Digging for Fossils in the Classroom

When we started our fossil unit, I wanted to spark my kids’ excitement!
I asked my kids to come up to the carpet- a typical request- but then, I asked them to make two columns with some space in the middle. They were a little confused, but complied.

As they sat down, I started my monologue:
“Please ensure your seats are in the full upright position and all carry-on items have been stowed in the overhead bins or under the seat in front of you. The captain requires that you fasten your seatbelts and turn off all electronic devices until we reach cruising altitude. In case of an emergency, exits are located at the front of the airplane and over the wings. Thank you for flying Garwoodington Air.”
Then, I showed this YouTube video of a plane taking off.

My kids LOVED this! (Yes, even in 4th grade.) They mimicked shutting off their cell phones, buckling their seatbelts, and even shouted out when their ears “popped!”
After the plane took off, I told them, “You may now get out your electronic devices, but this flight goes surprisingly  fast.”
I then turned away, and as I started the next video, covered my mouth with my fist to muffle it. “This is your captain speaking. As we begin our final approach, you can see the mountains in the distance, and the wide open skies that this state is so famous for. Please remain in your seats until the plane comes to a complete stop. We hope you enjoy your stay in beautiful Montana!”

As the plane “lands,” I move to the front of the seats and direct the students to move into the aisle and disembark. Then, they “drive” out to our dig site for the day (back to their tables) and I change the screen to show a photo of Montana and then of a paleontology dig site.
From there, we went through The Great Fossil Find, a mock paleontology dig from Indiana University. (Did I mention it’s free?)

I read from the script they provided to set the stage for each “day,” and my kids “dug” bones out of these envelopes a few at a time. As they found new bones, my little paleontologists had to change their configuration and predictions.

I loved this lesson for the excitement it brought- from sitting in a “plane,” to digging up bones, to the moment of discovery when my kids saw how the bones fit together! It was such an engaging way to kick off the unit!
Even better, I felt like the lesson not only taught some content, but also gave my kids a truer sense of what life as a scientist might really be like- needing to work as a team, revising your ideas as you find new evidence, not being able to check your work with an answer key, the need for patience, and the moment of frustration when they had to leave the rest of the bones inside the envelope!

I did type out a more 4th grade-friendly version of the Fossil Journal for my students, which you can download here: Mock Fossil Dig Handout

All other downloads are available from IU here: http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/gr.fs.fd.html
Even if you aren’t teaching fossils, I highly recommend taking 5 minutes at the start of class to “fly” to a destination. It really sets the stage for a fun and interactive virtual field trip that could take you anywhere- to learn about holidays around the world, to visit important landforms or historical landmarks, or even to visit the scene of a story.

Take the time to make learning come alive. It doesn’t always take costumes and elaborate props- sometimes it’s as simple as prompting kids to use their imaginations!

Bright Ideas Blog Hop- Get Kids Moving (And Still Learning!)

Today, I’m so excited to be part of a blog hop of great ideas- not products, not freebies, but just fantastic teaching ideas!

I don’t know about where you live, but we have had many MANY days of indoor recess lately. With having gym only one day a week, my kids are really getting antsy!

As a reading specialist who helps our struggling readers, I seem to see a decent number of kids who struggle with sitting still and/or focusing on the task at hand, even without the cold and snow keeping them inside.

Here are 8 ways to get kids moving to keep their brains active:

• Math Fact Exercise!
  Skip counting is such a valuable skill, and can be ramped up for kids of all ages. Of course, you can count by 1’s, 5’s, 10’s, etc., but what about starting at 14 and adding ten more? What about counting by 3’s when you’re learning multiplication, or by 25’s when you’re learning about money? I have my students stand and do some kind of exercise while we skip count- jumping jacks, touching their toes, jumping in place, etc.

• Brain Breaks
  My kids really enjoy the Just Dance videos on YouTube! I have a whole Pinterest board of brain breaks that get my students up and moving for 3-5 minutes, and it really helps them focus for the next hour. A kindergarten teacher I know even does the Cupid Shuffle, so her kids are counting and having to remember left from right. My kids especially love GoNoodle for LOTS of fun, interactive, and free brain breaks!
  
• Vocabulary Motions
  As a bonus, tying some movement to the definition really helps my kids remember the word meanings. In my classroom, the students help me come up with a motion for the words and we run through them quickly every day. You can read more about my vocabulary routine here.

• Chart Paper Brainstorming
  Can you let your students make a list of something? Maybe it’s proper nouns, words with short o, ways to make 10, factors of 100, or comparing and contrasting with a Venn diagram. Give each group markers, a piece of chart paper, and a section of the floor. Working on the floor always helps my class with the wiggles, and they all love to participate!
  
• Tall-Middle-Small Spelling
  Have your kids practice spelling their words by thinking about where they sit on handwriting lines. For “tall” letters, like t or b, they reach hands up high. For “middle” letters, they put their hands on their hips. For “small” letters, they touch their toes. You can also have kids sit in pairs and “spell” a word with their finger on the other student’s back, and see if they can guess the word.
  
• Scoot! with Dance Breaks
  Need students to get a lot of rote practice with something, or need to formatively assess their understanding? Put each problem or question on one card, and one card on each desk. Then, have the students stand and “scoot” from one desk to the other after 30 seconds or so. I sometimes turn on music and let them dance when they’re finished- makes it easy for me to see when most are ready to move on, and they get the wiggles out! (You can find lots of ready-made games like this by searching for “Scoot” or “task cards.”)

• Phonics Dance
  This is a program my school purchased, and it gives kids motions and chants for lots of common phonics patterns that they will encounter in reading. I love the way it makes phonics “stick” for my students- but it also gives them a chance to move!
  
• Read/ Write/Solve the Room
  Sometimes the simple act of turning an assignment into a scavenger hunt by having students find words/ math facts/ questions posted around the room can make such a difference in how well my students can sit and focus afterwards- and they’re still getting the practice!

• Geometry Challenges
  Give your students a challenge to make a certain shape somehow with their bodies. They can use their fingers, their arms, their legs, or their entire torso- but somehow, can they make a square? A trapezoid? An isosceles triangle?  Making geometry interactive is so much fun!

Love finding ways to get my kids moving AND learning!

Next in the hop, you’re headed to Matt of Digital: Divide and Conquer, who’s sharing a simple tech tip for your classroom!



You can click to some other bloggers here:

Pizza Box Jenga Game

You might remember that I’m subbing for our ESL teacher in the afternoons for a few weeks. She is an amazing teacher and introduced me to a simple but fun learning game!

She often uses it to review vocabulary, but the great part about this game? You can review just about ANYTHING with it!

To get started, you need a few pizza boxes and four times as many cups as pizza boxes. Some pizza places will be happy to give you a few fresh boxes as a donation, and any kind of plastic cup will do.

You’re going to stack them sort of Jenga-style- four cups holding up each pizza box. Ask a question to a student, and if they get it right, they get to pull a cup out of the stack.

Of course, you can pull out a few cups and have the tower keep standing. But after awhile…

… the tower falls!

If you want the game to go on longer, you can keep points for how many times each team makes the tower fall.

Of course, the kids LOVE when the tower goes tumbling everywhere! This is such a simple review game… perfect for those last few days before break : ) It’s also perfect for test prep in a fun, active way!

What kinds of things do you review before kids go on winter break?

Old West Day

My class filled their cotton ball jar and got to choose a reward. They picked "Old West Day." (Yup- 100% their idea.)

So we turned off the technology, dressed old-fashioned, and took a Western spin on learning a little more like kids long ago might have learned.

Yeeeehaw! Here are some snapshots of our day.

First, I wrote a poem about a cowboy on the board and the students had to copy it in their best penmanship and then try to memorize it. SIX of them were able to do that!

Of course, we did a little reading comprehension, too, and talked about the meanings of some words, like "harkin'"and "brand."

Next, we played a game called Gold Rush, and talked a little about how that was some people's reason for moving out West.

In my hat, I put pieces of "gold" with different values and let each kid draw one. Then, the boys and the girls, who were sitting on opposite sides of the room in rows (a la one room schoolhouse), combined their totals to see who got more gold.

While the kids were out at a special, one of my kids' moms came in with a couple of decorations.

And she was sweet enough to make them some trail mix, too! She had also stopped by Texas Roadhouse and they donated enough hats for every kid to have one- so awesome!

She even gave them a little cow eraser so they could be true cowboys and cowgirls.

Next up, we got out slates and chalk.

Now, we use white boards and markers, but this was still apparently a fun treat! We did some handwriting and some "arithmetic" that they copied off the board.

In the afternoon, we wrote campfire stories. Each student wrote a sentence and then passed it on to the next person in their row.

To signal when to pass, I used this awesome, authentic farm bell, borrowed from the same awesome parent.

Then, we gathered around the construction-paper-and-tissue-paper campfire and shared our stories.

It was definitely a fun day, and it was perfect for a couple of days until Spring Break just after 3 days of state testing! And, of course, we ALL had a blast dressing the part.

Am I a mean teacher because I keep taking my kids' rewards and turning them into learning experiences? :)

 

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Back to Real Teaching! Five for Friday

It's Five for Friday (on a Saturday).

It was a long week. Coming back from spring break was tough enough, but I spent a loooot of time in meetings or talking to parents or trying to solve drama. Does anyone else think "family mode" hits around this time of year and your kids start bickering like siblings?

At least we finished up round 2 of state testing (just one more to go!), and I finally feel like I got a chance to teach again!

We got out tangrams for the first time this week, and my kids had a blast trying to solve some puzzles.

We spent an afternoon trying to clean up mini oil spills. (You can read more about it here!)

We used Loreen Leedy's "Symmetry is Egg-citing!" product from TpT. (I wrote more about it last year here.) It's such a great authentic assessment for symmetry, and will look great in the hallway with some Easter grass next week!

My kids tested out some glider designs this week.

Of course, once they designed one, we had to fly them in some trials and compare their success to that of a control glider. (Such fun measuring practice!)

And now... (sigh)... It's a report card weekend. Time to power through some grading! Make sure you link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to show us a little about your week!

P.S.- My linky closes soon! Don't forget to link up and share your...

 

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Think Outside the Box! – Hands-On Geometry

We have been having a blast learning about geometry in my class! We started by learning about patterns, and we made Winter Carnival decorations at the same time…

These were inspired by Camille from An Open Door, and she offered a great link to download printable pattern block shapes, too!

It was a great “blizzard” for the hallway (and incredibly simple for me to prepare!)

Our math vocabulary board is overflowing! 3rd grade geometry adds a LOT more concepts. We go from faces, edges, vertices, and basic identification to suddenly learning about lines, angles, and classifying into polygons and types of triangles. (Not to mention the next chapter, which adds congruency, symmetry, and more.)

Because my kids don’t really have shape/ solid names and faces/ edges/ vertices quite down yet, we spent Valentine’s morning making toothpick and marshmallow shapes, angles, and solids.

I really got to challenge their understanding- after some “easy” ones, I gave them ones they hadn’t memorized, like trapezoidal prism, to see if they really understood what a “prism” was. For the tough ones, they worked with their neighbors to figure out what the solid was AND how to make it.

To learn the new vocabulary, we’re doing TONS of partner talk, writing to explain, and hands-on learning. We’re also doing small amounts of Whole Brain Teaching-inspired definitions with motions, and trying to make it concrete as much as possible.

One very fidgety day, I split students into groups of 4 or 5 and had them use their bodies as teams to make shapes.

Some students laid down and used their whole bodies, others sat down and used their legs, and some stood and used their arms. Nearly every group found a different way to make the shapes, but having a group of 4 make, say, a pentagon really required some creativity. They also did a lot of explaining to one another and needing to work as a team, and of course it made a great excuse to get up and move around!

Most of my ideas aren’t new, but my students have been loving this unit! How do you “think outside the box” to help your students learn geometry in a more concrete way?

P.S.—Thanks to everyone who picked up my free fonts and especially those of you who left feedback and followed my new TpT store! :) You made my day.

Photo Dump!

I love that Miss Nelson is running her monthly Teacher’s Gonna Snap! linky party. It gives me an excuse to post all the old pictures of stuff we’ve done over the last few weeks! Please, feel free to pin for next year, when I’m not way too late for these ideas to be helpful to you!

Here’s what we’ve been doing lately!

Weekly Must Do’s board is new, and I’m loving it. Our CRAFT board (thank you Ladybug’s Teacher Files and Sisters!) and Reading Response journals are going really well, too, and the pile of 6 books are the new books I got from the book fair (thank you Parent Council- they give us a gift certificate every year!)

Our fall party snack and some favorite pumpkin book reports…

And finally, some of the work from our government unit:

(Thanks for the citizen freebie and branches of government flipbook, Fourth and Ten!)

And finally, how cool is this?!

Yes, that’s me with Jack Hanna. Not a school event, but so, so cool to get to meet him!

Make sure you go link up with Miss Nelson!