So...it's been awhile! I hope you haven't given up on me. I have been so overwhelmed since I came home from my cousin's wedding - there's just so much to do! It took me awhile to get caught up with everything that happened while I was gone, and since our STAAR reading and math tests are coming up in just 8 days, I've been crazy busy trying to plan a fun review week for next week. Standardized tests are zero fun, that's all there is to it, so I want to make sure my class is able to enjoy themselves during the review/prep days before they're forced to sit in silence for four hours for two days in a row.
But - I didn't come here to write a post to rant about standardized tests - I wanted to show you some of the fun things we've been up to these past few weeks. We finished up our geometry unit by learning all about 3D shapes, and my kids had a blast building the different shapes with play dough and spaghetti!
Then, while searching Pinterest for more geometry ideas, I cam across this activity from Heather over at Loose Shoelaces, and my kids LOVED it! It literally took my students ALL day to create their castles, but they were engaged the whole time, and, even though a lot of my students did not correctly calculate the total number of edges, faces, and vertices in their castle on the first try, once I told them which calculations were wrong, they were able to correct their numbers by actually looking at/touching the different parts of their castle, which was awesome. Love me some hands on activities!
I know that's not much of an update, but that's about all the time I can spare right now! I'm off to spend the rest of my day at school to prep for our review week. Since I decided to go with a theme, it makes planning easier, but I'd like to get everything ready today so that I'm not scrambling every day after school to make copies or figure out what to do next! Have a great week, y'all!
I just happened across your blog this afternoon, and boy am I glad! =) Everything looks great, I love the idea of creating the shapes using spaghetti and play dough, I never would have thought of that! When you had your students create their castles, did you have some sort of shape template for them to use? Or did they have directions they had to follow to create them? I'm new to blogging, and am loving all of the ideas I am coming across! Check out my blog sometime =)
ReplyDeletehttp://cantmakethisstuffup-hmichaud.blogspot.com/
Hi there! Good question - I had print outs of the different shapes for the kids to cut out and assemble themselves. While that did require a lot of copies (which I hate), I realized that what I had originally planned to do (which was going to be to make several laminated templates for the kids to trace) would have taken WAY longer and would have ultimately been more frustrating, because the template they'd trace wouldn't allow them to trace where the folds should be. So, I ended up having to make a bunch of copies, but the masterpieces they were able to create because of it was worth it. :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't know where the patterns came from that I used, but they are very similar to the ones available here:
http://www.senteacher.org/wk/3dshape.php
Hope that helps! Thanks for letting me know you stopped by - I'll check out your blog for sure!