The One with Bridges and Teaching Gods

This entire blog was written with Shake It Off on repeat so I kindly recorded a bit for you so our brains could both be in the same place. And yes, on repeat for a record player means moving the needle every 3 minutes.  It times nicely with my attention span. (I won’t tell you how long a blog can take from start to finish) 

This blog was meant to come out last Wednesday but for once my procrastination has a bright side! Wednesday was our zoo trip and we returned with 45 minutes of instruction. What’s a girl to do when 24 eight year olds are still in zoo mode? Pull out the STEM labs!

Next year I plan to implement #STEMFriday and as usual my excitement and brain went faster than my calendar and #STEMWednesday was created.

A HUGE shout out to my new favorite TpTer – Teachers areTerrific – she has amazing STEM products and I went a little overboard once I found her. 

Back to Wednesday – for our first STEM activity we I decided to have the kiddos build bridges out of index cards. My reason was very thought out and methodical…index cards were easier to find than spaghetti and marshmallows in my supply closet. In this STEM activity we only needed scissors, 25 index cards, and weighted pieces. NO CARDBOARD, NO GLUE GUNS, NO SPRAY PAINT, AND NO GLITTER. Ask me how I feel about that.

Here comes reason 1 of 3490843 why I love Teachers are Terrific – she has everything laid out to a T! Following her expert advice we launched the activity using just a few index cards to understand how to bending the index cards can give more support and weight than a plan index card. 

I think in Teachers are Terrific’s neat and organized classroom would have taken about 5 minutes? In Room 21 after a day at the zoo in May that was our left over time for the day. It worked nicely though because everyone was ready to build the next day and ideas were already developing. 

Day 2

The “today’s behavior will determine our ability to do STEM activities for the rest of the year” spiel had been given and we were ready to build bridges! I gave students about 10 minutes to start and explore in their own groups. After that we shared a few things we learned and tips and went back to work for another 15 minutes. The creativity, innovations, and competitiveness was intense! Our strongest bridge held 184 grams. In the future I would probably give them even less cards because they probably could have added more weight but we ran out! 

The second half of #STEMThursday is where the real magic happened! (I’m more determined to make this hashtag a thing than Gretchen Wieners and the word “fetch”) We had a little bit of time to go into the extend part of the product! To be honest, I first did this to tie it all together and because we had an extra 20 minutes – I’m so glad we did!! 

There were many different extend activities but I chose to have my kids research. They LOVE getting on “the google” and learning all they can about a specific thing, whether it’s bees, electric cars, or today – bridges.

I had each student raise their hand (eyes closed of course) for three different research projects. They were then broken up into groups of 2-4 to begin their research. This is where I re-thank my lucky stars for all the technology I have in my classroom! 

Groups researched:

• The World’s Greatest: Tallest, Widest, and Most Expensive

• Types of Bridges: Covered, Platform, and Suspension

• Specific Bridges: Brooklyn Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, and the Navajo Bridge

Their desire to learn everything they can is what I love most about this group! The information they gathered was so impressive! Tons and tons of facts and stories were in their notes.

Day 3 

On Friday we had Junior Achievement all day except the last 40 minutes – again 40 minutes to go on a Friday in May? STEM is a lifesaver. We stayed motivated and learning and you could only 78% tell we were nearing the weekend. 

Students continued their research and started to think about how they wanted to present their research to the rest of the class. Some even asked for more resources! (YAY!) So I picked up about 10 children’s books on bridges. 

Unfortunately some of us thought every research project ended in a replica out of cardboard. “But isn’t the Golden Gate Bridge important enough to be a replica?” (I didn’t know a hunk of metal could guilt trip me) We’ll see how nice I am throughout the week if I let them come in before school to work on it. Other groups want to create a PowerPoint and include videos about their bridges. 

And to think, this wasn’t even the original plan?? I love when the Teaching Gods have my back yet again. 

PS. Tomorrow is our Dr. Seuss themed Field Day! Can you guess what book my class picked?! 

The One with a Birthday!

Today was my favorite birthday to celebrate all year… the amazing Dr. Seuss! The kids know him as my favorite genius in the whole world and we loved getting to put the spotlight on his works! 

But first, we took the first part of our standardized tests. Woah! Talk about two different classroom environments. I tried to lighten the mood with some encouraging words and a little Katy Perry before...I'll let you know in a few months if it helped. 

Since our day was cut drastically short because of testing our entire week in Literacy will be dedicated to this great author. (Not like it would be too hard, there isn’t enough time in a week to learn everything we could about him!)

Here’s a peek into our day/week…Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! 

To start our day we read Bartholomew and the Oobleck. I love this one because *most* my kiddos haven't read it before. They are always on the edge of their seats. In pairs they worked on comprehension and short response questions. And somehow they don't ever see it coming that we make Oobleck! Surprise! Today's batch came out a little too watery but it was still fun! 

As one kiddo put it, "It kind of just feels like green water, but I can imagine it!" A for effort, right?

 

With P.E. and ELD in the afternoon Oobleck was a large chunk of our Dr. Seuss Day. During ELD (English Language Development) we did more to celebrate! Students read a reader's theater based on Green Eggs and Ham. We are working on expression, fluency, and for fun...props! We will share our skits tomorrow.

 The rest of the week we will continue to read different Seuss books and do little comprehension activities! Here's just a peak: 

Suessville ... a fun Seuss website (the next few days we will have indoor recess for weather) it's already downloaded to use on the iPads and computer. 

 Family Feud ... fun and silly PowerPoints that get kids thinking about Dr. Seuss, rhyming words, and fun questions.  

 

Dr. Seuss Biography ... One from TpT  (free!) and one on Superteacher with an account.

Book Apps ... I also went a little way overboard with my iTunes gift cards and bought quite a few Dr. Seuss books for our iPads. My tutoring kids tested them out... love the extra features like vocabulary words and being able to click on any picture and see the word. 

And finally... no birthday would be complete with out a treat! These will be passed out throughout the week. Can you tell which book they belong with?! (Don't tell me if you can't) 

Thanks for reading and I hope you were able to celebrate Seuss today!