On Friday, February 10th, the 4th graders at my school took a virtual field trip to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Students started out with an overview of the newest Smithsonian museum, followed by scenes from the opening ceremony. For maximum engagement, student also got to compete in a “Presidents for Equal Rights” Kahoot game and an equality quote match on Quizlet. After these activities, the museum was open to be explored by students with their iPads. Around the museum were various QR codes that would give access to the content: a document, image, or video. The students were engaged in this virtual field trip, and you could see students working with peers to complete writing, reading comprehension, and math activities inside the museum. The highlights were hearing students say: “This was the best field trip I’ve ever gone on!” and “Ms. Payne, I didn’t know that there were that many black people that did so many great things!”
Specific skills in the museum: ordering decimals, compare and contrasting different passages, editing a writing passage to correct errors, identifying fact and opinions in literature.
I’ve been trying to motivate my students to work hard this third quarter of the school year… So I created some goals that I had for my classes, and I asked them to create their own math goals…
Here is what went up on the bulletin board to track how we’re progressing through some of these goals.
Fraction Equivalence Drills Trackers – Students need to earn 6 basketballs between January and Spring Break after mastering each of the equivalent fraction drill sheets.
Test Average for All Students – My goal for the students is that they score an average of 75% on our assessments. We met this goal on our first 2 assessments.
Homework Completion Goal – The goal is that all students will complete their homework and turn it in on time.
When I started this school year, I knew that I wanted my students to master their facts by October so that they would not struggle during the Multiplication and Division units… So I set up this bulletin board to motivate them to move their car along the Multiplication Grand Prix. I was inspired by the popular Multiplication Grand Prix game on Arcademics, but this did work to motivate most of my students to move their cars along this race track.
I am a strong believer in setting the tone for the year at the beginning of the year with a classroom theme. I did “Oh the Places You’ll Go” a couple of years in a row. Then I took it a little deeper for my 6th graders with “Education = Equality.” This year’s theme for my 4th graders is “Math is Real Life.”
When the school year started, I, like many others, just couldn’t get enough of the Olympics. I was determined to find a way to tie it into the curriculum… So I decided to update a planet project I did with place value. I wanted to review the skills of 10 times as much or 1/10 of a value as well as write numbers in expanded form, word form, and standard form. The students love this one! I made to sure to the differentiate the content for all my learners!
Ever since I was in Washington, DC, I did some type of Black History Month activity/project, and my students have always learned a lot through the process. Last year, when I taught 6th grade, I knew that I had to take this project to the next level, so I planned out how I could make this better and more relevant for them. We used plenty of apps on our iPads and got really familiar with the Google product family! I made sure that we had plenty of library books for research purposes, and we took a journey from Africa all the way to present day. Some of my students’ work is featured below.
I love making MATH relevant and finding a way to tie it into current events. Back in October, we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month with a math review game! They learned some facts for their scavenger hunt, and they got to find math problems hidden around the classroom. I made this a little challenging for the students by using Spanish numbers around the classroom.
One aspect of the job is professional development, which can be extremely beneficial… However, it comes with the laborious task of lesson planning. When I was going to a training in California, I had to make plans for the entire week.
For the past few weeks, my students have been completing their Career Research projects. Thankfully, every student completed their project on time! That in and of itself is a major accomplishment! More information on this project is on this previous post: Career Planning and Budgeting.
