Revamping Science Class

Another year has started and it is time to take a look at what I do in the class.  I have taught grade 6/7 Science for the last few years and have dutifully just followed the text books and topics laid out for me.  I have added nice experiments and activities and tried to make the class enjoyable and informative.  Last year I was working with a grand total of 8 text books for my 2 classes and students were frustrated by not having the access they wanted to the book.  I began straying away from the text more often.  Resources in the school for experiments are shared and with our school getting larger it is harder to share.  The whole school works on an A/B year system with all the classes separating when you have your chance to use the resources.  Unfortuately with my style of teaching I don't always fit in with these types of schedules.  This year we are supposed to move on to the grade 7 curriculum.  Well I didn't even go to see where the textbooks are.  Instead I decided to try something new. 

My friend and fellow teacher gave me a book a few years bakc called, "A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe" by Micheal S. Schneider. 

Desk organization

Last year I had a student who was very disorganized.  We tried different techniques to try to keep his papers in order but was not very successful.  He listened to me and tried the techniques that I gave him but nothing seemed to ever get in his binder.  His desk was a disaster of papers and materials all stuffed in.  Near the end of the year I sat down with him and we discussed how to be better organized.  This time though he looked at me and said, I know how to be more organized, just find me the top of a box.  The ones that are on top of the photocopy papers and I will be more organized.
I looked at him suspiciously and said okay , I will see what I can find.  The next day I brought in the box top and asked him to show me how this will work.  He put his binder and materials into the box top and put the box into the desk.

Superstars - Role Models and traits

With September near I guess I must start thinking about school again.  So here we go.  A nice way to start the year is to have the students think about the type of year they want.  With this project I get them to think about role models.  Who are the role models in our society and who are their personal role models.  I start by have the students think about the role models in society whether it be politicians, or athletes or any other role model.  We then brainstorm traits that those people have in common that make them role models.  What are some traits that make a good role model?

Next I have them decide who are some of the role models that they personally have (parents, brothers, teachers, actors etc.)  I then ask them to write down the traits that those people have that they admire.  The students are asked to have reasons why that person is a role model.  For example I had a male student who named Megan Fox as his role model because she is "hot".  He then had to come up with other reasons and prepare for a paragraph and discovered that Megan Fox was not really his role model.  Through some discovery though he found out about some of the charity work that she does which opened his eyes a bit.  I also had a student who chose a celebrity from a show he liked and after some research he found out the person wasn't as good of a role model as his grandfather who demonstrated many of the traits he found important. 

There are many character traits lists online but here is one that I have used : http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson175/traits.pdf

For fun I have the students then get a picture of their role model and they will use it to become that person.  At the beginning of each year I take pictures of all my students and so they combine the two pictures using their head and the persons body.  If you enlarge the head a bit you can make it look like a bobblehead and the effect is quite fun.  The student design a background that would be suitable and write a paragraph about why this person is a superstar in their mind.  I display this on the wall of the classroom and the students really enjoy it. 

I have also extended this project by adding a goal setting component where the students use the traits that they think are important to make short term and long term goals.

If I can find some previous examples in my room I will post them.  Hope you enjoy.

Fun Fair Probability - Middle School Math Project

Okay, so this is pretty obvious but is still extremely fun to do.  I have done this many times during the month of June because it keeps the kids focussed.   Sometimes I even tell the kids that it is not going to be formally assessed but the expectations still need to be met. 

The basic concept is that the students work in partners and create a game that is probability based.  This automatically rules out many games that are skill based (throwing darts or basketball tosses) unless they can prove its probability based.  Next the students brainstorm ideas from games they have already seen from fairs and generate their own ideas.  I almost always make students generate their own ideas and proposals before I put them in partners or groups.  They have to come to the table with something or they work alone.  (This creates accountability and those students who just can't complete assignments and now won't be another student's problem but I can work with them in a smaller group with other similar students).  While they come up with their game concept, I begin teaching probability of single and two events.  The criteria I give them has them create a game where they have a minor prize and a major prize.  I usually give them a general rule of minor prize should be around 1 in 5 and a major prize around 1 in 20.  This gives them a sense of how they need to create the game.  Many games have 2 stages (or events like a plinko board they may have to hit the winner twice for a major once for a minor) while others just make one event with different options (for example the classic choose a rubber duck from the pond. only 1 of the 20 is major while 4 have minor).  The figure out the theoretical probability of their game and build it.  It helps to have many decks of cards and lots of dice around because students use them.  The creativity of the games can be quite amazing just as much as it can be underwhelming.  I have had the students bring in prized that they will give away, or I have collected money and bought the prizes myself so that all prizes are equal (therefore people don't choose a game to get a better prize),  or one year I had some PAC money that I was allowed to spend and put it towards the prizes.

Building a business and leadership in the class: Year middle school long project

Well this year I wanted to give my class the opportunity to start something that could possibly carry on.  This is my first year at the school and I teach a group of students who travel from various locations outside of the catchment of the area.  Coming from a different Middle School I was able to use some of the ideas that were successful their and try to incorporate them in my class.  One thing that was quite successful in my former school was when a teacher started up a leadership group who focused on creating different food themed events (ie. smokie BBQ, Turkey Sandwich).  The events became quite popular throughout the school.  After moving I asked him about using the idea in my new school and he encouraged me to try it.  He was working with students as an extracurriculur group.

I decided to take this idea but incorporate it into my Career Education class.  It started in November and has been going on all year but the results are something I am quite proud of even though the process was tough at times.  Here is how it went.

We started by discussing what the concept was.  Creating a business that will make money and be enjoyable for the whole school.    The question was : What is something we could ourselves and create ourselves that students will want to purchase and take part in.  We did our first brainstorming session for a first possible event:  The ideas were : cupcake sale, cookie sale, popsicles or freezies.  I was underwhelmed by the ideas my students were coming up with.  They were having a tough time coming up with something original that could get a school excited.    Since we were just starting , I took the leadership role and acted as a "boss" of the business.  I told them that we are trying to create something unique, something that they would want, trying to build up a name for ourselves but they always wanted to go back to what they knew; basically have a Bake Sale.  I told my class they had a week to come up with a simple idea that was unique.

Flip Book - Middle School Math Project

Ok so flip, turn, slide or reflection, rotation, translation can be one of those items that gets skipped when other items take a bit longer.   It is one of those things that seems to be put on the backburner.  Well I started doing this project part way through the year to make sure it wouldn't get missed.  We start just after integers and begin learning about the Cartesian Plane and coordinate systems.  This then lends itself to the transformations that can occur on the plane.  I have had a lot of success with the flip book by have students create motion with their transformations.  I have the students work on how to rotate and translate as well as reflect.  Rotations need to start with easy 90 degrees, 180 degrees or 270 degrees.  More advances students can start trying other degrees but they usually have some difficulty with it.

Here are the sheets in one file:  Flipbook project sheets on my TPT site if you dont want to just recreate from this page.

Have the students use very simple characters or elements of nature.  Stick men running or the sun setting are just fine to start especially in the rough copy version.  Simple movements end up looking better in a flipbook.  I have had boats moving into the sunset and people on trampolines as easy examples. 

Alien Numbering System

In this era of education it is important to have work that is going to challenge all students.  I teach grades 6 and 7 and began going over the basics of numeration with properly understandign the base 10 system and how to read and write large and small numbers.  Many of the students in my class didn't need the practice and showed mastery of the material immediately.  By the way having students read decimal numbers properly sure helps later on.  Make them use the words tenths and hundredths all year long and your life will be easier when working with the relation of fractions and decimals later.

Anyway, I had my students mastery group begin to study other numbering systems and eventually create their own.  I received many thank you's at the end because these students were excited about learning this.  Easy correlation to computer programming which use different base systems.  I had them pretend they were inventing it for an alien group so that they would describe themselves fully.  I allowed them to present their material however they wanted and received a youtube video, a poster and a few text book style projects.  The students then began to appreciate the base 10 system and even months after the completion I still have students come to me as they are trying to learn more about different bases.

Smarties / Skittles - Data Analysis and Graphing Project

This idea didn't come from me.  It has been borrowed from a teacher I worked with years ago.  I took her idea and changed it a bit.  I have also adapted it based on whatever I want to teach that year, which makes it great. 

So even though this project may be difficult to connect to the real world and the question math teacher get the most "Why are we doing this", it is a lot of fun for the students.  Yes , it is based on candy which immediately gets their attention. 

I have used this to teach bar graphs, circle graphs, central tendenciesExcel, theoretical and experimental probability and even stem and leaf plots. The kids really seem to enjoy it and are generally interested in the results.

Here are the basics - bring in a box of Smarties or a bag of skittles.  Some students bring in huge family size bags but only an individual package is necessary.  There job is to graph the different colours that occur in the candy package.  Using probability I will ask them the chances of reaching in and grabbing a red one.  Or have them experiment on how often a red one comes out.  Yes it is silly but the kids get into it and learn because of the candy.  The display that they put together will have four graphs. The graphs open up and underneath the student explains the style of graph on top.  The can explain the data or explain the purpose of that style of graph. 

Examples:  I have done this a few times and so there are different styles here

Fraction Know it All - Math Resource

One of the concepts I truly believe in is that you must continue working on important elements of the curriculum all year around.  Working on a unit in math such as fractions at the beginning of the year and then not really focusing on it again until the next year can really bring about difficulties for the students.  That instant recall after not seeing it for a long time is almost impossible for many students.  One of the things that I have tried to bring to my math class is responsibility for all math concepts at any time.  Even though we go through units with specific math themes we also try to work on all the math concepts all year as well.  The way I accomplish this is through the opening minutes of the class.  The warm-up or sponge activity when the students come through the door.  Each day has some kind of different theme.  The following is what my students get every Monday morning when they enter the class.  It is the Fraction Know-It-All and it basically goes over many of the important elements of understanding fractions, decimals and percents and how they are connected. 

Here is the downloadable copy.  Fraction Know It All

At the beginning of the year it takes a little bit of time to teach but because I know that we are going to continue this all year I don't feel the pressure to explain everything all at once.  I have the students show 3 equivalent fractions, the decimal, the percent, draw a diagram of what it should look like and place it on a number line.  I put a student's example below so that you can see the basic results.  I have them do 2 different fractions at a time.

 

 

Videos for my math class

Every now and then I come across some Youtube videos that work really well with my class.  These add to the culture and the excitment of learning for the students.  We have a lot of fun with them.  Some of my favourites are below.  I would love to add to them so any sharing here would be great.


Circles:  The best one is here, the students actually now sing this song every time that I even talk about circles.  They love it.  My neighbouring teachers may not like it as much.


This one I can't get to upload nto the page but it is worth clicking on.  I even had a former student email me because they couldn't find this video and wanted the link.  Her email was: I hate math but that song helped me remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbUPyUi5YtM&list=FLb3QBPNaCFvuf1dE-FddGdA

Second best and was a favourite for a long time.  The kids in my class used to actually sing this one without me even asking them.  They loved the Pi is 3.14 approximately part for some reason.


http://youtu.be/eiHWHT_8WrE 

Drawing the perfect circle: For some reason my students are just amazed by this and then want to try it.

http://youtu.be/eAhfZUZiwSE

From one of my favourite math blogs: http://mindfull.wordpress.com , she posted this animation that I have used a few times to demonstrate the area of a circle. The students can visually see why Area is 3.14 * radius squared. 

http://therese.eveilleau.pagesperso-orange.fr/pages/hist_mat/textes/mirliton.html 

and a second one

http://therese.eveilleau.pagesperso-orange.fr/pages/hist_mat/textes/mirliton_arch.html