Monday Freebie - Bill of Rights Resources

For the last four years my methods class in science and social studies has been team taught with an amazing social studies specialist from a local school division. This semester the class has returned solely to me, and I'll admit to being a bit nervous about it. So, I've been spending a lot of time brushing up on content and pedagogy for elementary social studies.

Since Constitution Day is just a few short weeks away, today I'm sharing a packet of resources on the Bill of Rights. In this packet you'll find a series of notebook pages for students to illustrate each amendment and write about them in their own words. You will also find a cut and paste activity where students sort rights and protections into the categories of individual freedoms, rights of the accused, and protection from government. Finally, you'll find a few suggestions for web sites and children's book that may be helpful.

Here's what the pages look like.

 Download Bill of Rights Resources. 

I hope you get a chance to use these resources in your home or classroom. Please let me know if you try them and how they work! 

Connecting Math and Science to Agriculture

I've been a strong supporter of Agriculture in the Classroom for many years now. We in Virginia are fortunate to have an excellent program with a terrific team of writers and facilitators. I invite them to my class every semester so that my pre-service teachers can see how agriculture concepts and ideas can easily be integrated into the curriculum.

Here are a few of the outstanding resources they share with teachers EVERYWHERE (not just in VA).

Math Ag-tivities contains more than 130 pages of lessons and reproducibles for grades K-6. Each lesson incorporates interesting information about agriculture along with the mathematics concepts. Students gain skills to solve math problems while learning agricultural facts about livestock, various commodities, and plant growth.

The Garden Chef: Cooking Through the Food Groups provides teachers with a cooking and activity book that incorporates skills from the core subject areas. This book is divided by the five major food groups: Grains, Vegetables, Fruits, Milk, and Meat & Beans. The recipes feature nutritionally wholesome foods and contain extension ideas for teachers to use in elementary school classrooms.

Barnyard Banter is a collection of quick lessons and activity ideas to accompany 29 different books with an agricultural theme.

Jump Start Your School Garden is a guide intended to help educators integrate the use of the garden - whether it is an outdoor garden or an indoor container garden - into their science and mathematics curriculum. Additionally, tips and suggestions have been included for schools who hope to begin a garden or to enhance an existing one.

You'll find many more resources, like a searchable lesson plan database and extensive booklist, on their Teacher page. On the Volunteer page you'll also find some quick, fun activities.

I know I've left you much to explore, but before you go, have a bit of fun with the Peterson Brothers and think about how important agriculture is to each and every one of us.

Monday Math Freebie - Numbers to 20

As I prepare for the start of the semester, I find myself working on materials for teaching number sense and place value.

In this packet you'll find three sets of numbers sense puzzles to 20. Each set contains the number in graphic as well as standard and word form. One set uses ten frames, one tally marks, and one base-ten blocks.

Here's what the puzzles look like.

 Download Number Sense Puzzles to 20. 

I hope you get a chance to use these puzzles in your home or classroom. Please let me know if you try them and how they work! 

Monday Math Freebie - Problem Solving Booklet

While working on some word problem/problem solving resources, I thought it might be nice for students who weren't journaling in math to have their own problem solving booklets.

In this packet you'll find two versions of the cover (one says word problem book and the other says problem solving book) and a blank problem solving page. On the forms students draw a picture, use a number line, and write an equation to solve the problem. They must also give the solution to the problem and explain how they know the answer is correct.

Here's what the pages look like.

 Download the Problem Solving Booklet.

If you are looking for some word problems to use with these booklets, check out these resources for Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI).

• South Dakota Counts: CGI Problems (70+ pages of questions for K-5!)
• CGI Problem Sets
• Math Made Fun: Cognitively Guided Instruction (Scroll to the bottom of the page for downloadable resources.
• MindSong Math: CGI Word Problem Files
• CGI Word Problems

If you're not familiar with CGI, check out this helpful chart from Teacher Tipster.

I hope you get a chance to use this booklet in your home or classroom. Please let me know if you try it and how it works! 

Monday Math Freebie - A Twist on the Dot Game

While searching for resources for teaching scientific notation I came across a middle school version of the dot game where students were required to simplify exponents and record numbers in scientific notation. I loved this idea and wrote to the author asking if I could adapt his idea for the elementary classroom. My thanks to Kevin Koch for giving me permission to create these resources! Here's what I've come up with so far.

In this version of the dot game, students draw line segments and form boxes as usual. When they complete a box, they earn one point. However, if they complete a box with a picture, they must solve some type of problem (write the number, name the fraction, etc.). Answering correctly earns a player extra points. Once all the boxes have been made, players total their scores. The player with the highest score is the winner.

I made two versions to start. One game is for young students on identifying numbers. The other is for older students and is on naming and writing fractions in simplest form. Here's what they look like.

Download What's That Number? Dots and Boxes.

 

 Download Fraction Dots and Boxes.

I hope you get a chance to use these in your home or classroom. Please let me know if you try these and how you like them! 

Thinking Beyond Big

Even though I've been thinking about nanotechnology and things that are very small lately, I'm also pondering something at the opposite end of the spectrum. Actually, it's not a thing, but an idea.

What do you know about infinity? While teaching about fractions and decimals I often talk about the density property of numbers, or the idea that there always exists another real number between any two given real numbers. For example, can you name a number between 1 and 2? How about 1.5? Can you now name a number between 1 and 1.5? Sure you can! Let's pick 1.4. Can you name a number between 1.4 and 1.5? No matter what numbers you pick, you can always name a number between them, and you can do this forever.

Can numbers be infinitely big and/or infinitely small? Are there different sets of infinite numbers? These are great questions, and the just the very sort I want kids to ponder as they think about numbers and our system of numeration.

Here are two videos I like that nicely capture these questions and ideas.

Thinking Small

When the Virginia Standards of Learning for Science were revised in 2010, nanotechnology was added to the content of the 3rd and 5th grade study of matter. Here's how it reads.

Nanotechnology is the study of materials at the molecular (atomic) scale. Items at this scale are so small they are no longer visible with the naked eye. Nanotechnology has shown that the behavior and properties of some substances at the nanoscale (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter) contradict how they behave and what their properties are at the visible scale.

In 5th grade they include the above information and add the following sentence.

Many products on the market today are already benefiting from nanotechnology such as sunscreens, scratch-resistant coatings, and medical procedures.

Since elementary school students are just grappling with our number system and how it's constructed, understanding the math of the nanoscale (negative exponents!) can be difficult. One of the best ways to approach this topic is to make comparisons that kids will understand. This UC-SD-TV program is one of my favorite resources on nanoscience.

If you want to play around a bit with the nanoscale, check out this McREL site.

Finally, if you are looking for some teaching resources, check out my Pinterest board on nanotechnology.