Sunday Scoop October 26

TheSundayScoop

Five for Friday October 24th

Hello again! I'm linking up with Kacey with Five for Friday for the first time! Let's see how this goes!

 

 

 

This week I introduced order of operations for the first time and I used this NCTM Bingo game! All you need to play are the BINGO cards for each player and markers/chips to mark the bingo spots. Here is the complete lesson with the Bingo card Printable and the best part is that it is FREE: http://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=2583

To further extend the order of operation lesson, I found this awesome game! It does have some more difficult problems as you can see on the screen (exponents), but the students enjoyed the challenge. The game let's you play with one or two players. They will need clipboards and paper and pencil to work the problems out. The set up is like the game show Millionaire. I was surprised by how much the students wanted to play this game as an option during some extra time in the computer lab. I went ahead and added it to my classpage and many students chose this over some other popular online math games. Here is the link if you decide to check it out: http://www.math-play.com/Order-of-Operations-Millionaire/division-millionaire.html

 

 

Sandra Markle is an amazing author. I used almost all of her books to teach my Living Systems Unit and all about animal adaptations. This book pictured above is one of the many interesting and kid-friendly books that my students just loved! The illustrations are amazing and the facts are pretty interesting! Must read if you are teaching about animal adaptations and survival in your science unit!

 

 

I think I found this idea on Pinterest, but to teach about the difference between seed and spore dispersal this worked well. All you need is glitter and bigger seeds like acorns or sunflower seeds. I took the students on a nature hunt. Luckily we have an oak tree on the school property. I shared with the  students how seeds typically fall near the tree and usually don't travel far (unless squirrels, or water interfere) and how that lowers the ability for these seeds to actually become trees. I demonstrated spore dispersal by blowing glitter out of my hand and the students saw how much further those "spores" landed. We then discussed how these spores would have a better chance of survival vs. the seeds. Student's then searched for ferns with spores (which we found) and picked up a few acorns as well. Very fun outdoor activity!

 

 

Finally, this week we started our Matter unit. We began with learning the important vocabulary: Solid, liquid, and gas. We added notes to our interactive notebook and then we participated in a solid, liquid, gas magazine sort. Students searched through magazine and food ads and found all sorts of creative examples. There were a lot of student discussions about which pictures would work or not. Very successful lab! The solid,liquid, gas worksheet in the picture is, you guessed it, a FREEBIE from TPT! Get it here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Matter-Liquids-Solids-and-Gases-Sort-325039

 

 

Thank you all! Follow the linky party by clicking on the Five for Friday picture above!

Student-Led Parent & Teacher Conferences

This week marked the start of my student-led parent & teacher conferences. For these conferences, we start by setting goals for Math & Reading with the student leading the conference. Afterwards the students track their progress throughout the year and keep track of it all in their "Data Binders". At the end of the year, we hold Celebration conferences where students and parents come in to celebrate all the progress that was made and review all the data in their binders. Today I posted my newest product which includes many of the forms I use in the student data binders! If this is something you'd like to start to improve your conferences here is more info on where you can find it:

Here is the link to my store:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Student-Data-Binder-for-Goal-Setting-and-Tracking-Progress-1515480

I'm also giving away one free copy of this product tomorrow on my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thejunglespot

Thanks for stopping by and happy conferences!