The Field Trip

When I taught second grade in CPS, I had students choose where they wanted to go on a field trip. Students decided to go to the Planetarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park Zoo, and Shedd Aquarium. I had decided to provide subs for the students and this is what the distribution looked like:

Group #1 [Planetarium]

- 3 subs

- 4 people

Group #2 [Museum of Science & Industry]

- 4 subs

- 5 people

Group #3 [Lincoln Park Zoo]

- 7 subs

- 8 people

Group #4 [Shedd Aquarium]

- 3 subs

- 5 people

Now the question that was on everyone's minds when we returned the next day was:

WAS IT FAIR?!?

So, today, I decided to make my fourth grade students decide if on that day five years ago:

1) Was the distribution fair - did each person in each group get the same amount?

2) How much of a sub did each person get, assuming the pieces were cut equally?

Phew. My fourth graders went to work today! Oh, and did I mention that today was the first day of our fraction unit?

Some big ideas that will be discussed tomorrow in our math congress are:

- fractions can be seen as division

One student was able to find the pattern right away and didn't have to draw pictures to decide the amount each student from each group got.

- fraction equivalence

This partnership used connecting cubes called this amount 4/5.

This partnership used connecting cubes and called the amount 16/20.

- what to name a piece

Do you see the misconception that we'll address tomorrow?

1/2 + 1/10? I love it!

Students worked on a draft first, figuring out all of their math. I walked around at this point, lifting the work that students were doing, or addressing some ideas that students were using, but confusing. Then as students finished their rough drafts, they then began to work on their stand-alone posters [posters must speak for themselves w/ clear mathematical thinking] that will be critiqued during our gallery walk tomorrow!

I love me some Cathy Fosnot! I can't wait to see what our gallery walk and math congress will bring tomorrow! Stay tuned...

Marshmallow Challenge - Part Two

This always happens to me. Life gets a hold of me and I haven't blogged in forever.

Well, part of my [school] resolution this year is to get blogging, so here I am!

I love having my students take part in the Marshmallow Challenge twice a year: once at the beginning of the year in August and a second time in January. The second time around, I like to see how students respond to the challenge and what they might have learned from their mistakes last time. We talked about which base would be more stable, a triangular base or a quadrilateral base. (It's interesting to see which two structures were still standing after coming back from specials.)

Although the students participate in the Marshmallow Challenge to build the tallest freestanding structure, I have students discuss the process of collaboration and teamwork more so than their product. After 18 minutes of designing, building, redesigning, and rebuilding, students took a seat and we began the discussion of how we could collaborate better in Room 208.

Here are some of the bullet points we took away from our activity:
- communicate [listen to EVERYONE'S ideas]
- agree w/ your teammates BEFORE you do something
- it's okay to follow someone else's plan EVEN IF it's not your first choice
- work TOGETHER
- watch your BODY language
- let people TRY things out

We have learned so much about collaboration throughout the first half of our year, but we have resolved as a whole class to get better at it!

Force and Motion

We began our science curriculum with a force and motion unit. After attending STEM TQ this summer, a two-week long teacher workshop involving STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) practices, I was really motivated to bring a lot of the things I learned into the classroom. One way of doing that was to bring a lot of design challenges where students are designing, building, engineering, and so forth.

This unit began with an iSlide experiment, learning a lot about push and pull, as well as an experiment involving ramps, different surfaces, and toy cars to determine speed and how the different surface types affect the motion of the toy car.

We have since then moved on to one of our design challenges, designing a balloon car. Each group could only "spend" $15 on supplies and had two days to create a design and execute the plan.

Balloon Car Price List and Design Plan

Many students planned and designed and quickly learned that their balloon cars failed. Only three out of six balloon cars moved a distance of more than zero inches. Unfortunately, we did have to stop our design challenge time so that we could discuss (and revisit) our norms of collaboration and teamwork. Hopefully, our redesign of this challenge will prove to be more successful than 50%.

The first car moved a total of 155 inches, and it probably would have gone even further if it had not run into the chair (another lesson learned). However, this car definitely will need a redesign because it did not use a balloon! :)

The second and third balloon cars didn't go quite as far, but any movement was a success this round! Hopefully, these two groups will redesign their balloon cars for further movement!

Look for our redesigns in a following post!

Building a Community in Room 208

It's September?!?! That's crazy! No. Do you know what's crazy?? My schedule these days! I'm finally blogging after almost a month of teaching. But I guess it's better late than never, right? I sure hope you agree with me. :)

The first couple of weeks in 4th grade were consumed with Room 208 desperately trying to learn what it means to be a community. Our essential questions for this time were: 1) What makes a community? and 2) What does the way I show respect say about me?

Students were involved in so many activities that required a lot of communication, collaboration, teamwork, and so many other wonderful qualities needed to succeed.

Solo Cup Pyramid
- 6 solo cups, 1 rubber band, 4 24-inch long pieces of string
- Students had to work together to make a solo cup pyramid (3 on the bottom, 2 in the middle, and 1 on top) without using their hands.

Build a Tower

- playdough, 5 straws

- Students have to build a tower using only the materials provided.

Saving Sam

- gummy worm and gummy life saver, 1 plastic cup, 4 paper clips

- Sam is the worm that has tipped over in his or her boat (plastic cup)! He or she needs to be saved and placed into the life preserver! The only thing is that the partners can only use the paper clips and must not use touch the worm or the life preserver directly!

 

Magic Carpet Ride
- butcher paper
- Students are on top of the butcher paper and must flip the paper over while the entire group is still standing on top of it.

Marshmallow Challenge (Read more about the Marshmallow Challenge here!)

- 20 spaghetti noodles, 1 yard of masking tape, 1 yard of string, 1 marshmallow

- Students have 18 minutes to plan and design the tallest freestanding structure with the marshmallow on top

The Human Tank

- blindfolds, socks

- Students are paired up and one student is blindfolded

- The student who is not blindfolded is giving his or her partner directions to find a sock and throw it at another blindfolded student

After these activities, as well as some others not mentioned in this post, students created a list of thoughts to the question, "What makes a community?" We then created this anchor chart to help remind us off what we want our learning community to be like and is hanging in our classroom (our class picture is missing from the middle):