The Operating Room

Calling all surgeons. After keeping my brain turning with different ways to engage my students, I went back to my notes from RCA, and remembered the wonderful Kim Bearden and the ideas she gave us. So with the help of my wonderful resource teacher, we turned my room into an operating room. We were working on adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers, and that is what the doctors needed to do! 

Set up wasn't too hard. I got the aluminum casserole dishes for the bodies, and that is where we put the body parts. The bags of blood (water & red food coloring) I hung from my ceiling with yarn. Each student doctor was prepared with gloves, mask, and head lamp, name tag, and operating tools (tweezers). 

Every doctor had a patient folder with Patient Notes (aka workspace) and a picture of a body where they would record their answers. Sammy and I created differentiated "bodies" to meet that needs of the kids in my classroom. The student's job was to put the body back together by solving the missing addend problems on each body part. As soon as the students were explained their cases, they were off to work to save their patient's life. With a little bit of background sound of a heart rate monitor, the doctors were busy helping their patient. 

Problems were differentiated for my different math groups, and to make that much easier for set-up, I made each table group their math group's color operating room to spice things up! 

It was also perfect that it was Career Day for Red Ribbon Week, so Sammy and I borrowed some of my mom's scrubs and were nurses for the day! (I proposed to my principal that we wear them everyday because they were so comfortable!!)

The students had a great time and loved being a doctor for the day. Most of them didn't take off their name tags all day! 

This activity was such a hit with my kids! If you have any questions, please email me at crazinessinfifth@gmail.com

If this would work for your class, you can get it here or click the picture below!

Happy Operating! 

Haunted House Math

We had quiet the crazy week at school last week. Red Ribbon Week, full moon, Halloween, please tell me I wasn't alone. I knew I was going to have to do something special for my kids. Sammy (my awesome resource teacher) and I decided to make my room into a haunted house! It was quite simple, and the kids loved it!

Let's start with set-up. Sammy got cobwebs online and caution tape from the Dollar Spot at Target. Target for the win! She put it all over my room, and that was it! We didn't just want them to just to task cards, so I bought the plastic orange pumpkins from Target and decided to fill them with "eye balls" and "brains" (aka, water beads for eyes, and cake mix, marshmallows, and water for the brains). I mixed those up and dropped in the laminated task cards. 

Students came in we told them that the only way out of the haunted house was to solve all of the math problems. So off they went. The students were given a glove to fish out the task cards. 

Easy as that. With a little spooky background music, my kids were working hard to escape the  haunted house. With the red velvet cake mix, it began to look like a crime scene, oops! I differentiated my task cards to meet the wide abilities of my students. 

Once the students finished all of the task cards, they had a secret message to decode. If they solved it, they got what it message said... NO HOMEWORK :) Needless to say, my kids were super excited about this! 

I know Halloween is over, but below is activity I used. Check out my TPT store to get it for next year :) If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at crazinessinfifth@gmail.com 

Calling all Secret Agents!

Are you ready to help us find the nation's missing laptops with top secret government information on them? My kids were, and this led to probably the best lesson to date in my teaching career. After my visit to the Ron Clark Academy (post on that below or here), I have been filled with ideas and inspiration on ways to engage my students. In math we have to give our students time to practice the skill we are teaching them, and I could've given them a worksheet to practice, but that wasn't going to fly. I saw Hope King's Set the Stage to Engage series this summer, and she did a spy lab for non-fiction texts, so after looking at her pictures, I made it my own for my kids. We were working on adding and subtracting fractions, and their skills were tested during this unit.

I'll start with the set-up, and it was easy. The hardest thing for me was figuring out how I wanted to set up my desks! Oops! I made my desks into three groups (math groups) because my activity was differentiated and I wanted them to be able to talk to their math groups throughout. I made a spy area in the back of my room using string and black lights. This is where the clues were housed. I had all of my lights off and my window blacked out with black butcher paper from our art teacher. They saw by using push lights from Walmart. I got all of the set up idea from Hope King! 

I had my art teacher bring my students to me from specials, and I was standing outside my door, in my black sunglasses and black blazer with my iPad ready to let my fellow agents in. They were asked to sit on the carpet when they entered the room.

I filled my students in on the issue the government had called for our help on. After that we were on the clock to figure out who stole the iPads from our school that the government was housing top-secret information. 

Every student had a file folder with a letter about the situation, their first clue, and a clue tracking sheet. Once all the expectations were given, the agents were off to work. I put on a little background music to set the stage, and intensify the situation! They had to solve each problem using their yellow notepad and when they finished with a clue, they went on to another with my approval. 

My favorite part of the room was the clue area. I have a wide range of abilities in my classroom, so I differentiated for my three groups. 

Most students ended around the same time, and they had to work with their group to make a final decision about who they thought stole the laptops. I had an idea during the lesson to have my dad call at the end and say he was with the White House. I told my kids they had to come up with a final decision because someone would be calling us from the White House. "THE WHITE HOUSE?? Like where Obama lives??" So I texted him and never heard back so I didn't think he could but left my ringer on loud just in case. At the end of my lesson, my ringer went off, and it was madness in my room. "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!!" Once they got quiet, I picked up and my dad asked who they thought the culprit was, and my students told him the clues led them to believe it was our principal. He said,"Agents, thank you for your hard work, I'll share this information with the president. Hopefully we can work again soon." Their reactions were great, "Did we seriously just talk to someone from the White House?" "I cannot wait to tell my mom!"

As a result of my RCA experience, I am trying my hardest to find ways to engage my students in different and unique ways, and I learned its importance through this activity when every single student is working hard and independently. I hate to admit this, but I was fighting back tears because of how hard they were working! 

I am working on getting this made into a product for my TPT store. So check back soon!

If you have any questions on anything I did for this lesson, feel free to email me at crazinessinfifth@gmail.com 

Wedding Weekend

Hi all! Not teacher related today, but I have been in full on wedding mode, getting ready for my sister's wedding this coming weekend. I have had an important speech hanging over my head all week, until tonight! Procrastinated I mean completed it! :)  I finished my maid of honor speech! WHOO! I am so excited to share with you about the wedding sometime next week! I wanted to explain my M.I.A. on here this week, I blame this important life event! I hope you have a great rest of your week!

The Game of Life

I hope everyone is surviving the craziness teachers face this time of the year with end of the quarter, parent teacher conferences, and report cards. My crazy week just ended, and what a great feeling it is!  I have had some amazing days at school, and I am excited to share them with you over the next week!

I am one of the luckiest teachers because I have a wonderful resource teacher who pushes into my classroom everyday of reading and math. We work so well together and collaborating is our forte.

We had a week of working on adding and subtracting decimals using real life situations. Sammy and I thought of this idea of a classroom economy, and we couldn't figure out the details. After thinking about it more we came up with this idea of the Game of Life, and made it come to life!

Each kid started off with $1,000.00. At the beginning, everyone had to pick their job card which had their salary on it. As we cheered and oohed and ahhed for each other when they picked their cards, the kids began to get super excited!

Once everyone got their jobs and found out their salaries, we let them go and browse the 6 different sections they would be purchasing from, Cars, Houses, Entertainment, Electronics, Colleges, and Vacations. Their were 5 options at each. When Sammy and I were creating this activity we made the prices from super expensive to cheap. Our reason for this was to see what the kids would do and watch them try to budget their money. Throughout the activity, every time I would ring the bell, the students would receive a PAY DAY! At that point their were lots of, "YES!" "Finally!" "I really needed that!" There was even a kid who was begging for a pay day! :)

When we decided it was time, our students were allowed to make their purchases at their own speed. They used a tracking sheet similar to a check balance to keep track of purchases and salaries, deposits and withdraws. Students also had to watch out for the 2 police, good and bad. I was the good police because if I saw a student doing a great job, they would get to pick a lottery ticket with varying amounts. Sammy was the bad police because she gave out tickets with fines on them. She called out random birthday months, days of their birthday, and they had to go to the hall and pay up! One kid had to go out 4 times, "WHY ME?!"

Overall the activity was a success! Students were working on adding and subtracting decimals the whole time! The only rule was they had to have some money left over, and once they heard that they were going to make more purchases. One student said, "Well, I guess I'll go to college again!"

At the end, they were not ready for it to be over. Since this activity they have asked multiple times, "When are we going to play Life again?" I would call it a success. 

I have it up in my TPT store! If you have any questions feel free to email me at crazinessinfifth@gmail.com 

Happy Saturday!