a year of math & science

bulb updates

This is how the hyacinth bulbs looked the week before the holidays:

We left them at the school for the holidays with lots of water for the roots to drink up. I'm hoping they'll be in full bloom when we get back.

The amaryllis bulbs kind of stalled...they kept producing leaves and those got very tall, but there was not stem for the blossom. I called the nursery where I got the bulbs and they said the stem should come up first and they would exchange them. I brought the amaryllis home for the holidays and will try and figure out what to do. The kids were so excited to see such a huge flower so I know they will be disappointed that these ones don't seem to be growing. At least they saw how the one in the library shot up so tall.

I'm hoping it will still be in bloom when we get back to school!

math games for the holidays

We typed out and illustrated the math games the student had created. I copied them into a little booklet to go in a "math kit" for the children to take home over the holidays. I'm hoping that some of the families will find time together to play some of the games. I found some cute little mini decks of cards and dice to include (they were so excited about the double dice!) so they would have all the materials they needed. Each student also made his or her own 0-9 spinner to add to their kit.

We will add to the home math kits as the year goes on and this will make up their math "homework" for the year.

I hope the children have a relaxing break with their families. I really am going to miss them and have all sorts of ideas already percolating in my head for January!

 

sweet structures

This afternoon was my last day at the school before the holidays. I took the students down to the library to do a little structure building. I told them they were to build a tower, bridge or building using the skewers and toothpicks in the middle of their table and I asked them to start making a plan in their heads. At this point, they didn't know what the "connectors" would be. When I pulled out the gumdrops, they were a little excited! Once they got started building, I told them I wanted to see some engineering principles applied to their structures - strong shapes, a stable and strong base, reinforcements, etc. 

Oh what fun!

structures project

Because most of the students in the class had studied structures last year as part of an alternating science rotation at the school, I am not spending as much time on this topic as I would typically. To finish up the study and have students show what they know, I decided to have them do some project work and decide how they want to represent their learning.

Last Wednesday afternoon, I put out over 30 books on structures on the carpet and had each child choose one that interested them. I had them read the book, using a Reading Power approach and having them list what information they already "knew" and what information was "new" to them. We used this to inspire inquiry questions that they were interested in finding out more about. 

       

Because this was the first time we had done a project like this, I gave the students two suggestions for how they could present their project - a poster or a model and gave them the option of coming up with an "other" idea if they wanted and orally suggested a book, a slideshow, an imovie, etc. The students were so excited about doing a "project". We had just visited a grade seven class in the school to see their Ancient Greece projects so the students were very inspired.

I couldn't believe it when a few of the students showed up the next morning with models they had made at home for their project! One of the students had even got poster board and had started to glue down some images. They were very motivated!

We had 20 minutes in the computer room last week and the students searched for images for their project and some also created wordles from the texts they had been reading.

We didn't get much time in class this week, so this project will probably carry over to the new year. Today I did a poll about what materials the students needed for their projects. Luckily we had posterboard in the school but I had to make a trip to the dollar store on my way home today for modelling clay and popsicle sticks. We probably won't get to their models this week though because I have a fun last day of school before the holidays (for me) building project for the class for tomorrow!

creating our own math games

Today I made up a new math game for the students to play that we simply called "tens". I had noticed that some of the students were not able to add 10 or multiples of 10 to any number...something I would expect most students in grade 3 to be able to do. We have done lots of number pattern work involved counting by 10s up and down and with different starting points but I thought we would try the same concept in a different context to see if that helped.

I modeled how to record the step-by-step instructions on a piece of chart paper and then we played a few games as a whole class to make sure everyone knew how to play. The instructions were to roll a ten-sided dice (0-9) twice and make a two-digit number with the digits rolled. So if a 4 and a 5 was rolled, the students could choose from recording a 45 or a 54. We then rolled a deca/decade dice (00-90) and student added on the number rolled to their original two-digit number. So if they had chosen 45 and then rolled a 30, they recorded 45 + 30 = and then recorded the sum. I had the students share the different ways they could figure this out which included "just knowing it", counting on by 10s in their heads or using their fingers to put up the number of tens and count on by 10s using fingers to keep track of how many tens they have counted on. Simple and focused on a very specific skill but as one little guy said, "I like this game, it's fun!". It always amazes me how making the math practice into a game takes away so much anxiety for many of our students.

The students played in their table groups with one person rolling the dice, all the students choosing their two-digit number and then the same dice-roller rolling the decade dice and all the students recording their equations. They took turns being the dice-roller and happily played for about 5 minutes with many groups getting over 10 equations recorded. Good use of practice time I think!

     
Next, I showed the students the game materials I had spread out on the carpet and told them they could create their own math games to practice something about the number concepts we have been working on (mostly place value work). The students could work by themselves or in partners and needed to write out their game instructions and then gather their materials and test them out. Oh, the excitement!!

  
We had quite the range of games and I am going to type them out and make a little booklet for the children to enjoy with their families over the holidays.

those cute little oranges

I bought a little box of the little baby mandarin oranges to take into the class on Tuesday. We did a combined math/science investigation. I asked them to observe the orange using all five of their senses, before and after peeling. I also had them predict how many segments there would be when they unpeeled the orange. We have many students learning English in the class and I had to explain what a segment was and used alternate words like piece and section. I ended up also introducing vocabulary such as peel, membrane and pith as it came up while they were investigating their oranges.

Some students wanted to record their oranges in "actual size" so they measured the dimensions of the oranges and tried to draw them to scale. I love when they just do that on their own :) 

The students wondered why the oranges had different amounts of segments. I thought they might think back to when we learned about cranberries and how pollination affected their development.

Some students pulled out magnifying glasses to get a closer look. The inside texture of the orange peel was quite fascinating to some of the students!

After they had some time to record their observations, we created a tally graph of the actual number of segments in each orange (we had a range of 6-11). 

It was fun to see how excited they got when I told them they actually got to eat the oranges! 

mushroom re-cap

The mushroom investigations continue...the students come in after lunch to tell me about all the new mushrooms they have found. They really feel like mushroom experts!

We put together two photo books about mushrooms since our library did not have a single book about mushrooms in it! The students took most of the photos for the books. 

The first book included all the students' wonder questions about mushrooms as we were finding them and beginning to learn about them.

  

  
After we had finished this first book, we had another amazing mushroom treasure hunt day so created this small little book to capture our finds!

      

As a final fact-finding mission, I took the children to the computer lab and showed them how to use worldbookonline and we read articles on mushrooms, looking for nonfiction text features and reading for new information. I then showed them how to use wordle and they copied the text of the article to paste into the wordle site. They each made their own wordle something like this:
 

The whole mushroom investigation has been fun...we've all learned so much!

structures workshop

On Wednesday afternoon, we attended a Structures workshop at the Science World classroom in Aberdeen Centre. The children had a great time working in teams to make geodesic domes. They started off by combining pentagons and triangles to make "ice cream cones"

Next, they bolted and wing-nutted the ice cream cones together to make a crown.

Finally, the students added the roof pieces and had turns sitting inside the dome.

We had a great time!

The workshop built (oh the pun!) on the concepts we have been working on in class. The instructors talked about the "S" words (shape, stability, strength and standing) which I think helped the students remember what makes a structure a structure. The program also emphasized the importance of triangles in structures.

If you are a teacher in the Lower Mainland, this is a great little field trip. There is a Canada Line station right at Aberdeen Centre although we are so close, we had parent drive us there. The workshop was only $1 a student and there are lots of other topics available. The classroom is also open to families on Saturdays.

 

   
For this notebook entry, I specifically asked them to include at least one labeled diagram and one text box. With open criteria like this, I like seeing how they all make their entries their own!

 

 

paper bridges

This afternoon, the children were asked to make a bridge that would support a hot wheel car out of one piece of paper (no glue or scissors). They could modify the paper however they wanted to and the bridge had to sit on two wooden blocks with a span of at least 15 centimetres between them. The idea was to get at techniques that strengthen structures and to look at the kind of shapes used in structures that provide strength and stability.

We got all sorts of different bridges:

After developing a plan and testing it, the students had a change to make improvements to their bridges and test them again. They learned a lot from looking at each others' bridges. 

  

I love how some students share their learning with lots of words and explanations while others use drawings and visuals to share what they have done and what they have learned.