Albert Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
In this blog I will write my thoughts for myself and others. I intend to look at teaching and learning from the viewpoint of doing the greatest things in the most minimalistic way. In other words, how can one do teaching that matters without all the fluff that interferes. Blog by Jim Hansen.
Showing posts with label Teachers Pay Teachers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teachers Pay Teachers. Show all posts
Here is your opportunity to win a Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card. The gift card was given to me to promote the two day Teachers Pay Teachers sale happening on November 28-28. Everything in my Teachers Pay Teachers store will be 20% off, plus Teachers Pay Teachers will take another 10% off that price.
Each bundle has 15 games and upon completion of each game, a student can earn a monster reward card. These have been a hit in my classroom! There are 15 monster cards to collect.
Here are the 15 monsters that kids can collect. Which is your favorite?
There are four easy ways to enter. You may enter here. The contest closes on November 20 at 12 am.
I usually don't get notes from my students, although sometimes I find them on the floor like this one that I found last year!
The Friday before Halloween, I did two new things in my classroom to celebrate. I used these Silly and Sweet Reward Cards that I created to have some fun throughout the day and in the afternoon I had my class make "Pumpkin Shooters" as a STEM challenge.
On Monday, I got two notes from different students. I thought they might have enjoyed the afternoon shooting candy corn pumpkins across the room. No, they enjoyed the reward coupons.
OK, we are going to work on spelling my name
and other words!
I had a blast with the reward coupons, too. In fact, I had made a set of Thanksgiving Reward Coupons before I had made the Halloween ones. I can't wait to use these next week. I am looking forward to kids talking like pilgrims, strutting like turkeys, and shaking their tail feathers! I am going to hand them out when each students finishes the Thanksgiving Math Scavenger Hunt that I made. Then I hope things get a bit comical for the rest of the day!
I did say that I rarely get notes from my student's, but I often get letters from the students in the Mathare Valley slum in Nairobi, Kenya that I have visited with three times now and help sponsor. One boy, Gregory, sent me a picture he drew of me riding my ElliptiGO. This week, ElliptiGO did a feature article on my ride up Mt. Washington and my work in Kenya, including Gregory in the article.You can read it here: So Much Depends Upon... You can read more about the poems I used in while Kenya here: Storytelling through poetry writing modeled after "The Red Wheelbarrow."
I had fun putting together another math scavenger hunt. I have geared this one more to the fourth grade common core standards, but my fifth graders not only enjoyed it, but were challenged by it. I have been to Kenya three times since 2011 to help teach in the Mathare Valley slum of Nairobi. On each trip, I have gone on a weekend safari to the either Masai Mara or the Amboseli National Parks. There I was privileged to see the beautiful African wildlife in all its natural glory. I will be making a few more math scavenger hunts using these African animals as my inspiration to write interesting articles with embedded math problems. You can find my giraffe scavenger hunt here: End of Year Math Review Scavenger Hunt Grades 4-5 Gigantic Giraffes.
Last summer, while I was in Nairobi I visited a baby elephant sanctuary and a giraffe sanctuary where I took the time to get kissed by a giraffe. One thing that I learned before letting the giraffe get his lips close to mine is that the giraffe's mouth has no germs as it is anti-septic. It still didn't make the experience a bit weird.
I also learned how heavy a giraffe's lower leg bones are. The fibula and tibia are fused together and the bones are solid. They can kick in any direction, which keeps all but the hungriest lion away as they can kill a lion with one kick!
Here you go!
I learned plenty of other interesting facts putting this scavenger hunt together. I found what a giraffe can do with its long tongue pretty fascinating. Those facts are included in the scavenger hunt. Here are a couple of facts that I did not include.
The first fact reminds me of the compression socks that many kids wear today. They think they are being trendy and don't realize that the purpose is to not let blood pool in their legs. The giraffe has high blood pressure because the blood circulation has to go 2 meters higher than the heart to reach the brain. The skin on the legs below the knee of the giraffe is tight, otherwise that high blood pressure would cause a giraffe’s ankles to swell. It has natural compression socks!
The other fact that I found bizarre and probably unsuitable for elementary kids has to do with their mating habits. A female giraffe will pee into a male giraffe's mouth so the male can check and see if she is ready for mating. Then the male giraffes will go into their "necking" behavior as the battle over the female. The necking more often than not turns into the two males having a bit of romance together.
Now I feel just a little weird for letting a giraffe kiss me! Here is a short video I took in 2011 on the Masai Mara showing some giraffes running. They are quite the majestic animal!
You can find my giraffe scavenger hunt here.
You can find my Teachers Pay Teachers store here.
It is very interesting doing the research for my recent math scavenger hunts. I have made one for The First Ferris Wheel, The Titanic, and now The Eiffel Tower. While researching facts on the Eiffel Tower, I found some interesting things that were fun, but didn't go into the scavenger hunt.
1) Most people assume that Gustave Eiffel designed the Tower named after him. The design of the Eiffel Tower was the product of Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier who worked for Eiffel's engineering company. Eiffel didn't approve of the design until the head architect Stephen Sauvestre added decorative arches to the base of the tower and other improvements.
2) The tower is painted in three shades of color. It is lighter at the top and gets progressively darker towards the bottom to match the Parisian sky.
3) It is illegal to publish photographs of the lighting on The Eiffel Tower at night. You need to get permission from France to do so. The lighting is considered a work of art and under copyright. Photos of just the Eiffel Tower are in the public domain.
4) Winds can make the tower sway from side to side by about three inches. Heat and cold can make the height of the tower vary by as much as six inches. It is taller in the summer and shorter in the winter!
5) Hitler wanted the Eiffel Tower destroyed when the German army abandoned Paris in 1944. He ordered the Nazi military governor of Paris to destroy the city and the tower. The governor decided not to do it because he loved Paris too much.
I made a math review scavenger hunt based on other facts and numbers related to the Eiffel Tower for students in grades 4-6. You can find it here.
"Kids who jump, squat and move their bodies during math and spelling may learn more effectively than students in typical sedentary classrooms."
Students should not be sitting in desks throughout the day. Period. It is a good thing if I can get my students to learn while incorporating movement at the same time. I have been having great success with classroom scavenger hunts in my classroom. Instead of doing a worksheet at their desk, my students start with a blank numbered worksheet and move around the room looking for the problems that they have to solve. I have taped the numbered problems all around the class for them to find, copy, and solve. It has worked fantastic. At first, I thought that it might get a little bit wild, but they were actually very quiet as they moved around the class completing their tasks. There is a good healthy buzz in the classroom and the students are more engaged in their work compared to what they would be doing if it was just seatwork.
I thought it was so fun to do that I have begun developing my scavenger hunts as products on Teachers Pay Teachers. I have started with fractions and have five scavenger hunts listed already. They tie in with the 5th grade Common Core units on Fractions, but can be used for advanced 4th graders or as a review in the 6th grade. Each scavenger hunt has 15 problems as well as a hidden message puzzle to solve just to make it more fun. Each scavenger hunt game sells for $1, although if you want to check out the quality, I currently have listed the 5th Grade Math Scavenger Hunt: Converting Improper Fractions and Mixed Numbers as a freebie.
The Better Angels is a 2014 movie depicting three years in Abraham Lincoln's life (1817-1819) when he was a boy living in backwoods Indiana. It is a beautiful black and white film directed by A.J. Edwards and presented by Terrance Malik. I recently watched the movie on Amazon Prime (currently streaming free for Prime users or as a rental):The Better Angels. It is also out on DVD: The Better Angels DVD.As I watched this cinematic beauty, I wondered how interested my fifth grade students would be in such a visually artistic movie that was quiet and contemplative in spirit. I decided to write up some lessons and try it out with them. With guidance and conversations before, during, and after the movie, they were thoroughly engaged with the movie.
My class had been working on a colonial America unit, so I introduced this movie as just a movie about a boy and his family in 1817 Indiana trying to eke out a living on a sustenance farm. I never told them that it was a film about Abraham Lincoln until after it was over (I just skipped the first few moments of the film in front of the Lincoln Memorial).
I discussed a lot of information about movie-making before showing the film and gave my students some specific things to look for while watching the film. This process proved vital in keeping them interested and aware as they watched. It led to numerous great discussions with my students that continue even a week after watching the movie. This is not a movie that you just pull off a shelf and show to your class. If you are not engaged and they are not prepared, I don't think it would go over very well.
I would recommend this movie in your classroom if you teach grade four or above. You do need a plan before you show the movie, because of that I have put together a guide to the movie on Teachers' Pay Teachers. It is an 11 page PDF with conversations to have before watching the movie, activities for the students to take notes on during the movie, and things to do after the movie. I also include a guide with links to various resources about the movie that you may find interesting in attaining more background information about the film and how it portrays a boyhood Lincoln. You can check out my Guide here: Movie Guide: The Better Angels. If anyone uses this guide, I would be interested in your feedback.
Note:
the portrait you see at the top of this page is of a print by George Bucher Ayres from 1861 taken by Alexander
Hesler of Chicago on June 3, 1860. It has been written that this image was
Lincoln’s personal favorite portrait. The glass negative was broken in the mail
on the way to the Smithsonian Institution in 1932 or 1933. This historic
photograph has been passed down in my family and is the first photograph taken of that
print
. It is also out on DVD: 
.As I watched this cinematic beauty, I wondered how interested my fifth grade students would be in such a visually artistic movie that was quiet and contemplative in spirit. I decided to write up some lessons and try it out with them. With guidance and conversations before, during, and after the movie, they were thoroughly engaged with the movie.