Our Harlem Shake Video

LEGOS

Last week I was asked to attend a training on LEGOS Build to Express.  This training taught me how to use LEGOS when teaching.  We can use these to create predictions for books we're reading, to illustrate scenes from battles we may discuss in Alabama History, or even demonstrate how we may use fractions each day.  Each student is given a prompt, an amount of maximum pieces that can be used, and then given 3 - 5 minutes to build.

To begin we built towers.  Each student was given 15 pieces and 3 minutes to build.  Following their build each student was given a chance to explain what they built.  We had phone towers, castle towers, plain towers, princesses in towers, queens in towers, towers in New England, towers in England, and even a tower with the girl from Tangled in it.  I loved hearing each students' story!

Ask your child what our #1 rule in LEGOS is and why we have that as a rule.

Fraction Songs

We have learned several songs to help us remember how to simplify and create common denominators when using fractions.  Mr. Sanders walked by our classroom one day while we were singing one of our songs and asked us if we would like to come teach his class our songs.

Monday we had the opportunity to walk down to the 5th grade hall and teach them something new!  We sang our Rihanna song that has the steps for simplifying, our Taylor Swift song that has the steps for finding a common denominator, and our S-I-M-P-L-I-F-Y rap!  Mr. Sanders' class LOVED our songs and even wrote us a thank you note for sharing :)

Name Kaleidoscopes

We used math to make these cool kaleidoscopes.

1. First, fold both of your papers in half diag­o­nally, then in half again, and finally in half one more time. Unfold both of them and set one aside.

2. Cut out one of the tri­an­gles cre­ated by your fold lines on just one of the papers.
3. With the flat edge along the bot­tom and the point fac­ing up, write your name with large stick let­ters so that it fills the entire tri­an­gle.
4. Now, draw an out­line around your stick let­ters to make nice, thick let­ters that touch all three sides of your tri­an­gle. Trace over your pen­cil lines with Sharpie.
5. Next, place the tri­an­gle with your name on it under one of the cor­re­spond­ing tri­an­gles on the other paper. Trace your out­line let­ters with pen­cil onto the new paper. (It can be help­ful to use a light box or even tape your papers to a win­dow for trac­ing.)

2. Then line up your tri­an­gles for trac­ing so that each cor­ner is made up of a mir­ror image of your name.

6. Con­tinue trac­ing your name onto each sec­tion, flip­ping your name over every other time to achieve a “mir­ror image”. (Flip­ping your name over every other time is essen­tial to achiev­ing a mir­ror image, so don’t for­get this impor­tant step!!)
7. Then, trace over all your pen­cil lines with Sharpie.
8. Color with mark­ers or col­ored pen­cils.

Were those directions confusing enough??  LOL

Your child would be happy to show you how to make one!

If I found a pot of gold...

We are currently working on our writing skills.  We started small by writing a simple paragraph.  Our paragraph told what we would do if we found a pot of gold.  Some of the students ideas were to:  shop, buy a mansion, meet Justin Beiber, go to several concerts, and live in the White House.

Live Chess

Last Thursday was our Live Chess Tournament.  The 5th grade students that are in chess club participate in this event each year.  The 2 students playing for the championship were Caleb Smith and Joshua Topliss.

Several of our students watched closely.  I hope to see many of them out there next year!

Beauty and The Beast

Friday, March 1st we traveled to The Princess Theatre to watch our students in Beauty and The Beast, Jr.  They did a FANTASTIC job!!!!