Summer time, and BIG NEWS

Hello everyone, and I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday weekend, so we are officially out of school, and summer has started. I am going to be working on a lot of summer projects that I plan to post about, but none of them will make sense is I do not reveal my BIG news (and part of the why I have not have many post).

As I have let you all know I was applying to get into a very selective graduate school program, and it was taking up a good bit of my time. Well the news is in and I got into the program!!! HOORAY!! So I will be getting my master's in Teaching in Learning in Urban Schools, from Peabody College (Vanderbilt University).

 I am telling you all this partly because I am really pumped up, and partly because my post will probably look a little different since I will be teaching in a Urban Middle School instead of an Suburban elementary school. I hope to still give out the same quality of ideas, and any feedback you all can give will be helpful and appreciated.

Oh and I couldn't leave you all with out a little bit of my end of the year fun we had so hear is a division song that I wrote for my kids to the popular song "Call Me, Maybe" it is called, "Division's, Easy," We mess up a little on the timing, but it was filmed in the last 30 minutes in on the last day of school. Enjoy, and leave me a comment if you need a lyrics sheet. :)

Thank you everyone for continuing to read my blog, and I hope that you get a lot of great ideas this summer!!

Love,
Mrs. B

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!

Chritmas Trees wishes, and gingerbread dreams

Hey everybody so I have some stuff for you all today. Oh yes, I am in the Christmas Spirit as it is our last week of school before break!!

This week and last week we have been working on decimal representation: word, standard, expanded, model, and fractional. I know ugh right! Well my kids don't think so, I have tried to be upbeat about fraction and decimals and it has seemed to rub off on them. Well today we, "Trimmed some trees with Decimals,"
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5AmFXrzxffpZTE4OTExZWItM2FhNC00ZDgzLWEwMWUtZWM4M2UzMDdkMGQz

that is the link to the template. Anyway each pair had three trees, they had to put the stars on top of each tree and then use the ornaments to do the other forms of the decimal.
star-standard
gingerbread man- expanded
round ornament - word
long ornament - fraction
presents- model

Then they had to paste the trees in order from greatest to least. Here are how they turned out.

I won't put a bunch of pictures, but everyone this time did it correctly and it was a fun way to see if they are getting it.

Okay, so also not to long ago I saw on Blog Hoppin' a teacher did a project for younger kids called turkey in disguise (sorry I don't remember the teacher, but she is so smart). So we decided since I saw it too late, to do Gingerbread men in disguise for our Christmas writing prompt. The students are currently working on stories about how they woke up and they found a gingerbread man running for his life and asking for help. In their story they must tell about how they disguised him, what they disguised him as, and how they helped him escape certain peril. They are having such a good time, they begged for extra writing time today. Anyway here are some of the gingerbread men in disguise, these are not all from my class. Our whole fourth grade is doing this project.

 aren't they adorable, these are just a few. There were way too many to choose from. Hopefully when they are done with the writing piece I can post some of those.

I hope you all have an amazing last week before break, and as always thanks for reading!

Mrs. B

Praying for a new computer

So my laptop is soooo old, and it has been very very sick lately. This is not good for blogging. Well there are a lot of things I have wanted to share with you all. So we will start off the week with Geometry.

First, The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns. This is one of my favorite books. I love going cross-curricular. tee hee! Well anyway I must focus. We did an activity with this book. We read the book first, and if you know anything about it on the pages it will say, "and much, much, more!" talking about all the things the different polygons could be. So my students were put into groups, and were asked to add the much, much, more to the book by thinking of all the different things that each polygon could be (real world examples) there were four groups quadrilaterals, triangle, pentagons, and hexagons. The penta- and hexa- groups got five minutes on the computer after 5 minutes without computers since theirs were harder. Here are some of the things they came up with. I was really proud of them.

BeyBlade Screw Hexagon

inside of the Star of David- hexagon

Maids apron- hexagon (this one I thought was clever)

Fire hydrant side bolt- pentagon

Superman symbol- pentagon

these are all the triangles

Sorry for all the pictures I just get really proud, and sometimes it hard to explain what they did if you can't see it.

Okay so also I wanted to teach you all the polygon song that I teach my kids every year to help them remember the prefixes that goes with the number of sides. I am a proud Power Teacher so I do gestures, but you can just do the song if you like here it is if you would like to use it!

So I will hopefully have some more post this week if my computer will allow it, and I hope you can use these!! Thanks again for following, oh and pinning my blog on pinterest you all are the best!!

Long Time No Post, Freebies to make up for it :)

Okay so I'm so sorry I have not been able to blog lately, I don't know if anyone has been reading the papers or watching the National News, but Tennessee's new evaluation system is really different from our old one, so we have a lot of meeting, and we have to write and turn in really long lesson plans. So I am really sorry, but to make it up to you I am going to try and post some freebies.

First I have a recording sheet for a game that I came up with when teaching Predators, Prey, and Competition. Originally I wanted to just use a Hungry, Hungry, Hippos game to illustrate that you would get more the less player (predators) there are. Well Hungry, Hungry, Hippos cost 20 bucks a piece and it was not going to happen on a teachers salary. So I  came up with a game called Hungry, Hungry, Birds. 

Each student will have cup (stomach) in front of them with Two Spoons in it (bird beak) or my teaching partner used straws for her beaks (the kids had to suck up the food). The student dump a cup full of counters (prey) in the middle of their circle. The students must try to get as many counters (prey) as they can into their cups (stomach) as possible only using their spoons/straw (bird beaks) until all the couters (prey) is gone. They students then record who ate the most food, and how much did they eat. The player with the least is out (dies) of starvation. After everyone has played, we discussed wheather the number of prey the winner was getting increased or decreased and why they students thought that was. Synthesis OoooOooo!! lol. Then we discussed what might happen if we added more predators to the mix. If you would to do this and use the recording sheet, please click on the link below.  Sorry I don't know how to make the picture the link.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5AmFXrzxffpOGM1NzM2OTctMDJlZS00YjU5LTliNzItZDkwY2UyNDkwZGQz

Also, we did a fun game in Math called Line and Angle Hunters after finishing learning lines and angle we searched our hallway for real life examples. My little angles loved, loved, loved it. Here is the recorder sheet for that if you would like to do it. It has the instructions on it. Like I said sorry the link isn't the picture.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5AmFXrzxffpYzRiNzgxYmUtMzlmOS00YWEzLWI1MzQtZTA3MjgyY2FhYWIx

Oh we also did greatest common factor turkeys. You all are so good with your designs, you put me to shame. I don't know how to use photoshop so I just draw and copy, but I think that my drawing turned out okay, and the kids didn't seem to mind. Here is that if you would like to do your own with all you guys crazy Photoshop and Vistaprint skills.

Aren't they cute my kids really liked this way of organizing their facts and coming up with common factors.

More, More, More, okay so we also have been reading the book Shiloh, So I decided that my kids could do a dog research project. They had to make a poster and give a speech it was great. One of my main goals was to get my kids to use book and not just the Internet, and I did mini-lesson on reference books, appropriate source, etc. It was great well, if you would like to do a similar project here is a link to the rubric I used to grade my kids, and the concept of the lesson.

Rubric

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5AmFXrzxffpMDQ2Y2RiMmYtMGVjNS00MDA5LWE4ZmQtNWQ5MWNiNzY5Njlj

Outline - We wrote this together to help guide their research

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5AmFXrzxffpNzY1ZTNiMjQtOGQyNi00OWJjLWI0MzEtZGRhYjI2ZmYzOTkx

Here are some of there posters

I love the Border Collie saying the facts about Border Collies. So Cute.

And here is a sample of one of the papers. Take into account this is one of my highest students, who attends gifted classes.

Well  I think that is plenty to mull over. I hope the freebies make up for my lack of blogging the last couple of weeks, and I hope you all continue to read. Have a great time with your kiddos!!

Mrs. Beasley

nomination and a busy busy day!!

Hello all first I would like to thank Tara @ http://4thgradefrolics.blogspot.com/ for nominating me for this award for The Versatile Blogger there were just a couple of conditions.
1. Thank nominator and provide you with a link to there sight. Thank you Tara your blog is amazing, I can tell you are a great teacher
2. Share 7 things about yourself that your readers may not know
    Alrighty
     1. I played college softball on a scholarship
     2. I was my high schools homecoming queen
     3. I collect DVDs I have over 300 :)
     4. This is my third year teaching
     5. I used to want to be an animal cruelty officer. Like on animal cops on animal planet (my original degree was going to be in criminal justice.
     6. I met my husband the day I moved into my dorm in college
     7. My mom is Filliapina :)
3. Pass along to 15 other blogs. I don't know if I stalk 15 whole other blogs, but here are the one I normally stalk

http://pitnerm.blogspot.com/
http://brittmale.blogspot.com/
http://theteacherwife.blogspot.com/
http://ladybugsteacherfile.blogspot.com/
http://whatteacherswants.blogspot.com/
http://mrsjumpsclass.blogspot.com/
http://ohboy3rdgrade.blogspot.com/
http://theinspiredapple.blogspot.com/
http://mregilchristclass.blogspot.com/
http://eagerlittlemind.blogspot.com/
http://weeklyhive.blogspot.com/

Well that is eleven pretty close I am new to blogging so sorry if the links do not work :(

Anyways in other happening I did to fun lessons today to share with you!!

First fact families I gave each child a picture frame and had them draw the fact family inside like a family portrait. They turned out pretty cute. They had to put the facts on the side in the frames. :) Check it out.

Pretty cute huh!!

Okay now this next lesson was on adjectives. Each student received three chips and had to use their senses to find adjectives to describe it. Then they wrote them on paper chips colored and we put them on these charts. Our charts say,  "I bet you all my chips that I can use adjective to describes nouns." Looking back on it it should say we. One of my students pointed that out, well I guess at least I must have done a good job on our pronouns unit. Tee Hee!

 I choose Doritos...

Cheetos

 and sour cream and onion lays

 here are some of the words on the chips!! My sweet kiddos did such a good job!

Well everybody it is bedtime thanks again to Tara for the nomination, and thank you all for following. Hope everyone has a great day with their classes tomorrow shaping the youth of America!! WE CAN DO IT!!!