Fractions, Music, and Art

This week seems to have gone by very quickly.  In math this week, we started our unit on Fractions.  We talked about how fractions are part of a whole.  The students made their own fraction booklets that show 1 whole, two halves, three-thirds, and four-fourths.

The class has also been having fun with singing our fraction song, "Fractions Down on the Farm."

We have also begun the process of making fraction kites where the students have colored in a 5x5 grid in different colors.  Then they had to write a math sentence about their kite by telling which fraction of their kites were which colors.  (Pictures to follow next week when they are complete.)

Our story for this week in Language Arts was, "Ah, Music" by Aliki.     I personally, had a really fun time teaching this story.  It was a great review of what our class did for the Second Grade Christmas Performance.  We talked about performances, volume, and tempo of music.  This non-fiction piece of writing was a great way to spiral back to some events that our class actually participated in.

To take our story even further this week, we did a little bit of painting.  I showed the students some pictures of the Northern Lights and we talked about how they are formed.  Then I put on some music and the students painted their own Northern Lights based on how the music made them feel.  It was very interesting to see how different the Northern Lights could look from different perspectives.  

Have a fun and safe three-day weekend!

Fraction Finishers and E-Mail Usage

The last two weeks in the classroom have been very busy, which is why it has taken me so long to post.  In math we have finished up our unit on fractions.  The class made fraction kites.  The kids were given a 5 x 5 grid and were able to color it any way they chose, as long as they used at least 3 different colors.  While this was fun to color in our kites, it was definitely more than that.  The class had to look at their individual kite that they colored and then write which fraction of their kite was each color.  Take a look at our wall of lovely kites!

For the final finishing touches on our fraction unit, we were able to enjoy a fruit pizza.  Earlier in the week during our English Language Arts centers we had read an informative text of a recipe for Fruit Pizza.  After reading about it in centers and identifying fractions within the recipe itself, we had a chance to cut our own fruit pizza into equal parts.  

After we divided into equal parts so that everyone in class got a piece, each student was able to decorate their slice of fruit pizza with whatever toppings they wanted.  Before students could eat their fruit pizza, they had to answer a fraction question that was similar to, "What fraction of your toppings are bananas (or other fruit)?"  You can see the yummy results of fruit pizza.

 

 

Also, many of the students have been requesting the recipe for fruit pizza.  Here it is:

Fruit Pizza

Dough:

1 roll of Pillsbury Sugar Cookie Dough

Frosting:

1 Cup of sugar

8 oz. of cream cheese

8 oz. Cool Whip

1 can of crushed pineapple (drained)

Toppings:

Mandarin oranges

Kiwi

Banana

Strawberries

Blue berries

Grapes

1.        Roll out the Pillsbury Sugar Cookie dough onto a pizza pan.  Bake dough according to package directions.

2.       Mix all of the ingredients for the frosting together.  Spread over the rolled out cookie dough.

3.       Top with fruit pieces.

This last Friday for our STEAM Friday, we had a lesson on how to read your e-mail, send e-mail, and clear out any unwanted e-mails.  The students had to clear out their old e-mails and then send me an e-mail telling me about their favorite part of the day.  (Most of the e-mails mentioned something about fruit pizza.)  After the students were done with their e-mail jobs, they were able to go to our class Symbaloo site.  Here they are able to quickly click on a link that is approved by me or is one that we use in class at various times.  The link to our class symbaloo page is here.  The items circled on this picture were where the students were able to go and explore on their own this last week.  Using this web mix we had some students doing coding online, while others were working on their typing skills, and still others were playing educational games.

It has been a good couple of weeks for the Busy Bees!

Perfect Passwords

This last week we had a digital citizenship lesson on how to create safe and usable passwords.  As a class we had a great discussion about things we can include in a password and things we really shouldn't include.  Our discussion also consisted of why we should create passwords that are both strong and safe.  Take a look at what we were able to come up with concerning creating passwords.

We also took a look at a website called dinopass.com that creates strong and safe passwords for kids.  As we were given different passwords from dinopass we discussed why they would be valid passwords.

I had a wonderful lunch on Wednesday afternoon with two of our class members who spent some Class Dojo points.  Here are the happy guys!  Good job and keep up the great work!

This week in math we started our unit on fractions.  We did a group project as if we were working in a sandwich shop and had to come up with different ways to cut the sandwiches if it were for more than one person.  This was a bit of a challenge, but the groups were able to see how to cut things into equal parts and that the more parts you have (or our denominator in the fraction) means a smaller portion of the whole.  The students first drew out how the sandwiches would be cut and then we had a competition with cutting some construction paper as our sandwiches.  

Congratulations to our winning "sandwich makers"!

To finish off the week we had a combination of math and art and created Fraction Fish.  The class was given different fractions of circles including whole, halves, thirds, fourths, sixths, and eighths.  They had to use the different fraction templates to cut out shapes that they could form into fish.  They turned out really well and the class seemed to be more appreciative of fractions when they realized they didn't want all of their fish to be one giant circle!

I look forward to this next week as we wrap up our unit on fractions as there will be some very exciting events to help the students learn more about fractions and what they represent!