Wednesday, January 30, 2019

A Few Early-February Holidays and Special Events

Goodbye January

As we wrap up the month, we will finish up our focus on Knowledge Constructors!  This month we focused on tools that organized effective content knowledge and leveraged a student's ability to share that knowledge! 

1.  Groundhog Day

Seesaw Activity Library

K-2:  Will the Groundhog See His Shadow?  Check out this interviewing and graphing activity in the Seesaw Activity Library as well as this Prediction Activity (great for Seesaw beginners).  If these don't tempt you, there are many others posted as well!


Grades 3-5:
  Questioning Activity by Michelle Smelser- This activity allows the students to include text and/or recordings to write 2 questions for the groundhog, 2 sentences they would say to him, and an area for them to write if they hope he does/doesn't see his shadow!
Text Evidence Paragraph Activity- This activity allows students to color code their evidence in a short paragraph about Groundhog Day!

2. 100th Day of School

Here are a few reading and math ideas you might try to celebrate this HUGE event!

  • EPIC!  Search 100th Day of School (or Groundhog Day, or Super Bowl, or most anything)  and then click on collections to find collections others have created!







  • Padlet - Students can then respond to the books they read via Padlet.  Padlet is a free, online bulletin board!  Padlet can be used for most any subject and any topic!  Students can type their responses, include pictures and attachments, and more! Padlet is easy to create and we also have this tutorial created by Chris if it helps!





  • Looking for some "spice" in your math class?  Try Esti-Mystery!  Through the site, students are shown an image and each image invites students to wonder what number is represented by the image.  As you click through, clues will appear that will allow the students to use math concepts to narrow the set of possibilities to a small set of numbers.  In the end, the students will need their estimation skills to solve the mystery and figure out the missing number! We recommend allowing students to use a laminated 100s board (like these) to cross-off numbers as clues are revealed!  What we love about this is that it has aspects that tie nicely into ALL grade level lessons in Everyday Math!  Everything you need to use this with your students TODAY can be found here!  And when you're students are ready, we recommend Skyping with another class in the district and "playing" Mystery number using the same concept, as seen here on the Pennridge Skype site!

3.  Super Bowl Sunday-  

While we know there are many disappointed Eagles fans, we have 2 activities we thought your students might enjoy!
  • Google Earth- Show students the hometown location of both teams, Gillette Stadium (Patriots home field) and LA Memorial Coliseum (Rams), as well as where the game will be played in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia.  You can calculate the mileage between, can take a look at the weather differences, and more!  Use street view (see picture) to show what the towns look like, what the stadium looks like...the possibilities are endless!  How can you tie this into what you're already teaching this week!