I have had so many ideas stored up from college, other teachers, my own, and of course Pinterest!
Here are a couple of classroom procedures, projects, and assignments that I have incorporated in August!
Here are the cell pals that I introduced in my first teaching ideas post. The kids love them and they still keep a hold of them because we use them everyday! It is even a reward in my classroom, and they are able to choose the cell pal for the activity!
I love Venn Diagrams, to have the students compare and contrast any subject we are talking about! Be it, in reading, math, or science. The kids know that whenever they see the big chart paper that it is Venn Diagram time! This was a first day of school activity where I had the students come up with a question, then I gave the students "markers" with their name on them and they did a "gallery walk" and placed all their markers wherever their answer was. This Venn Diagram was "are you a cat or dog person?" Others were about movies, animals at the zoo, etc, I was able to see day 1 how creative my kids can get!
One thing my kids LOVE and ask to do everyday is 4 card Friday. The rules of the game are that I give them 4 cards and they can mix them around, use addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication to make these cards equal 21. The other rule is that you have to use ALL 4 cards! I love doing this activity with the kids and sometimes if they solve the first 4 that I post, and will give them a second 4 cards.
Parts of a scientist. I had the kids write down how they use their whole body in science, how your mind is used for exploring and making hypothesis, how your eyes are used for observing and watching things happen or change, etc....
This word wall was from August, it is filled up now! and the top purple part if our reading word wall, which we just add on 8 words each lesson, once there is no room for reading we will just need to find more space in the classroom for our vocab words!
The kids love to tweet their exit tickets. I might pose them a problem to solve and post on their way out, or I will have them work as a group to solve a riddle. Whatever I think is necessary. Needless to say the twitter wall is never empty!
We made bookmarks for their books and I had them jump in pictures for me, I then got them developed and they had to color something creative with it. Some had themselves hanging from a rope, some were some gymnastic moves, this boy asked to do a running jump and his bookmark says "150 meter" hurtle! What creativity!
Another "tweet" They had to come up with sentences to go with these numbers!
One thing that Chelsi and I always included in our classroom was scavenger hunts, where the question was at the bottom of the sheet and they had to go find their answer that was at the top of a different sheet! I made about 10 different questions and I hang them in silly places like on the ceiling and below tables. They have so much fun moving around with their learning. I of course have to move around with them to make sure they are on task!
This was our big project for September, comparing the cell to an object! I didn't want to make a cell using food and candy, I wanted the kids to be more creative with it! This was mine that I gave them as an example. Some kids compared their cell to city council, an airplane, their homes, etc! They got so creative with it!
Playing "Stac and Pac" with fractions, decimals and percents! Any games they love to play! I have learned that they love learning from one another. And as long as they are on task I let them sit wherever they want to on the floor!
A really cool science experiment that we did in science class when we were talking about cells! We dissolved the shell of an egg using vinegar, we then soaked some eggs in corn syrup and some in dyed water to show osmosis happening. The kids LOVED this experiment. You can teach so much from this lesson, about the cell membrane, the type of reaction that happened, osmosis... the list can go on. And what inspired me most was a lot of kids came back to school after the weekend telling me that they tried it at home with their parents!
-Miss Koch
