Area and Perimeter

Okay so I did this lesson so long ago, but I had no time to post about. For my observation, the one that has to hit like 12 intense indicators in Tennessee wonderful evaluation system, I did this lesson on area and perimeter. Now keep in mind this is after I had taught both concepts. This lesson is purely to practice, teach real world application, and to help relate the concepts to the students.

First you have to start with the book, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. It is a wonderful book about a dreary town. The little boy finds a plant, and it eventually becomes this amazing roof top garden.

I scanned mine and put it into a smart board software so that it would be large, but you could also read it aloud regularly, or scan an put it into PowerPoint for large easy flipping.

After that My students planned a rooftop garden for a roof here in Nashvegas in Nashville, then then had to figure out the area and perimeter for each different plant plot in their garden. As an extension, the students had a seed and fencing catalog that I made up. They had to figure out how many packages of seeds they would need to make their garden.

Finally, in Tennessee every lesson must have an extended writing piece, yes I said extended, so the students worked on writing letters to Lowe's asking for donations for the supplies they received. Here is one of the finished products, sorry there is only one, but I hand this back ages ago. So this is the only child I still had one that I could take a picture of.

I took her name off that is why the return address looks so sloppy, sorry.

I know it sounds kind of complicated, but it was really quite easy to create the sheets, and my students loved it. My dream is to do it with a class with vegetables and make it a community project were we donate the vegetables to local food banks.

Hope you can use this with your kids and I love to hear your ideas about it! As always thanks for reading!

May

Random Rotational Symmetry

Alright readers I'm back, I hope you are all having a wonderful year so far. Been applying for a special masters degree program that is very selective so that has sucked up a lot of my blogging time. Here I am though with an idea for those of you who have to teach rotational symmetry.

What I did was cut out different shapes out of card stock. (If you have a die cut machine I would use that because cutting them individually was quite the task) N-E-WAYS....so I attached it to a piece of poster board using a simple brad so that the shape can be rotated. (The poster board is one giant piece cut into four smaller pieces)

The students will rotate the shape 90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees drawing the shape each time to find out if it has rotational symmetry. Also, if it does then at what degree. I drew the star and the lines for the kids to match up and remember where the shape started. Since I can just see them spinning and spinning. I hoping this will be great for my tactile learners. As well as my artistic students who enjoy drawing.



See this one does not have rotational symmetry.

But this one does!!!  It looks the same but if you look for the star they have to line up it is upside down. You could make yours much prettier with fancy paper and colors!!!

Well I hope you all enjoyed my newest lesson plan idea, and I hope my absence does not mean that you are no longer my readers. Talk to you all next time!