Plate Tectonics

Science is by no means my area of expertise, but I am helping to tutor students in the subject. I think being a novice in a subject works as an advantage sometimes, because it is easier to see it from a fresh perspective. This week we worked on plate tectonics.

Like always, I found a videos to start with. (Our district has an account with brainpop.com, so I showed that one first. If your district doesn't have an account, they need to get one, or you need to write a grant! They have bunches of videos, mostly aimed at the secondary level and are quick and a little funny.) The other video didn't have much of a lesson with it, but the kids were entertained:


The art teacher at my school was nice enough to lend some supplies to me execute my idea. I borrowed clay and we built boundaries. I love my kinesthetic learners!
They had so much fun with the clay!
...and each one had their own way to illustrate their understanding.
~Mrs. Scott

Surface Area

We recently learned about surface area. For some reason, this is always a hard concept for students, and then add in some funky formulas on the formula chart and it totally throws them for another loop. I prefer just to teach them how to find the area of each side and add them together.

I like to start lessons with a brainpop video or youtube video/song. Sometimes you get some good ones, other times they are a little cheesy, but still memorable, like this one:




I thought it might be fun to do something different than just drawing a picture of the sides. We pulled out some paint and 3-dimensional shapes and stamped the sides instead!

When the posters dried (we used a hair dryer borrowed from the nurse), we started measuring and calculating!
~Mrs. Scott

Wii in the Classroom

My husband and I bought this game some time around my first year of teaching 8th grade math: As soon as we started playing I realized some of the games had objectives that I had been teaching in class!

Perspectives:
Ordering Numbers:
I had the bright idea to unplug my Wii and take it to school! I think it was the most engaged my class of 35 students had been all year! Since then, I make a point to have "Wii day" a couple of times a year and the kids could not be more excited!

I have looked on Amazon and found a couple of other educational Wii games, but haven't bought any yet. Maybe future grant?

ThinkSMART appears to have games best for high school: Science Papa lets you explore chemistry, biology, physics, and paleontology through science experiments.
Reader Rabbit has a couple of games for early elementary grades (I think I saw Pre-K through 3rd grade).
My Word Coach looks like it would be great for GT and high school classes, but may be a fun warm-up for a typical middle school classes too.

Jump Start advertises being great for ages 5-9.As if you haven't seen this show! Upper elementary classes would love this:
We recently bought an XBox Kinect for our son and may have to start checking out games for that too! If you know any other games, please share!

~Mrs. Scott

Homemade Christmas Gifts

Pinterest inspired me to give homemade gifts for school Christmas presents. I actually came up with ideas for my boys teachers without stealing them from someone else, and they didn't include they typical coffee mugs that teachers always end up with!

Homemade cake balls:

1 tub for each teacher and a jar-full for daycare.

At school, our Student Council gave baggies of Jolly Ranchers to all of the staff:

~Mrs. Scott

Geometry Ornaments

The Christmas tree in my classroom was needing some decorating, so I took the opportunity to review geometry with my students.

This would make a great classroom lesson for lower grade levels (4-7th). I bought some gumdrops from Walmart (mini marshmallows work too, but aren't as colorful), and used left over spaghetti noodles and toothpicks.

Students build 3-dimensional shapes (could work with 2-d shapes too) using the supplies given. We built cubes, triangular prisms & pyramids, rectangular prisms & pyramids, and then students calculated the number of faces, edges, and vertices, and showed me which side they would use to calculate "B," the area of the base.

~Mrs. Scott

Adopt-a-Family

This is why I love being a Student Council Sponsor:

Tonight I am organizing 76 gifts from our Fall service project: adopt-a-family. This year we have adopted a family with a single mom and four children, ages 5, 8, 9, and 11 years old.

Our members stepped up and really took care of this family, ensuring they have a wonderful Christmas. One of our members even purchased gifts (including shoes for mom) with her own money because she said a few years ago, she was "one of those families." What a perfect way to pay it forward!

Anyone who complains about "kids these days" needs to step into a junior high and see that there are plenty of children (teenagers too!) with huge hearts!

Book Character Day!

Every year my school has the annual Book Fair set up in our library. This is an awesome fundraiser for the library and a fabulous way to get children excited about books! On the last day of the book fair my school celebrates Book Character Day and my team L.O.V.E.S. it! On Book Character Day everyone (students, teachers, aides, principals,etc) dress up as their favorite book character and we all sit in the hallway and parade around the school showing off our costumes and celebrating books.

A few years ago my team started to notice that students were dressing up less and less which made us very sad. So we decided to help parents out and figured out a way to include the entire class or grade level in dressing up without putting too much work on the parents. I work in a Title 1 school and my parents are more worried about putting food on the table and paying their light bills than Book Character Day. So, thus was born the First Grade Book Character themes....

Our first year we chose the book 101 Dalmations. We had the students bring white shirts and used sponges to add the black spots. The students also made dog ears to wear using sentence strips and construction paper ears. Then the next year we did...

Where's Waldo??? The students yet again brought white shirts and we used A.L.O.T. of red duct tape! Our principals even got in on the Waldo craziness that year!

Last year we each chose a different version of the book "There Was an Old Lady.." I did the Old Lady that Swallowed Some Leaves. I had the kids bring a fall colored shirt and we used the awesome art teacher's cool leaf stamps and stamped leaves on their shirts. Then a few students carried important items for the story such as a shirt, pants, and finally I had a student dressed up as a scarecrow.

This year to go with our school Royal Quest theme, we decided to dress up as different fairy tail princesses. We had Belle, Pocahontas, Princess Jasmine, Cinderella, Mulan, Princess Ada from Bug's Life, and Tiana from Princess and the Frog.  We found our costumes on clearance after Halloween two weeks ago and had our classes dress up as different things from the story. My neighbor Belle actually drew Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts on posterboard then attached it to boxes and had students wear those. They were so cute! I wish I could show you their pictures! I did the story Princess and the Frog because I had to throw my frogs in there! My students wore green shirts and made absolutely adorable frog masks in art with the help of my very fabulous BFF art teacher.

Now looking for ideas for next year..... 364 days and counting!!!

Mrs. Halbardier


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