These maps are crucial for understanding the region's history, its present, and some of the most important stories there today.
Social studies and science students can learn about pangea, an important theory about the formation of the earth and its continents.
Just a quick little post to share an anchor chart I made to help my students visualize the difference between area and perimeter. Visit {Deb} to see other awesome anchor charts (and add your own). Sh
Get ready! Your vocabulary word wall is about to grow big time... I have posted them before one at a time, but now I am just going to plunk ...
If you are writing a historical fiction, or epic fantasy, chances are one of your settings will be in a medieval village. Not all villages are set up in the same way, but for the most part they wi…
We might tend to think of passive home design and environmentally-friendly cooling methods as qualities of modern “green” construction. But natural cooling techniques have been used for as long as humans have been building homes; after all, the modern air conditioner is a relatively recent invention. These homes were all built to take advantage of […]
TENS is an acronym for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator. This device is used to deliver an electric current through electrodes that are placed on the skin.
Teaching area is engaging and authentic with this hands-on applied math activity! Students arrange furniture to find the area and perimeter of their house.
Nestled in some of the most beautiful corners of the world, are hidden settlements of people who have adapted to live under boulders, on floating islands, in volcanoes and in the middle of the ocean.
In a time and society where students spend more time communication through text messages, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and 14 other social media platforms that I cannot even begin to name, I find an ever increasing need to get my students talking to each other fact to face. As a result I have been on a quest this year to implement as many collaborative activities as I can. I have used many of them throughout this school year and have had some amazing results that include increased communication, retention of information, assessments grades and more positive attitudes (overall)! Throughout the summer I will be sharing some of my favorites, some of my other favorite math teacher-authors and many others so that hopefully they can become your favorites too! Today I am excited to share with you my Surface Area and Volume of a Sand Castle activity! As we were finishing our three-dimensional figures unit in Geometry I was looking for a really good way to a) get the students talking and b) show them how the different figures can share dimensions to build the structures that we see on a daily basis. Since I do not possess architectural skills and summer is upon us I decided to build a Sand Castle (as "Do You Want To Build A Snowman" is running through my head). I started with a goal of including as many of the main solids that I could and managed to include prisms, cylinders, cones, pyramids and even a hemisphere! I worked to have the solids share bases, sides and dimensions whenever possible. This is what I came up with! I also came up with a second version that has the figure divided into 11 smaller figures to help struggling students visualize a path to follow to solve it. Additionally, this helps students to organize their work so that you and they can identify an error if they make one. (I did not, however, hand this out to begin with as I wanted to see what they would do with it first!) Before implementing this as partner/group collaboration piece I sat down and created a list of questions that I could ask as I walked around the room to point students in the right direction, get them thinking, communicating and solving without actually giving them the answer. Some of the questions that I came up with: 1) Are there any surfaces that aren't exposed? Alternatively - are there any surfaces that shouldn't be used in surface area? 2) Have you thought about breaking any of the larger figures into smaller ones? 3) How are you arranging your work so that you can go back and check it later? 4) Are there any dimensions that you don't have? How can you find them? 5) Do the unused surfaces from the surface area get used for volume? FREE!!!! Finally the day arrived to implement this and I must say, it went AMAZINGLY! After my students got over the expected moans and groans and sat down to start working on it, they had fun with it. I heard great discussion, collaboration and genuinely helping each other understand instead of just giving each other the answer. I set forth the "rule" that their final answers had to be within ten of mine (to account for rounding error) and that whoever was the closest won a prize (extra credit, candy, excusing of an assignment, ect.). My students quickly turned it into a competition and worked hard to earn the prize. I ended up with multiple students hitting my answer down to almost the decimal point - which is great! :) Based on the feedback I can honestly say that they enjoyed it and felt that it really reinforced the concepts we have been learning in this unit! I have put the entire activity, including a multi-page answer key that highlights each piece and how to find their surface area and volume up in my teacherspayteachers store. You can pick it for FREE here :) I would LOVE to hear how you use it and implement it! Please comment below!
Saw 3 variations of this poster today. Seems note-taking skills are pretty crucial in content area studies. #tcrwp
Learners sleuth out the area of three triangles in this simple geometry worksheet.
Educators from the Bay Area's KIPP King Collegiate High School and the KIPP network have provided these resources for you to use in your own school.
Get students hands on and confident with these 11 surface area math activities.
Use the area calculator to find the area of seventeen different shapes, plus learn the formulas and steps to calculate it.
This is a fun project based learning activity where students build a playground to learn about area and perimeter.
This elementary science experiment creates a wave box that demonstrates how earthquake waves can travel through solid materials as they travel away from the focus of an earthquake .
African knowledge was not only passed down orally. The notion that ancient African education was oral and not written is only a myth. In his book,
I am officially on Spring break! Two whole weeks off to rest and get ready for the home stretch of this school year! :-) I am so excited to catch up... on chores, seeing friends I haven't seen since Christmas, blog stalking, and so much more! Here is one of my very favorite art/writing projects we do all year!!! They always turn out adorable and they never fail to get some laughs from the adults! I got the idea from Patty at Deep Space Sparkle. If you haven't checked out her blog, you SHOULD! It is full of amazing (and doable) art ideas for your classroom (even if you aren't very artistic like me!) She even has them organized by grade level! So...the kids first did their writing about what they would be in 20 years. Here's the template we used: You can get this {HERE}! Here's a completed one: "In 20 years I will be 28 years old. I will live in a college dorm. I will be a police officer and I will take bad guys to jail. I will still love my family and I will still love meat loaf. I still won't want to eat spinach. And most importantly, I will be happy." The writing always turns out absolutely adorable! Then they drew what they would be in 20 years. They used an example I purchased from Deep Space Sparkle (from the "Fun with Self Portraits" pack!) Then they colored it in with markers and outlined their self portraits with a black marker. We painted the backgrounds, and a parent volunteer mounted them on construction paper and attached their writing. We had: Police officers (love the handcuffs!) Race car drivers (love the 'stache! And the braces!!!) Marines (so grouchy!) Ballerinas (adorable!) Artists (too cute!) And football players (not just football players- quarterbacks!) among many other things! Like I said, these are always a hit, you can keep them up as long as you want (i.e. until the end of the year because you're too lazy to change your bulletin boards LIKE ME!) because they're not holiday-ish (??? not a word! I know) and the kids love creating them! Check back soon...I'm thinking give away in celebration of Spring break! :-)
