thursday. Throughout the week the kids get to vote to answer a question. This week the question was "What is your favorite kind of M&M?" Peanut or plain

The students write the following things in their composition notebook for daily data:
question of the week
draw the venn diagram with totals
draw a bar graph
I1 & I2- Write 2 inferences about the data from the graph.
Who cares? Write 2 people who would care about this data and explain why.


Later I'll add a few more things but that's all we do right now.




We wrapped up the week with an experiment to explore potential and kinetic energy. Students used a tape measure to measure the bounce height of a bouncy ball when dropped from different heights.






Then they completed the chart with the heights from their groups, average bounce heights for each, and a graph of the data.



Students mentioned they thought this was math. We talked about the fact that you use math in science a lot.



STUDENTS: Create a question for our daily data board. What would you like me to ask and what would the two choices be?

Week 3: Helicopter Drop

This week my science classes completed a helicopter drop to test a hypothesis.



We cut our paper helicopters out and started testing.



Students had to figure out how to make the helicopter spin in the opposite direction, spin faster, and what a paper clip would do to the helicopter.



This was a fun way to use the scientific method. Students wrote a short response about what they thought, what they did, and the results.



STUDENTS: Tell me about one hypothesis you tested. What happened? Did you like this experiment? Why? Don't just say it was fun,, what was it about the experiment that was fun?