State Testing Superheroes

A couple of weeks ago the 4th grade students had to take Florida Writes.  The administrators had asked other grades to write letters of encouragement or do some kind of activity to show support.  The theme this year was "Superhero" so I had each student in my class (28) make a silhouette of themselves and using a couple pops of color create a superhero.  They turned out very cute and the 4th graders loved walking through the hallway of superheros telling them they could "beat" the test.

I love that this little girl tried to make hers look like Cat Woman, it's hard to see the claws, but they are there.

Tasty Tuesdays

Frankenstein Pudding Cups

One of the things that I started this year was a Tasty Tuesday.  I try to find a recipe that has a few steps, but does not require cooking.  I have the students copy the recipe on a recipe sheet and we talk about the ingredients.  We then have to triple or quadruple the recipe so we pull in a little math.  After we have made the recipe the students get to taste it, rate it, and write a review, they also record anything that they think should be changed in the recipe.   I keep these recipe sheets throughout the year and create a book for them to take as a memento of 5th grade. The pictures below is one of their favorites.

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Halloween Math Freebie

Wow, I decided tonight that I was going to take time out of my super, duper, unbelievably busy life to post a freebie for the Halloween Season and saw that it has been two months since I last posted!!  STOP THE HORSE----BACK UP-----WHAT?????

 

This can't be....everybody is busy the first couple of weeks and postings drop tremendously, but two months...that ridic, ridic, ridiculous.

 

Well, the school year is in full swing and we have been busy learning, so for a little holiday fun I created a puzzle to review place value, subtraction, division, addition, and multiplying with zeros.  Print the first two pages back to back, cut apart and put in a snack size Ziploc for the students to place back together on the answer sheet (3rd page)

 

Grab it and enjoy

 

 

 

This is a quick look at my schedule, it has changed a few times and is apt to change again, but for now this is what I'm going with.

Week #1

Week #1 

Done and boy am I whipped!

 

This is an activity that I found on Eberopolis' blog--the kids loved working on it and I think it took a lot of perseverance for the beginning of the year when brains are still a little mushy.

 

I had to front-load the students with 4! (4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24) and we had to discuss the square root of 4, but after that they were off and running.  It was a good opportunity for me to walk around and see who was contributing to the conversation and who was struggling with basic equations.

Rules:

Using some arithmetic combination of four 4's, can you write an equation for each of the numbers from 1-100? Here are the rules:

• You may use any combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division
• You may combine numbers, e.g., use 2 of the fours to make the number 44
• You may insert decimal points
• You may use a four as an exponent
• You may use square roots
• You may use factorials, e.g., 4! is equivalent to 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
• You may use overbars to make a decimal repeat
• You may NOT use any digit other than a four
• You MUST use all four 4's in each solution 

 

Classroom

A quick look at the beginnings of a classroom. 

My school rents our space during the summer to different summer camps and I just happen to be one of the lucky gals that "gets" to pack up EVERYTHING.  The summer camp really is a good thing and I know that they appreciate the space, but let me tell ya----it's a lot of work to pack everything up and then unpack and organize during pre-week school. (Along with all of the meetings)

But I'm almost done~insert happy face~