Search results matching tag 'projects'

At Your Service!

MsP — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:43:00 GMT

First, let me say how I wish I could get some pictures in here to show you our projects, but for whatever reason, I am fighting with this site or my computer or maybe just myself, I'm not really sure, but I am having a lot of difficulty getting my pictures uploaded. However, I will continue to try to update with pictures. I am not giving up and I'm a pretty good arguer. So, please check back in a few days and maybe I will have been the victor! :)

I have long felt that Service Learning projects are an important part of a student's educational experience. I'm lucky that I work in a district that agrees and actually requires that students participate in at least one SL project a year. However, I like to take my classes beyond that and have them do more for the surrounding community.

This year, we made "Turkey Fan" cards that accompanied holiday meals for elderly citizens that were homebound and created "Winter Holiday" and "Patriotic" cards to accompany care packages for patients in the VA hospital. These projects gave us an opportunity to talk about people in our community that the kids don't often think about or come into contact with very frequently. I enjoy these projects because they give me a chance to work on the kids fine motor skills, spelling and vocabulary, while providing a service to let others know that they haven't been forgotten.

The turkey fans were a first for me and I wasn't sure how they would turn out, but, the kids did an awesome job. We took a heavy duty paper plate, without the waxy plasticy coating (is "plasticy" even a word?) and cut it in half. Then, we stapled a large craft stick to the plate for a handle. Feathers and a body were next, followed by a holiday message and drawing on the back. Voila, a card for more than just reading! :)

The VA cards were set up as single fold cards, but on the inside, I had the kids create word clouds to describe the veterans. First, we created a brainstorm list of all the words the kids could think of to describe the servicemen and women, which students on all levels to contribute to the discussion. We ended up with everything from "nice" to "courageous" to "freedom protector". It was really great to hear the kids discuss the words with each other and explain why they thought the words belonged on the list. The kids picked the word they thought was the most important, placed that word in the middle of their "cloud" and then surrounded it with 8-10 other words they thought were the best support words. This project let us work on vocabulary, synonyms and coming up with explanations to support our ideas.

We are now ready to start our annual school-wide civic project to collect donation items for overseas servicemen and women and their families. Our school collects safety sealed food, personal care items and letters/cards to support Operation Interdependence. Working with OI has been a great experience and lets our kids expand their SL. Many of our students and faculty have family members in the service and we usually have a good collection of items by the end of our drive.

If you have participated in a great SL project or have an idea of a project you think others might be interested in, let us hear from you. Please share! :)

Awesome Card and Projects Web Site

MsP — Wed, 01 May 2013 21:09:00 GMT

I am always trying to find fun and exciting projects for my students to use to show their knowledge of content. Recently, I came across a fantastic website that has outstanding projects, cards and ideas. It is called Card-Making-Magic. I spent quite a long time looking at a lot of the projects and ideas shared on this site (I'm not really going to tell you how long, but lets just say it kept my attention about the way Pinterest keeps most people's attention nowadays!).

I tried the "Faux 3D Book" card and it turned out great. I taught my 3rd graders how to create it and they loved it! We are using it for Mother's Day this time, but I would love to have them use it as an intro for themselves or for a biography study or a genre study or to present their favorite book or...ok, you get the idea. Check it out and let me know what other possibilities you see for these wonderful projects!

Why I Love Construction Paper Projects!

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:23:00 GMT

I discovered construction paper during my first year of teaching and I will never stop using it. We refer to it as scrap book paper or craft paper because at my school, that's what we use it for - art, craft, cutting, folding, gluing, etc. It's not only the students using it, I use it too! Why? Let me list the reasons:

1. The many different colors (even black)! I use them to make classroom posters that need to project different layers. Each color would represent a different part of the concept and bring a lot of color to by display area. See the different parts of a flower being represented in the poster above?

2. You can get it in loose pages or already bonded in booklet form. I love the ones that are already bonded because I let my students use these to make their own books as an end of year project. Click here to see an older post I did showing the books my students created about butterflies. The pictures above show the symmetry books my students made. To see more of the symmetry books they made, click here!

3. It is firmer than regular paper but is still easy for little hands to cut and it is available in different sizes to suit any purpose. The very large sizes can be folded down to a quarter of its size to create greeting cards that are quite sturdy. I still love using felt and card stock paper but construction paper is the easiest paper for students to handle, especially if cutting is involved. The picture above shows one that comes with cut-outs of objects from different themes.

I'll say that when it comes to cutting, construction paper is definitely a cut above the rest!

Why I Love Construction Paper Projects!

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:23:00 GMT

I'll say that when it comes to cutting, construction paper is definitely a cut above the rest!

Polacco Magic

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 01:52:00 GMT

Patricia Polacco is one of my favorite authors to use in the classroom.

She is such an engaging storyteller. My class was riveted to this author study video today.

I plan to now have my students practice sharing a family story of their own with this assignment:

Click picture to download

Which Patricia Polacco story is your favorite?
Leave a comment and share

It's All About Presentation

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 20:51:00 GMT

I've always done some form of monthly speaking presentations in my classroom.

Some months it's a poetry recital and others it is presenting an animal report or news article review.

My class also LOVES doing Readers Theatre scripts.

With the common core standards, being able to speak in front of groups and with groups is pertinent and mastering the art of public speaking is a life long skill that helps build self confidence.

I always start the year with a poetry prompt which helps students appreciate poems as a literary genre.

For grading the presentations I use this handy form.

Grab this freebie at my TN Store

How to Eat a Poem

Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.
You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

by Eve Merriam

What are your ideas for fun presentations? Leave me a comment and share.

Stop Motion

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 12:00:00 GMT

There are many different ways you can create stop motion videos. Especially in the math class where students demonstrate a video that entails a concept or math problem.

http://www.stopmotionpro.com/ is an online software tool where you need a video camera or webcam. You create a model and then set it into motion.
There are also apps for stop motion on the iPad and iPhone.

Stop Motion Recorder StopMotion Recorder is toy video camera enable you to make stunning stop motion video like claymation.
StoMo Create simple stop-motion animations/movies with this easy-to-use capture utility.
Smoovie Smoovie is the only stop motion app that lets you arrange your content in scenes.

These applications would be great proofs, especially creating proofs without words. Like the example below finding the area of a circle (formula). You can have students create projects like these in the classroom over math concepts and ideas.

Change Testing

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Self-Referential Tests

The experience was so challenging, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding, that it didn’t take long to realize it was a perfect exercise for students.

I ended up creating some simpler examples that gently introduce the student to the idea of a self-referential test, a test where questions and answers refer to other questions and answers. By playing around with these easier versions, students develop a sense of how to reason their way through using various problem-solving strategies.

After working through the more challenging versions, the final project for students is to create their own self-referential tests, which we then all enjoy solving. This is the perfect kind of project, in that it allows students to exercise their creativity while pondering substantial and significant mathematical questions like “What constitutes a solution to this test?” and “Are we sure that this puzzle has a solution?”, as well as fundamental mathematical ideas like logical consistency.

Learning Contract

Inspired by Dave Cormier's learning contract, and previous work at learn-defined syllabus and assessment, I had though about learner-created project evaluation rubrics. It occurred to me that for advanced learners having them propose their own evaluation criteria for rubrics. In the course of investigating what should be important they are beginning to learn about what is important. The students should create the criteria for success of the project, and consequently the criteria for the evaluation of the project.

The link to the learning contract can be found here: http://davecormier.com/edblog/2012/05/09/ed366-learning-contract-prior-to-student-input/

5 Angry Bird Lessons

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 12:00:00 GMT

5 Angry Bird Lessons ranging from quadratic equations, geometry, graphing, addition, measurement, to conic sections. These are fun engaging lessons for students to accomplish in the classroom.

Quadratic Destruction: Given the equations of the curves required to destroy the pigs, can the students plot the graphs? This is an attempt to bring quadratic graphs to the world of the teenager. http://coolcatteacher.visibli.com/share/Ea4NL
Enter the correct quadratic equation and birds fly on the right path and knock out the pigs. There are four levels to this game. Each successive level gets more difficult as the information makes the calculation more challenging. Before attempting this game, you should know and understand the basic properties of the quadratic function, findings zeros, the apex and it might be helpful to be able to solve simultaneous equations. http://www.teachmaths-inthinking.co.uk/activities/angry-birds.htm
Graphing Puzzle: This Graphing Worksheet will produce a four quadrant coordinate grid and a set of ordered pairs that when correctly plotted and connected will produce one of the Angry Bird characters. You may select which one of the characters you wish to make. http://www.math-aids.com/Graphing/Angry_Birds_Graphing_Puzzle.html
Angry Birds in the classroom? What!?!?! Check out how I used this wildly popular game to help teach measurement, geometry, addition, skip counting and money!

5. Conic Sections: The following is about Angry Birds used to describe conic sections, especially parabolas. Featured below is the journal article, I have been trying to implement the use of Angry Birds on the schools iPad. http://new-to-teaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/angry-birds.html

Organizing Social Studies Projects For Any Content

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:54:00 GMT

I posted a little while ago about differentiation in the classroom. Although it can be time consuming, there really is no other way to teach these days, than to create a variety of choice for students, providing options in learning processes and products. I realize that the year has come to a close for many. However, we are still in school here for a couple more weeks. With the beautiful weather, it can be especially difficult to keep students' attention in the classroom.

I've had my students working on differentiated Social Studies projects for the last number of weeks, and they've been really into them! Come on over to: Lessons From the Middle to get all of the info on organizing these projects in your own classroom. I've shared some photos of student samples, as well as a freebie with the info and assessment rubrics!

Project Sample: Confederation and PEI ~ Drawing and Oral Presentation