S.T.E.A.M. in our Classroom

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics) has always empowered me to plan for and implement project-based learning situations that encompass all five areas and therefore promote an inclusive learning environment in which ALL of the students in my class are able to engage and contribute.  Students loved working through PBL and STEAM projects and the learning was endless.

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Math Carpet

I am so excited about my 100 square grid math carpet. I got the idea when a speaker at a math workshop that I attended over the summer spoke about it briefly. You can purchase a carpet just like this for $300.00 on the web. I didn't have $300 to purchase it so I bought a black area carpet from the Dollar Tree for $19.99... I bought 7 rolls of lime green duct tape from Michaels for $1.99 each roll!   

Students love working in Math centers and this is one of their favorite centers! They are asked to do a variety of things at this center...complete algorithms, show place values, make graphs, show commutative and identity properties, create arrays and so much more.

   

Fraction Reactions

Hi Everyone! After a few days of vacation and snow... it is back to school!

My students were having some difficulty with developing a concrete understanding of basic division...so...I thought that if I could help them to make connections between the breaking up of a whole into parts, it might make it click with division...I decided to introduce them to basic fractions.  It worked! We talked a lot about how the two (division and fractions) are related. We started with a read around which is pictured below. I placed a diagram of some circle fractions and a fraction wall into our Chalk Talk mats and asked the kids to jot what they noticed.  After a some discussion to activate and share background knowledge, it was off to our meeting area for an interactive read aloud using the text  If You Were A Fraction by T. Shaskan. We read and explored the book through a word choice lens. Students were then asked to work with their literacy partners and reread the text and pull out the POWER words. Because they are  familiar with this activity, as a part of our routine at the start of each new unit, this went quickly and was successful. We came back to the carpet to share the words that were extracted. Students shared their thinking about how they might sort the words and we completed a chart T-chart that would help them to see the relationship between division and fractions.

  

Some of the follow-up lessons were:

• RAN Chart to record What We Know/New Learning/Common Terms/Real World Math Encounters
• Vocabulary Illustrations
• Choose Two
• Connecting Blocks to Show the Fraction Center
• Pizza Fractions
• Math problem read arounds
• Math Tweets

Take a peek below at some of the activities that I had them work through.

Math...Money

Started a new math unit of study on Money...take a peek!