Avoiding Reports Hodgepodge Post

So... I'm supposed to be writing reports. So far I've filled in one child's name on one report!! At this rate it will take me months to write them all - and they're due next Tuesday. I'm just not in the mood today :( Will have to burn some midnight oil during the week, I think...

Anyway - to avoid having to write the things I thought I'd post some of the activities that we did this week. It's a complete hodgepodge :) (Do you use that word? It's quite common in my family.)

Let's start with art :)

We painted parrots this week. We used Gail Bartel's fabulous lesson plan to draw our parrots in a step-by-step process. Then we used water and tempera paint to create our own 'watercolours' and painted what were supposed to be blurry feathers. The overall effect of all the parrots was quite spectacular and my kiddies loved their art work.

On Friday we did Math centers with 15 minute rotations. It's always a bit of a risk doing Math in the afternoons but I've found as long as it's review and hands on the afternoon just whizzes by and the kids enjoy themselves thoroughly.

This week we reviewed measurement, using wool to measure curved lines - this needed some careful management by partners but it kept them busy and surprisingly quiet.

Another group reviewed Venn diagrams - I gave them two big circles and a bag of objects and told them to come up with their own headings and then sort the objects accordingly. I was thinking they'd sort by colour and shape and they didn't disappoint me although one enterprising group stood all the flat polygons on end and told me they were 3-D shapes! Not quite what I was looking for but it showed creativity :)

And we practiced our fact families and I have to say that I was APPALLED! Yes, appalled! We are seriously going to need to do some more practice with this concept. I used these clothes pegs and popsicle sticks so that the girls could play with their multiplication and division facts and it became abundantly clear to me that a lot of my class do NOT get the idea of families at all. Mind you, the clothes pegs (which are the brainstorm of Anne at Common Core Connection) were great fun and being able to manipulate definitely seemed to help some of the students!

 

 Next week we move onto fractions again - it's time for fraction of a number bracelets (yay) and all that kind of good stuff. Plus we have to get moving on our Rainforest Cafe. I had a brilliant idea today inspired by a very cool Pinterest board that I found - I'm going to have the kids make all the food (that they're supposed to serve to their parents) in animal shapes! Don't ask me how we're going to manage because I haven't figured that part out yet. It is still in "vision" form. :) In the meantime I am collecting all the products of the rainforest for our big display and "invite the Year 3s to visit" day. The advantage of living on a sub-tropical island is that I can find quite a lot of rainforest flora in the back yard. :)

Ok - I feel reinspired. :) Maybe I can get one report done after all!!

2 blog posts already :)

So two of my class have posted their research homework - and one child has asked me indignantly why she couldn't research the quoll (that would be because I already did it as an example!!)

I think these are pretty good posts for beginning little bloggers :)

Don't forget to change your "time devices" (as I read in the church bulletin today). I thought it was quite funny - I guess we all have so many gadgets now that tell time (iPads and computers and phones) that the word "clock" may soon become obsolete. Of course your time may not go forward but ours does so I'm heading to my bed early to avoid losing an hour of sleep. :)

What's a quoll?

We did an editing exercise this week that was about a quoll. I'd never heard of it so I went and looked it up and discovered that it's a cute little carnivorous marsupial living in Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. :)

The peculiar name sparked my curiosity so I went cyber surfing and found  a website with a l-o-o-ng list of weirdly named animals - quite fascinating actually. Who makes up all these animal names?!! - and decided on the spur of the moment that this would be my class blog homework post assignment this weekend.

I chose these animals for my kiddies to research this weekend.

aardwolf

axolotl

falanouc

dibatag

gymnure

iiwii

zokor

tsessebe

And that's just a sample of what's out there! (I have heard of the axolotl before but I'll bet none of my kids have!) Their task is to choose one animal to research, classify it (!) tell me where it lives, what it eats and one more interesting fact about it - oh, and post a picture of it. Easy peasy, right? We'll see what they make of it.

Look up a quoll - it is the cutest thing! It's only about the size of a house cat. I'd love one as a class pet :)

Anybody out there have a class blog? What sorts of posts do you do? I'm always looking for new ideas. :)

Music, Menu, Management Linky

I missed the last alliteration linky at Primary Possibilities but thought I'd take part in this one.

Here's the idea:

MUSIC- What kind of MUSIC do you like to listen to? Do you have a favorite MUSIC group?
MENU- When you go out, what is your favorite item to order from a MENU?
MANAGEMENT- What is your best classroom MANAGEMENT tip? What works best for you? How do you MANAGE your literacy stations, math rotations, small groups, and organization tips?

                                                           

So...

Music: I like classical music, old time gospel and spirituals (I love the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir) and some songs from musicals like Mamma Mia and Phantom of the Opera.

Menu: A bit tricky right now because I am experimenting with being raw vegan - and there aren't a lot of places that cater to that here (in fact there are none!) But if I slip off the raw wagon then I think I would choose (if I was in the USA) to go to California Pizza Kitchen because I love their thin crust vegan pizza dough and I love how you can mix up toppings to suit your own taste.

I made this raw vegan dish from The Rawtarian
 for lunch the other day - delicious!! Mine didn't
look quite like this but it still tasted
good :)

Management: Ha! Well, this is my weak point :) I have a very laid back attitude to classroom management so I tend to rely on my Learning Posters - tastefully designed by the talented Meg of Fourth Grade Studio - to redirect my kiddies to their work.

I'm focusing on accountability and taking responsibility for our own learning this year. :) Sometimes I clap in a pattern to get their attention and of course we have the two "quiet" desks where students can choose to go if they need to concentrate. I adore center work and teach practically all my Math this way now - we work in groups of 4 usually and I set a timer to move from one activity to the next. My class is well-trained now - they take their yellow folders with them, pack all their work into it at the end of each center, tuck in their chairs and wait for the move signal. They know not to interrupt the teacher table unless it's an emergency and it all goes very smoothly. I have to admit though that we have a very free and easy classroom and it can get noisy at times - but as long as its busy, creative, inquiring and learning noise I'm good with it. :)

Head on over to Primary Possibilities and link up your own music, menu and management :)

Does a rabbit lay eggs?

Is an elephant a reptile? A penguin IS a mammal. Are birds cold-blooded or warm-blooded? A snake is SO an amphibian!

These were remarks I heard as my class worked on animal classification today! This, mind you, is after we have done a data base classifying animals, an animal research project on powerpoint where they had to classify their animals, a powerpoint presentation lesson which they loved, sorting activities, writing activities... I DESPAIR! Do children today know NOTHING about the natural world?!!

Does a rabbit lay eggs?!!! "Only the Easter Bunny," I wanted to say but restrained myself :)

So how did my formative assessment go? Well, they couldn't eat the cookies until they got the right answer so it was certainly... inspirational, shall we say :) Eventually everyone managed to assign the right characteristics to the correct cookies and were allowed to enjoy them. Thank goodness for the few children who know what a reptile is, know that a dolphin is a mammal and that an elephant doesn't have scales!

I think I'll put a little quiz together with all the questions I heard and see if they can answer them! I wonder if they'd recognize them. :)

Check out our cookies! All the leftovers went to the staff room - where thankfully my co-teachers knew the right answers :)

 

 

You know - I don't even remember officially learning about classification as a child. We just kind of absorbed it - we learned the language of classification at home, in visits to the zoo, as we read stories, keeping pets ( I had tons - lizards, salamanders, toads, caterpillars, rabbits, guinea pigs etc - all at different times of course) I knew how animals were classified before really being taught it. Now I'm wondering if this was unusual - did other children think rabbits laid eggs?!

Do you think it's normal for children to know so little - or is it a sign of the times or is it just my class?!! I'm wondering if I'm being unrealistic in my expectations. Has anyone any insight to offer?

Tasty assessment...

This is my kitchen table tonight...

And what are these delectable little creatures for? Aha! A science formative assessment! Yes, indeed! I'm doing it as a center activity to see what my kiddies remember about animal classification. I'm dying to see my girls' faces when they see THIS test! :) (I will post about it tomorrow...)

And... I only ate ONE cookie!! (It was a shark and it fell apart in my hands so what could I do? Had to put it out of its misery :)

Perimeter Farm

We finally finished our perimeter farms!

Mind you, the mathematical part was finished some time ago but it took my little girls a l-o-o-o-ng time to decorate their farmyard. Apparently pigs require a playground and hens need water beds and tvs!

This was an awesome math project to practice measurement and perimeter. I divided everyone into groups and gave them a specific part of the farmyard to build. We had a pig pen, a chicken run, a horse paddock and a duck pond. Each group was given the perimeter that their enclosure had to be and the perimeter of a small building or feature inside that enclosure. They had to construct walls or fences around the edges and then were allowed to decorate any way they wanted. No animals were allowed to move in until Farm Inspector # 1 deemed it suitable :)

Step 1: Figuring out dimensions

Step 2: Drawing and glueing the base

Step 3: Building the walls - the girls had to measure these carefully, decide how high to make them, double the height and add 4 cm ( for flaps at the bottom to make the walls stand up). This took quite some time and a lot of groaning and moaning was heard but I made sure to stay completely out of it and they all managed beautifully!

 

Step 4:

Constructing the internal feature - this was a fountain for the ducks, houses for the hens and pigs and stalls for the horses. Props were required to make sure the animals would fit :)

Step 5: Endless decorating!! We started with a plain house or fountain but my creative kiddies kept going! They added trees and water lilies, playground equipment and TVs, ponds and piles of hay - I finally had to call it quits and say, "The farm is now FINISHED!"

The hen yard before the decorating
frenzy!

The duck pond - this group was
actually quite restrained.

The finished farm :) My girls played with this for about an hour on Friday afternoon, moving the animals around, making up little plays and really enjoying themselves. And the best part of it all was...

it was a MATH project!! And they made it all themselves :)

I actually put this project into my Farm Problems pack available here but really it's quite easy to do. Last year we made it as a perimeter zoo (on a smaller scale) and that was a successful project too.

This is a picture of one of the groups last year - they made a Tiger Pit :)

It's a great project and really gives the students an idea of the practical application of perimeter. Mind you, I don't know what I'm going to do with this giant farm now - I have to find somewhere to put it at least until the end of term!! :)