Math, Reading, and Science Goodies

As promised, I took some more pictures of my classroom and the things I've been working on so that parents could see what we've been working on, teachers could get some ideas for their classrooms, and my family and friends could see the work that I've been doing! So let's jump right to it-- these are mainly foldables, lapbooks, and bulletin boards.

Math

So these are lapbooks. They are all the rage now at my school. The way I've described them before it 3-D scrap books filled with information students are learning.

These are lapbooks our class made about angles.  The right side is a simple note-taking form that we filled out as a class where students filled in the blanks with the definition of the 3 types of angles as well as practiced drawing angles.

The left side was what I used as my formative assessment. Students had to come up to me putting the popsicles sticks together to form the correct angles- for blue they had to show a right angle, yellow an obtuse angle and red an acute angle. Then I hot glued them together after I checked their understanding and hot glued them to their lapbooks (where they then had to label the angles one more time).

One of the other teachers told me that she's thinking about creating a lapbook for next year that has something on the inside so that students could practice moving around the angles to make different shapes. That may even be my summer project this year so that students could practice that when they finish an activity early or something. I may even turn that into a learning center activity (since the file folders aren't the most durable!

Another lapbook that we made that does allow students to review and practice was for transformations.

We had already talked about the definitions so we filled out the left side as a class with the definitions for a translation, rotation and reflection.

Then we glued or taped graph paper to the other side of the folder.

Then the students were to cut out specific shapes out of construction paper. The pentagon was for a rotation (or turn), diamond was for reflection (or flip) and rectangle was for translation (or slide). To practice a rotation, I had the students poke a brad through the shape so they can practice turning it and seeing how the shape looks. To practice a flip, students taped one side of the diamond to the graph paper so they could flip it over and see how the shape looks. To practice a slide, the rectangle is paper clipped to the top of the folder so they can take off the rectangle and practice sliding it around the graph paper. Very easy and cool lapbook.

Reading

This was an Easter left over of a bulletin board I had in my room. For fourth grade, students have to know the prefixes: ex-, non-, anti-, dis-, and under-. They also have to know the suffixes: -less, -ness, -ment, -en, and -ful.

To help the students review the meaning of the different prefixes/suffixes, I created an interactive bulletin board and turned it into one of the the kids' learning centers.

There are notecards in the pocket below the big egg and to either side I have string set up for students to hang their "EGGxamples" (and yes, the kids do appreciate my corniness!).

So here are some samples of what the kids made. They also had to write the meaning of what their word meant (using the definition of that prefix or suffix in their definition).

This also gave me a good chance to see which prefixes/suffixes my students are comfortable with (-ful, -less, non-, anti-) and which ones they shy away from (-ment, -en, ex-, dis-).

Science

Here is an example of a foldable we just made in class. I used this same concept in 1st grade (I just had the definitions already typed up for the kids to cut out and paste) so for all you teachers out there, this can work for intermediate or primary.

The stem of the plant is a foldable about plant parts and includes a description of the job and a drawing for what that part looks like.

The top part of the plant is about plant needs. I used the acronym PLANTS. Place to grow, Light, Air, Nutrients, Temperature, and Soil.

Sorry this got to be so long! I just had so much to share! I'll be sure to add more next week :)