Thursday, November 29, 2012

Salt Dough Ornaments


Hard to believe it’s Christmas time again already, but it’s true. To get the kiddos in the Christmas spirit, we’ve been practicing our carols, decking the hallways, and (my favorite) making those cheesy ornaments for mom. I’m pretty sure my mom’s still got the ones I made when I was in elementary school hanging on her tree. I’ll have to remember to ask. Anywho, they’ve assigned me to the afterschool Art Attack club and we’ve been working away like elves trying to get these holiday decorations ready to go before the big concert in 2 weeks. What I love about these is that they appeal to all ages. I mean really, who doesn’t love baking and painting?

If you’ve never made salt dough ornaments, you haven’t been living should try it! Here’s the recipe and a few pictures from art club. Enjoy!



Food Web Poster Project


One of my very favorite units to teach in life science is on food chains and food webs. I guess I’ve always been fascinated by how perfectly nature seems to work; organisms giving and receiving life- no detail overlooked, everything serving a purpose. The interconnectedness of nature and life is truly mind-blowing, isn’t it? Ok, I’m done with the deep, philosophical thoughts for nowJ



We’ve been studying the symbiotic relationships that exist in different biomes around the world and learning all about how species are dependent on one another for survival. For our final life science project, each of the students was assigned a different ecosystem to research and present in the form of a food web. Naturally, I wanted them to go beyond the basic rabbit-eats-grass, snake-eats-rabbit connection and start using the vocabulary that we’ve learned so I required that they label producers, consumers, and decomposers. As with most of my projects, I gave them the option of creating the poster by hand or using a word processor program. Once again, they rose to the challenge and impressed me with their ability to simplify their findings. Their oral presentation skills are improving so much.

Here's a fun video that breaks down the different types of symbiotic relationships that we find in nature.
 

Feel free to steal the guidelines and rubric here. Here are a few photos of their work.


 

Happy Friday!

Biome Research Project


One of my science standards this unit was to address biomes and habitats. Because I'm trying to move my classroom into the 21st century, I wanted to get away from teaching straight out of the book and go digital. I absolutely love having this kind of creative freedom as a teacher.
Anyway, I made these nifty NatGeo research journals (attached below) for my students to study different biomes around the world during our ecology unit. I wanted to cater to the different types of learners in class and this was the perfect tool. I sent them on a little digital adventure as modern-day researchers to collect data and present their findings to their team at headquarters. I wanted them to look for key characteristics such as plant and animal life, climate, and human impacts while documenting their findings. It’s great because these research journals are going to make the perfect study guides for the test coming up in 2 weeks.
 
After completing their research journals, they each chose their favorite terrestrial or aquatic biome and created a digital presentation that they delivered to the class the following week. My students hit this one out of the park. Here are a few examples of their work:
 
 
 


Research Journal Pages:
-Cover
-Aquatic Biome
-Terrestrial Biome    

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Life Science- Information Reports


What a busy couple of weeks it has been! I tell you what, it’s going to be a miracle if I survive until Christmas break. This semester is kicking my bootyJ

I’m going to make this one short and sweet, but I just wanted to share a prezi that I made for one of our life science projects. I got the idea from a webquest that I saw on zunal.com a few weeks back, and what’s great about webquests, is that they are a creative accessible and way to engage your students in projects. Since I’ve never made a webquest and I’m a complete geek for prezi right now, so I created this little number and posted it on edmodo for my students to have access to at any time. It includes my detailed expectations, some video clips, and even my rubric. Check it out:
 



The final reports are due tomorrow, so we’ll see how they do! Happy Wednesday.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Field Tripping


Field trips are something that every student looks forward to each year. In fact, when I did a questionnaire at the beginning of the school year, field trips was the number one answer for the question “What are you most excited about for 6th grade?” I remember feeling the same excitement about field trips when I was growing up. Actually, it’s probably still one of my favorite school days of the year.

Picking a location for a field trip here is a bit more challenging than it would be in America because certain things simply aren’t an option. There are no science museums, no aquariums, no nature centers. There is a very sad zoo, a few big parks, and a variety of war-related museums, but all leave a lot to be desired, especially for kids. Last year, we did a Master-Chef-meets-Amazing-Race at the biggest market in town during our Health and Nutrition unit, but this year, I had a better idea; visit the charities we chose for Service Learning.

One of the organizations that we’ve been fundraising for is Wildlife At Risk. This amazing non-profit organization is helping threatened and endangered species and their habitats throughout Vietnam with conservation and education/community outreach. One of the representatives of W.A.R. came out to give a presentation to our students about biodiversity and what is happening to the rainforests here. The students were so excited to help that we decided we’d visit the wildlife rescue center just north of the city in Cu Chi.

Visiting the rescue center was the perfect idea for a field trip because our theme right now is Life Science. We’ve been studying biomes, habitats, and food webs and the impacts that humans have had on them. Plus, it was an opportunity for the service learning group to see where their fundraising donations are going.

So Friday was the big day. It was quite a long haul on the bus with 50 first and second graders, but it was well worth the visit. Here’s a little slideshow I made of our trip.
 


What unique field trips have you taken?

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Broken Sentences


Let’s face it, grammar stinks! There, I said it. It stinks to teach, it stinks to learn, it just plain stinks. Whenever I even say the word, my students cringe. But there’s no denying its importance in English. It is vital to the development of writing and oral skills and it’s something that needs to be practiced daily in a mostly-ESL environment. I tell my students that practicing good grammar is like flossing or working out; you don’t have to do it, but it’s always a good idea (although that doesn’t seem to sell them).

I wanted to try something a little more, well, fun for this week’s grammar lesson so I introduced them to the broken sentence. I’m sure this is not an original idea, but basically it’s a sentence that has been scrambled and the students have to “fix” it. The way that I did it requires a few minutes of extra prep time, but trust me, it was totally worth it. The kids were INTO IT! Here’s what I did today:
I printed a few questions and sentences on a piece of paper (large font/bold works best) then cut them into strips.

Cut each sentence up into individual words and mix them so they’re out of order.


Set up numbered stations around the room and had them copy the sentences into their grammar notebooks.

For an added bonus, I offered 10 cool points (our sticker system) if they could correctly answer or ask questions to match the broken sentence. For example, we’ve been studying second and third conditional and one of the broken sentences was:

·         If you met Justin Bieber, what would you say?

They would have to answer:

·         If I met Justin Bieber, I would …

This is a really great activity to trick engage students in grammar. J If you have any fun grammar activities, please share them. Thanks, and have a great night!

Monday, November 12, 2012

Service learning update


As you may remember, our grade 5 & 6 students have started a service learning program this year and boy, oh boy have we made some progress. Once we completed a needs assessment of our community, chose our charities and set our semester goals, we hit the ground running with recess fundraisers and a school-wide book drive (more on that later). I was a little worried if they’d be able to pull it off, but they threw any doubts I had right out the window. They ROCKED IT! (I'm so proud)

The great thing about service learning is that it has all kinds of great curriculum tie-ins. The kids sent out surveys in google drive to learn what kind of fundraiser to do, created flyers to advertise, wrote and delivered announcements to every class, and that all happened before the actual fundraisers!

In preparation for the actual events, we learned some basic principles of economics and weighed the costs and profits that we could expect from each fundraising idea that was proposed. Finally, the date had been set and each group had decided on their snack. One group was insistent on making smoothies and could not be dissuaded by logic. I tried to warn them at the amount of work that would be involved, but they were too excited and I figured that letting them make the decisions (good or bad) would ultimately benefit them. So- smoothies it wasJ. The other group chose popcorn which was much more manageable and logistically sound.

Our first fundraiser was scheduled during a Friday recess and each group was given only 45 minutes to prepare their booth and product. Once recess let out, it was non-stop action. I loved how well they all worked together to make it happen. They assigned each person on their team a job; line control, cashier, packaging, order taker. I mean to tell you, it was amazing.

By the end of recess, we were sweaty and exhausted, but EVERYONE had a smile on their face. We counted the money we made and came out ahead by more than $150! Not too bad for our first-ever fundraiser, huh? Here are a few shots from the big day:

Announcing the fundraiser

Slingin' popcorn

Check out this line!!!

That's what teamwork looks like:)

If teaching doesn't pan out, I can always work at Jamba Juice... hehehe
 
 
 

Friday, November 9, 2012

Leaf Art


Sorry for the delay, folks. We have been incredibly busy this week trying to get the kids back into school mode after their week off. Not an easy task, I assure you. Anyway, we’ve kicked off our life science unit with some really exciting stuff. Here’s some art we did earlier today.

We’ve been talking all week about ecosystems, biomes, food webs, and habitats around the world and right here in Vietnam. Because it’s the end of the rainy season, the plants are insanely green and lush so I thought it would be a great day to do our art class in the elementsJ We headed downstairs to find a place to plop down and start our sketches. Here’s a few of those:








 

Later, we collected some samples (to use for our lesson on classification in the afternoon), headed back upstairs and broke out the watercolors. I don’t know why, but every time that I try to do a watercolor lesson, my students insist on using too much paint and not nearly enough water. I must remember to stress this more in the future. Anyway, they had fun and the art turned out ok too. I’d say that’s a win for everyone. Here are a few more shots from the second part of our lesson:


 

Happy Friday y’all!