Day 72- Once Upon a Time....

Once upon a time, in a land no too far away, (it's just right down the Interstate from where I live in Ringgold) there was a magical land known to all as Clifton Hills Elementary.

It was a happy land, full of knowledge and promise of a bright future. It's in this magical land where we find General Delk's Army.

(What can I say? They're an excited bunch)

Now General Delk's Army had been studying geometric shapes during their math time, and they had some trouble finding one of the 3-D shapes they needed. This shape was very elusive and only wanted to show itself in strange places and situations; like birthday parties or construction zones. 

But the valiant (and stubborn) General Delk was not going to settle for anything but that specific shape. So she scoured the land (her house) for the mysterious shape. No stone, or couch cushion, was left unturned! But alas, none such shape could be found. After deciding to hang her head in defeat, for the shape proved too hard to find, in walked the Princess.

(That would be my daughter. She takes her Princess status very seriously.)

Behold! What is that on her Highness' head? Could it be?... Yes! It is! The shape we have been searching for! General Delk begged the Princess for permission to borrow the shape in order to share it with her soldiers, and the princess graciously granted the request. (After a payment of 3 Skittles)

And thus is the story of how General Delk found... the Cone.

No joke, this shape took forever to find. I know that my students had an image of a cone in their heads since they could name objects in everyday life that have the cone shape, but it's nice to have a physical point of reference.And, yes, I did wear the party hat for the entire lesson. :)

Building on our knowledge of shapes, we introduced 2 new vocabulary words today: vertices and flat sides. Now parents, think back to geometry in high school. Remember that a vertex is the corner of an angle.

Well, vertices is the plural of vertex. So, vertices are the corners of a shape. The flat side is also called the 'face' of a shape. In the picture, the red sides are the faces.

We looked at 3-D shapes and counted vertices and faces.
This lesson did not take long. My students picked up in the objective easily and we found ourselves with 20 extra minutes at the end. Never one to waste a minute, we pulled out the paddle boards and markers and reviewed fact families. ( I can tell my students are practicing at home! Yea!)

We always play boys against girls, and today the girls won! Being the good little soldiers they are, they demanded to know what their prize was for winning. Well, I was stumped because my treasure box was running low. But... my girls did seem to love the Princess hat. Hmmm...

Introducing..... the best and brightest of Clifton Hills Elementary... the Princesses of General Delk's Army!

The boys asked what they would have gotten if they had won, and I replied, "Well, you could have been Pretty Princesses too. It's a good thing the girls won!"

In science we watched a little of the video Ben and Me. We didn't watch the whole thing because we are not studying Benjamin Franklin as a politician, just as a scientist and inventor. The first half of the video focused on his inventions and research.

Watch the video and see if your student can name the inventions that Franklin invented, and what he studied.

We also watched videos that Mr. Russell made in his college classes on Benjamin Franklin. They were great, and my students loved them. (the music was fun!) Unfortunately, I forgot to ask Russell's permission to post them on this blog. I'll remember for tomorrow's post!

Our Daily Brain

Celebrity Story Saturday 6

Today's celebrity... General Delk! That's right, it's me! Filmed at a special location- my home! I guess I can tell you a little about myself.
This is my 7th year teaching at Clifton Hills. I spent 6 years in 2nd grade and this is my first year in 1st. I work with an awesome team and have a wonderful faculty of supporters.

Today's book is Tea for Ruby. I got this book at our Book Fair that we just had at school. It was written by Sarah Ferguson, who is the Duchess of York. (remember when we studied Royalty earlier this year? She's part of the British Royal Family!)

Please excuse the crazy hair. It was late when I finally got to do this. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXhaeh6IhSc

Day 8- SECRET PROJECT almost done!

I apologize for getting this post a day late. I didn't get home until late yesterday. Let's see if I can remember yesterday...

We began our day in the gym where the kids learned about Mr. Burney's rules and regulations for PE. Our specials time is currently at 8:00, but Mr. Evans assures me that it will change soon since there are still a lot of kids in the cafeteria eating breakfast at that time.

After PE, we went to the room and revisited our KWL on Royalty. I remembered to take the chart home, and I did a little research. You would not believe how many royals are in the world today! Kings, Queens, Emperors, Sultans, Sheiks; you name it!
I made a Power Point to share with the class, and you can check it out HERE, plus you can check out this website for a complete list of the Royals of the World! (the information on the PPT, I got from this site, and Google)

http://www.nobledynasty.com/worldroyalfamilies.htm

I chose to use Queen Elizabeth II's picture for the link because when I went researching, I could find more answers to my students' questions in her information. In a brilliant marketing strategy, the British Royal family has photo documented everything! Palaces, jewels, clothes, paintings and sculptures, and the stables! The students and I got to take a virtual tour of the stables! If you want to take a tour of the many homes of the Queen, check out this website here...

http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/

I think the kids had a great time Ohhing and Aahhing over the pictures. We also looked into the King of Morocco and his family

 And the Emperor of Japan. Did you know that Japan has the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world? That's pretty cool!

 After the Power Point, we finished our chart by filling in what we learned. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it before I left. I'll get it Monday! I can say that a lot of what they learned revolved around the stables. They really were impressed with the horses!

From Royalty to the alphabet... we worked on our SECRET PROJECT and created illustrations for our book. My soldiers really took this project seriously. They worked very hard to make sure everything is perfect.

 

Their job was to illustrate an animal and write, in their best handwriting, the information about that animal. They did a great job. I collected them, laminated it all, and will finish the binding on Monday before our Library time. Here it is.

I made an invitation for Mr. Evans, and here is yours!

You, the Parents of General Delk's Army, are invited to a Book Dedication!

When: Monday at 9:30

Where: CHES Library

We are dedicating our ABC Animals book to the Library and Mr. Evans will be the first person to read it all put together. There will be video of the event! 

After lunch we worked on math. We are using a different math adoption from last year; this year we have enVision Math. I like it, the kids really seem to like it, so far we have had no problems with it. However, yesterday we seemed to hit our first snag. The first set of lessons revolve around the students being able to make groups of objects, from 1-12. We have been practicing turning objects into numbers. * some of my students even came back to school after one lesson and told me that they magically turned things around the house into numbers! I was so proud!

So, I decided to let them play a game after Friday's lesson. The game involved dominoes, a pencil and paper. The students were to choose a domino, write down the numbers in a math equation, and solve the problem by counting the dots on the domino. Here is my example.

We practiced in the ELMO (fancy over-head projector), I put an example on the board for reference, I thought we were set! I was very, very wrong. Within 3 minutes of starting the game I had 5 students at my table saying they had no clue what to do. *Sigh* After I took up their papers, I realized that 80% of the kids had no clue.
I am not discouraged! We will persevere! We will be doing a Domino of the Day as part of our calendar time. The students need to be able to take something as simple as a domino, take number information from it, and turn it into a number sentence. We will keep practicing here at school, but let's show the kids that numbers are everywhere!

Tip for home: I know you might not have a set of dominoes at your home (I know I don't have any at mine!) but numbers are everywhere! Have the kids count out their cereal in the morning. Let them line up the shoes in the house and put them in groups of a certain number. Let them count the spoons, let them separate the kitchen utensils, let them count the pockets on everyone's pants... be creative! If you have a deck of cards, play War with the number cards (not the face cards), and have the student add the numbers on the cards; if he or she can add them correctly, they can keep the cards, if he or she can't the cards go to you!

I want my soldiers to be able to see the world mathematically, as well as scientifically and through literature. And if we can trick the kids into learning while playing, well, I'll never let them in on that little secret. :)

Our Daily Brain

Day 6- I Wonder...

One of the things that kids are great at is asking questions. They ask them all day! When is lunch? What time do we go home? When do we go to the bathroom? Who are you again?

I took advantage of their natural inquisitiveness during reading today. We worked on making "I wonder" statements. We have been working on using ABC books as informational texts and I chose a great book to jump-start their brains...

 The great thing about this book is that all the kids already have a picture of "Princess" in their heads; thank you, Disney! I started a KWL chart titled 'Royalty'. I explained that Royalty means people who have a royal title like Princess; and I pointed to the book. Then I asked them what they KNOW about people like Princesses.

As you can see, they knew a lot about royalty! These are some of their answers...
dress up- clothes and shoes
crown/ tiara
King, Queen, Prince
castle
Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella
stories- frogs, kissing

From here, I asked them to tell me what they WONDER about royalty. Again, I was pleased by the thoughtfulness of their answers. Students had to start their answers with, "I wonder..."
I wonder about the color of their shoes. Are they pretty?
I wonder if they are different colors? (I verified that the student was asking about different races)
I wonder where are their castles?
I wonder... do they watch tv; do they go to school; do they have different flags; do the have special colors; what do they eat...

After we filled out the K and L of the chart, we read the book. What I like about this book is that it is full of fiction and nonfiction. The kids connected to the pages that talked about fairy tales since they are familiar with Disney stories, and they learned about real royals from different time periods. Quite a few of our 'I wonder' questions were answered! Tomorrow we will re-visit the book and students will help me fill out the LEARNED section.

During science, I told the kids that we are going to start a TOP SECRET PROJECT. Top secret from whom, you might ask? From Mr. Evans! We are going to work on this project for the rest of the week during science, and SURPRISE Mr. Evans with it!
We are making... An ABC book of animals we know!! The key to making the book is that we have to know something about the animals we are going to use. Our book is to be an informational ABC book; so we have to know our information! Here are the animals we have so far... (the board is really long, so I had to take 2 pictures)

Each letter will have an animal, the animal's classification, and one thing the animal can do. I was very impressed with my soldiers! They added different mammals, reptiles and amphibians; but they also added insects! We haven't gone over insects yet, but my students knew how to classify them!
The plan is to finish the list tomorrow, type and illustrate on Friday and SURPRISE Mr. Evans with it on Monday. Wish us luck!!

Our Daily Brain