Valentine's Day Rice Krispies

As Valentine's Day is approaching , I already know my students will be thinking about everything except for math on Friday as they wait to pass out their Valentine's. I have two choices, to fight it or to join them and by join them I mean create a fun learning experience on Valentine's Day.
For the past few months, I've heard multiple times, "why are we learning this? We will never use it" and as much as I always want to have a clever response, with some things it's more difficult than with others. Thankfully, fractions are a perfect example of math in the real world. We are going to use what we know about fractions and division to make rice krispies for Valentines day.
So here's the plan: students will work in groups of 4, ideally with an adult supervising each table, but one adult per two tables will work as well. They will be given the recipe that yields 12 rice krispies and their job will be to figure out how to make 6 (half the recipe). They will discuss and half their recipe, after which it will be time to bake, cool, and eat the sweet treats followed by reflection session while we snack on teamwork, how we used fractions, and other uses of fractions in the real world.

Photos of our creations are finally updated as well .

Wish me luck!

Below is the sheet students are receiving and answer key on second page:

rice krispie directions (click here for directions)

Thanksgiving Dinner Plan -Digital

As the holidays are approaching and I am noticing my students are beginning to loose focus, I really want to make sure they are engaged and understand that what we are studying applies to more than just math class. This week, during independent/partner work part of our days, students are going to work together or on their own if needed ( I always prefer in partners for projects so they can have someone to discuss ideas with, check work with, grow with) to create a Thanksgiving Dinner Plan.
I am providing detailed instructions of what is expected along with a rubric. I am also providing a chart students can use to record their work. However, I am well aware that often 5th graders are much more creative than I am when it comes to charts, so I am going to make sure they know they can change the chart in any way they want as long as they are still answering all the questions. I am also challenging them to present their work on seesaw including the written component and thus share it with others. If you are not using Seesaw, Dojo works just as well. Students can even record themselves and post in Google Classroom instead.

Once my students complete this assignment, I will post their charts on this page. I would love to see examples of what your students come up with!

Chart for Thanksgiving Dinner Plan
Directions for Thanksgiving Dinner Plan

Grocery Store Math (Decimals)

I am not even going to pretend, decimals are one of my least favorite topics to teach, specially adding and subtracting them. At the same time,  I am also not one to let my students know that, so after several days of practice, here's an in class project that we did.

Goal: To practice adding/subtracting and rounding/estimating in real world situations.

Students worked with a partner to complete this project.

Prompt:

Time frame:
5 minutes discuss what you are going to prepare/look through grocery store advertisements and circle what you will need/ discuss your reasoning
10 minutes to cut and glue
10 minutes to complete and discuss calculations
5 minutes to discuss questions

* 3 Pairs of students shared with the class


Rubric

The fun part, examples of student work!

Regions of the U.S.

We started out the year with learning about different regions of the U.S. This was a fun project students completed to learn about each region. It can be easily adopted to fit 4th grade when studying regions of a specific state. 

Here's my lesson plan:

TEKS:

Social Studies

5.7 Students understand the concept of regions in the United States (Geography)

5.8 Students understand the location and patterns of settlements and the geographic factors that influence where people live

Language Arts

5.20 Students understand the function of and use the conventions of academic language when speaking and writing. Students continue to apply earlier standards with greater complexity

5.22 Students spell correctly

5.26 Students organize and present their ideas and information according to the purpose of the research and their audience. Students are expected to synthesize the research into a written or an oral presentation

1. The teacher will introduce the concept of U.S regions through a KWL chart which will be followed by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kk_xtIVUQo (regions of the U.S. video)

  Imbedding language arts: First time, students will listen to facts

  Second time, students will listen to for adjectives used in the video. They will discuss with the group how these adjectives enhance the facts provided in the video.

  II. Students will be broken up into 5-7 groups (each group will be given information packet found in the drive with information on each region of the U.S.). More than 1 group can have the same region. Students will read their packet and take notes in their social studies notebooks. They will also make a list of at least 10 adjectives they found in the text as well as explain how these adjectives enhance the text.

III. Students will create a poster summarizing what they learned about each region (rubric in the drive). They will present their work and each group will take notes resulting in the class obtaining notes for each region.

IV. Students will take an open-notes quiz to show understanding of U.S. regions.

Here is my quiz . Students used their notes and posters around the room when they took the quiz. We practiced taking cornel notes together. 

Presentation rubric

Student work! (The best part )

These projects were so much fun and many of the students chose to do both a google slides presentations and a poster. They practiced presenting, took notes, and took ownership of their work!

Here's to a start of fun school year filled with project based learning.

-Always teaching, always learning

Mrs. Swanson <3

Exploring the U.S. Project Based Learning

If you know me well, you know I am all about projects. Projects make my classroom lively and exciting. This year is new and different. For the first time in a long time, I am departmentalized. I teach math, writing and social studies. This year is also my first time ever teaching 5th grade and I can genuinely say, I am lucky to have such a great bunch to start this journey with! This is also my first year teaching in Texas so of course I had to come up with a Texas based project. Over the summer, I contacted teachers from every state and began a post card exchange document which morphed into this project.

Goal : Students will learn about all U.S. states through conducting research,

connecting with classes across the country, and creating a model as well as

brochure of where they would like to travel. This project will incorporate social studies, math,
language arts and technology as well as will provide opportunity to
collaborate and present work to our 2nd grade partner class.

TEKS:

Social Studies

5.6 Student uses geographic tools to collect, analyze, and interpret data

5.7 The student understands concept of regions of the United States

5.17 The student understands important symbols, customs, celebrations, and landmarks
that represent American beliefs and principles and contribute to our national identity

Reading/Writing

5.21 Students write legibly and use appropriate capitalization and punctuation conventions and their
compositions

5.22 Students spell correctly

5.24 Students determine , locate, and explore the full range of relevant sources addressing a
research question and systematically record the information they gather

5.26 Students organize and present their ideas and information according to the
purpose of the research and their audience. Students are expected to synthesize the
research into a written or an oral presentation

Day 1

The teacher will read “Scrambled States of America”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxI9V_LODRM

After the  read aloud, the teacher will have students participate in turn and talk activity.
They will discuss with a partner the following questions:

1. What do you think makes Texas unique?
2. What states have you traveled to or learned about? What stood out to you and why?

Day 1-2

Students will work in groups of 2  to complete Texas scavenger hunt (on blend or can be done
through google classroom). After completion they will discuss:

What’s something you learned about Texas? Was anything surprising? Why/why not?

Students will work with their shoulder partners to complete postcards for our postcard exchange
partners around the U.S. based on info they found in the scavenger hunt

Day 3-5

Students will randomly select landmarks or the teacher will pre select or they will choose based
on interest.

Students will complete landmark research

Day 6-10

Students will complete the landmark brochure and model project/ present to 2nd grade and reflect on
their experience with this project. The presentation will take place in a form of gallery walk where
5th graders will have a chance to show their work/ talk about it to 2nd graders as 2nd graders ask
questions*.

* Our partner class is a second grade classroom.

* We are currently in the middle of this project, getting ready to send out post cards, researching and
preparing for the brochure. I will add photos of finished work as soon as they are available!


Inspired teacher,

Mrs. Swanson

Procedural Text

As a part of our unit on procedural text, students were asked (rubric provided) to create ANY creation from materials available in my recyclables box. They were to write at least 10 step directions and get a second set of exactly the same materials. At various times during the time such as "I am done, now what", intervention time, etc. different students were able to work on this project. Times were different but at the end they all had the same amount of time. Today, students were assigned a partner (did not show their partner final product) and gave their partner directions. They had 20 minutes to build a creation based on directions and materials provided. After this, they came together and discussed questions provided. Students shared out their answers with the group, went back to their desks to write down answers to the questions we discussed as a class. Throughout the entire activity, they were engaged and I saw very high level of participation (over 90%). I was able to obtain 3 grades: 1 for following the rubric and creating directions based on the rubric, 2 for participation in the project, 3 for answering the questions in writing. All students were able to complete this project regardless of AG, RTI or any other things they may be a part of. I have 100% completion when it comes to this project (now response grades  and rubric grades do vary but I am also able to differentiate there without it being obvious to the class, i.e my level C reader had a requirement of 5 step directions because of how much she's pulled out during the day). This project helped my students relate procedural text to real life and provide student engagement/buy in when it comes to this specific standard.

Enjoying Procedural Text!

Mrs. Swanson

Fables, Folktales, Myths and Legends-Fun With Projects

My students absolutely enjoy writing projects. So when we studied traditional literature from different cultures this year, I decided to finish our unit with a project. Here's what we did:

1. Students worked in groups of 2-4 to create a chart on their posters including characters, setting, plot, theme and the type of story they wrote.

2. They collaborated and wrote  a fable, folktale, myth or a legend ( typing it was an option). 

3. Students created an illustration and practiced presenting their work to the class.

4. They presented their projects and classmates guessed the theme as well as explained why the theme they chose fits the story. Classmates pointed out 2 positives about the presentation and 1 thing the group can improve next time.

5. Students rotated in groups through each poster and created 3 questions that would go along with that project. They used their understanding of inferences, author's purpose, traditional literature, story elements, etc. 

6. Students rotated again and answered in complete sentences the questions created by the previous group. They discussed the story and their answers before writing them down.

7. Finally, we discussed what students learned from this project as a class. 

Here are some photos of what this looked like and my rubric if you would like to use it 

Biography in a Bottle

So often we wonder how to make projects more interesting , more engaging, give them something extra while teaching to the standards. The following is a project my students recently did with biographies:

1. Students chose a person from North Carolina or who contributed to NC history
2. They researched the person
3. Wrote a 5 paragraph essay on google docs
4. Created a poster board, google slides presentation or another creative way to present their work
5. Created their person from a water bottle
6. Presented their work with classmates commenting: 2-positive (constructive) comments, 1 thing the presenter can work on next time.


I received very positive feedback from my students about engaging in this project. They stayed interested even with the amount of work it required and took ownership of their work. Here is my rubric and a few examples of student work.

I'm Done, Now What?

We all have students who are done early and need engaging activities to keep them interested instead of busy work. Usually my students are able to pick activities from the "Must Do"/"May Do" board. However, once in a while I like to switch it up. This particular activity is something all of my students had a lot of fun with !

In my classroom, I always have a container of recyclables such as : toilet paper rolls, color paper, ribbon, bottles, and other recyclables students bring in and I collect throughout the year. I knew that we had a persuasive essay coming up. Therefore, I asked all of my students to work on the following any time they were done early:

-Draw a sketch of a monster you can build out of recyclables in the box
-Make a list of supplies you will need
-Describe 5 qualities of your monster and why someone should buy him

Here are the exact directions :

Any time my students would finish an assignment early, they had the opportunity to work on their monsters. They were allowed to work on the monsters in class and at home. The monsters were NOT required, but an option students had. The plan itself was required. The following week, we discussed structure of a 5 paragraph essay and my students were asked to write an essay convincing their audience ( they had to pick their audience; at the time we were also learning about author's purpose) to buy their monsters. After the essays were finished, students presented them as well as their monsters to the class.

Here are a few of the monsters.

Here is my persuasive essay rubric.

After the presentations, students wrote a reflection explaining which monster they were most likely interested in buying and why. They also commented on the presentations in the following manner:

3 students were picked to comment on each presentation. One would say what he/she liked about the presentation (Example: I like how you projected loudly and clearly). After this a student would tell the speaker something he/she can work on (Example: Next time, it would be easier to hear you if you look at the audience). Finally, another student would say something they enjoyed about the presentation. Any time we do presentations in class, my students work on giving constructive feedback to the presenter. 

Keeping It Engaging -Social Studies (Establishment of NC)

If you are like me, you like to keep your lessons hands on. As I was planning my social studies lessons this Fall, I noticed that while we were using time travel sunglasses and working in small groups, it just wasn't enough. One evening while planning my lesson, I called my colleague and as we put our heads together thinking about hands on activities and students engagement, this what we came up with for teaching about Roanoke Colony.

Roanoke Colony (a part of the larger lesson plan on exploration of NC)

The class will participate in the Roanoke Island CSI Project. The students will be
grouped into 6 CSI teams and their task is to use the clues provided to make an inference
as to what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke. (This will be conducted during language arts
time as well, focusing on the inferencing strategies RL 4.1, implicit and explicit information.) Students
will write a paragraph stating their theory and use the evidence found in the
clues to support their theory.

The class will watch “Roanoke Island” video and students will be responsible for writing down

5 things they learned

5 things that surprised them

2 questions

https://youtu.be/o99Y4Brq-GY Part 1

https://youtu.be/YYb7P7wDvxI Part 2

Alternate Activity: Google Classroom- Students will listen to the article found in the included website and complete the questions included on the Lost colony of Roanoke. Students will take a short quiz based on the passage.

http://www.ducksters.com/history/colonial_america/lost_colony_of_roanoke.php

Here is how I set up my classroom and what the lesson looked like. My students were very excited and engaged. I strongly suggest doing this first thing in the morning. That way when students come in they are immediately curious and excited about this activity. It will also give you the most time set up (early in the morning or the evening before).