Equivalent Fraction Rainbows for St. Patty's Day!

Did you wear your green?  I don't take any chances at school and make sure I'm wearing my green.  I don't need any students trying to pinch me.  This is the first year I've ever had to work St. Patrick's Day (it was always over my spring break when I lived in the Midwest!), so I'm not used to working on this day.

I had a meeting and a sub in the morning and then the afternoon FLEW by, so here's a short and sweet update.  Pretty simple St. Patty's Day for me...

I did nothing- you heard right- nothing to celebrate this holiday even though it is one of my favorites. I had no special plans.  No treats.  No big celebration or game or party or anything.  I was a total party pooper.  And we all survived just fine.  It was a boycott of sorts since I actually had to show up to work.

I was feeling just the tiniest bit guilty about that (and you know, a bit Irish as well!), so for math we made some equivalent fraction rainbows to keep things festive.

It was a spur of the moment idea.  Do you ever have those?  Those completely unplanned moments when you throw all caution and lesson plans to the wind and just go with whatever crazy idea you just came up with?  Luckily it worked really well.  We've been working through our fractions unit and so I thought it would be fun to rainbow our equivalent fractions in the hopes that it would help a few stragglers catch up with us and be able to see it in a little different format.  Whatever rule (and color!) we used to change the numerator, we had to use for the denominator.

After we were finished, we made observations and searched for patterns.  I think/hope it helped a few of my students to wrap their mind around this somewhat complex idea for fourth graders!

So there you have it.  An accidental-math-rainbow lesson.  Whoops!

            

Follow RTL On 

How I Spent My Mid-Winter Break

It's Sunday.  Mid-winter break is over.  Everyone should get mid-winter break because it is fantastic.  It's five glorious days tucked between two weekends during the shortest-yet-longest month of the year, and also the most depressing month because by February you are just ready for spring to show it's blossoming face.

Here's how I spent my days away from school.  I only went to school once.  For only a few hours.  I should probably get there really early tomorrow to be sure I'm prepared to jump back in.

First, I helped some friends paint their living room in their new house.  Painting is so rewarding and refreshing because when it's finished it feels so fresh and clean!

Next, I spent some quality time with my blog, specifically the Websites & Resources tab up above.  I'm pretty excited about it.  I was busy locating and curating a few resources I love.  I expect this will be an ongoing resource for myself...and hopefully others!  Teaching is all about sharing!  Check it out...and let me know what I should be adding!

Then I spent some time enjoying the Puget Sound.  I went kayaking.

Visited Point No Point, the first known lighthouse on the Puget Sound.

Watched cargo ships anchor themselves in the water and wait for union workers to come to an agreement and start unloading ships again.

Visited Chief Seattle's gravesite.

Stood in the Puget Sound water and just generally admired my surroundings.  Love the Pacific Northwest and all it's beauty!

Then, I've had a few unfinished TpT projects taking up space on my computer desktop.  I usually have them ready for my class use, but then drag my feet on the part where I have to prep them for the store.  I was feeling motivated at the beginning of the week to wrap a few of them up.  I prepped a few for my classroom and got them all ready for the RTL store.  A few of them have been sitting around for awhile, so it was nice to get them off my plate!  

Here's a quick share of what I worked on and what's new to the store.

I get super excited when I see my own activity pinned by someone.  My most-pinned and one of my best selling activities is my 100s Grid Art for fractions and decimals.  I l-o-v-e using my SmartBoard center that follows this activity up, so I finally got it all together and up on the RTL store.  So now I have the 100s Grid Art, and the SmartBoard center up separately, but if you want BOTH, I bundled them, too.

(this picture is from before I got my SMARTBoard and was using a Mimio file, but the TpT product is a SMARTBoard Notebook file)

Another one of my favorites is the Retirement Booklet that I have in my store because I love being able to have it on file and ready to pull out at the end of the year.  However, I'm not one for doing the same thing year after year, so I like to have activities on more of a "round", or "spiral", if you will.  So I made another retirement booklet so that I have a few ready at any given moment.

This one is more of a Mad-Libs style (I call them Fill-Ins).  I made it pretty versatile because class personalities can vary from year to year.  I have a page for fill-ins prior to seeing the retirement letter that you can do first and then put your silly answers into the retirement letter page.  Or you could just do the retirement letter page without the first fill-in page so that answers make a little more sense or are a little more personalized.  Or if you have younger kids or students who may need a little extra help picking some words, I have a page with three word selections for each blank to help them out.  It could be done as a class for one letter or individually from each student.  It's up to you.

The cover is also in color or black and white, so you can choose.  This one has been on my mind for awhile so I'm excited that it is together and ready!

THEN (I'm telling you, I was motivated to wrap these up!), I finished a poster set for three sets of commonly misused words to give my kiddos a classroom resource to use.  My goal was that during writing conferring time, I could just point out that a word was used incorrectly and then guide them to these posters to see if they can figure out which word to use for themselves.  I am laminating them today and they will go on my bulletin board tomorrow morning!  Yay!

Again, color and black and white options, in case you're more of a print-it-on-colored-paper person like I am!

I posted a few other things, too... I was productive!

I finished my week of relaxing with a little professional development with on a Saturday.  I got to go hear Georgia Heard, author of Awakening the Heart and Finding the Heart of Non-Fiction (and many more), speak about using non-fiction and poetry to help students become better writers.

I took lots of notes, and I left with some good stuff to work on and bring to my "family of writers".

Ready to see those kiddos again tomorrow and start doing some fresh new learning!

            

Follow RTL On 

Let's Talk About the Money, Money, Money

Financial literacy is a pretty big deal, yet we don't really tackle it as a topic in schools.  Some high schools (maybe some middle schools?) do offer a basic finance class.  Not many people have experience learning about real world finances until they are in the real world.

The thing is... we are in the real world all the time.  Why not have kids learn some important financial tools young and then grow with them?

We do money word problems in school.  We add and subtract decimals.  There are some financial concepts that are being taught there, but I'm not usually teaching about money.  We teach economics and how money works on a large scale.  Students make and sell products and learn about supply and demand.  But what do we teach them about their money?

I like to offer parents some resources through our class website to put a friendly little bug in their ear to talk about money with their kids.  Some parents don't need that kind of reminder.  Some do.  I like to have my classroom website set up as a resource for both parents and students, because sometimes a teacher's job is to share resources with parents as well!

I found a great new resources that fills an otherwise empty niche as far as education goes for elementary-middle school kids, and I got a tiny bit excited (free resources do that to me...)!  Time for Kids just came out with a new monthly magazine all about financial literacy for kids.  It gets kids thinking about money.  Spending, saving, and lots of other things where money is important.  It's a really cool little resource.  They've provided a fourth grade level magazine, but also the same magazine for 5-6th graders, which is another awesome component!  I think it comes with a Time for Kids subscription, so if your class has that, then you may have seen it already!  The cool thing is, though, that the digital issues are up on their website totally free!

The monthly magazine is called Your $ and it just started in January 2015, so there are only two editions out so far.  Complete with teacher guides for each level if you use it in class!

In my quest to find some great resources, I gathered a few and put them here.  I've also added the teacher resources to my Social Studies page under the Websites/Resources tab up above.  Dive in!

$$$ Resources for Parents:

Money As You Grow

Teaching Financial Literacy to Kids: Introduction

S'mores or Sums?  Next Year Send Your Kids to Financial Literacy Camp

$$$ Teacher Resources for Kids/Students:

Your $ Magazine

Moneypalooza (A printable board game)

Economics/Money Vocabulary Cards

You have hit the economics vocabulary motherload here, download and print right now!

$$$ Just for Kids:

Rich Kid Smart Kid (games)

H.I.P Pocket Change {U.S. Mint for Kids}

            

Follow RTL On 

Works of heART {Angle Measurement}

We wrapped up our basic angle measurement unit and I took down our winterish decor, so I needed something new to brighten up our daily commute through the hallway.  Those two things don't have anything to do with each other except that I decided to make a heart themed bulletin board using our angle measuring skills.

I searched for a little inspiration, and found these adorable hearts.  However, I had to make the art project fit into our curriculum so I simplified the art part and stepped up the math just a tad.  Gotta teach those standards, ya know?

I got busy and pre-cut squares of cardstock and went ahead and traced the heart on each paper ahead of time as a time saver (and because as anticipated, I had students that said things related to "I stink at making hearts!").

We made our lines together- my instructions being that we would make FIVE lines TOTAL.  Two lines that go completely across the page, and three lines that start at one line and go wherever you want it to go.

Then we got measuring.  I was actually really glad we did this activity because we were so used to measuring one lonely angle that when there were a bunch of angles some students had a hard time locating what to measure.  It was a good lesson in how angles are all over the place and aren't just two lonely rays connecting in the middle of nowhere.

Oil pastels were our medium of choice.  I chose them simply because they were so bright, not because they are so messy, which they are... but that just makes things more fun, right?  Students measured one angle at a time, then write down the measurement and the angle color in their notebooks.  We transferred those measurements to the back of our mounting paper when we were finished.

Students filled in any non-angle sections with random colors of their choice.  I loved this as a culminating activity!  Plus our hallway is pretty cheerful now.

The Michael's Valentine's Day sale got the best of me and I ended up with a package of Valentine's Day scrapbook cardstock, which I told my Cricut to cut into large hearts to add in between our artwork in the hallway display.  It was a weak moment for me, but I was happy with out it turned out.  

            

Follow RTL On 

Pumpkin Math & Halloween Day Survival

Wasn't Halloween on a Friday such a TREAT?

While I'm not a Halloween fan (I know, I know, I hate fun), I am teacher which means I can feign excitement over just about anything.  Our school keeps the actual Halloween celebrations minimal- a parade of costumes for K-1st grade and that's about it.  We don't have "parties" but our grade teams can choose three days of the year to have curriculum based "celebrations", so we do Pumpkin Math on Halloween.

My students also had drama class in the morning, and she had them doing some super spooky acting, so I think they got a Halloween days worth of fun at school.

This took just a bit of prep, but mostly because I put together my Pumpkin Math booklets and chose to put them on orange cardstock and laminate them for reuse each year.  I figured it would save paper and be more festive- not to mention the fact that it just wipes off when pumpkin guts get all over it!  So I went ahead and put a little extra time into making those and binding them so that now I can just grab them each year.  Our packet'o'fun was just a bunch of themed worksheets and activities for if/when they had downtime waiting for the rest of the class to gather their data.

Over my break (haha),  I got the classroom all set up for our afternoon celebration.  Butcher paper on each table so that pumpkin guts could be examined and clean up was super easy- I also taped the butcher paper down so that it didn't wiggle around while they worked..  Pumpkin Math orange packet instructions and dry erase markers, as well as a measuring tape, plus their individual Halloween packets for down time.  I was ready to rock and roll.

Before we really dug in, I read the first part of How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? because it's perfect for this activity!  I stopped about halfway through because I didn't want to give away any clues.  We will finish it on Monday along with the second half of this pumpkin project.

Our data collection focused on number of lines, weight before/after guts removal, weight of the guts, number of seeds, and the pumpkin circumference.

When all my students got back from recess, we got to work collecting our data...

After each group gathered their data (this took about an hour), we put it all together on this chart on the board:

They worked on their Halloween packet while they waited for the other groups to finish.  

Whew!  After an hour, we hadn't even touched the second half of this activity, which was looking at the data and each group graphing one of the topics to share with the class.  We will get back to work on Monday!

I think I sent them all home ready to put on their costumes and gather loads of candy!

What were your Halloween classroom adventures??

            

Follow RTL On