Soil Texture

We are beginning our unit on Soil.  We will be exploring types of soil in various ways.  Today we explored soil texture.  It was real educational and messy! 

Building Circuits

The students were given plastic covered wire (conductor and insulator), battery, and several different objects.  They had to successfully build a complete circuit.  They had to know to ask the teacher to cut their wire to expose the conductor.  The circuit wouldn't work if the plastic was touching because it is an insulator.  They had a lot of fun, lighting up the room, buzzing sound energy and watching the battery heat up the thermometer.  Some of them even figured out how to expand their circuit to test more than one form of energy.

Testing Forces

The students had the task of designing a plan to test all 5 types of forces; push, pull, gravity, magnetism, and friction.  They were able to choose from a variety of materials.  They were responsible for designing the plan, testing the forces, and recording their data.  The students did awesome!

Circuit Poster

In the current unit we are studyting we have learned about all different types of energy, forces, and electrical circuits.  Sorry this is behind, but I am combining all the picture and what we have experimented in class.

Relationship Tables

In and Out Charts as we like to call them.  I started the lesson with my "Magic Machine".  The kids love to guess what happens in my magic machine.  (As you can tell, I DO NOT draw well.)  The magic machine does something to a number that causes it to come out differently.  My machine never changes its "RULE" though.  It always does the same thing.  The same is true in a relationship table.  The rule will never change.  We study these charts or tables during our multiplication and division unit because depending on the way you read the labels of the table, the operation or rule would be effected.  In the example above, TRIANGLE x3 = SQUARE or you could say the opposite SQUARE /3 = TRIANGLE.  Also you will notice going from a small number to a large number is multiplication and from a large number to a small number is division.  (We will hit this concept again when converting.)

Multiplication Songs

Often times it is difficult for students to recall their multiplication facts.  We encourage students to look at multiplication as patterns in numbers, or skip counting, and picture the multiplication chart in their head.  However, this concept is still difficult for some.  Song is often a very effective way of memorization.  I did not create these, but I do teach these in my class and have made posters to hang in the hall for the students to see when in line or at restroom break.  They are all set to familiar tunes, except maybe the eights.  Most kids don't know that song anymore.

MORE Division

Here are two posters that explains the process of division.  The students are free to choose which ever method they feel comfortable with.  We only encourage that they stick to one particular method.

Tower of Power

Okay, here is it.  Division the "funny way".  The theory behind this method is that division is connected to multiplication and repeated subtraction.  With this method, it doesn't matter which facts you remember, you will eventually get to the end.  This is very helpful to students that do not know their facts.  The goal is to take big chunks away from the dividend (the number under the house).  Your final quotient is found by adding up all of your factors and including the remainder.  Check by multiplying!

Division

Sorry for the brief delay in division information.  The district has been updating the system and I was blocked from my blog site.  Above you will see how we relate multiplication to division.  They are opposite operations.  Division cannot be solved apart from multiplication.  Dividing is simply putting total amounts into groups equally, you may or may not have any left over.  In my previous post was showing the connection between the two operations.

Division

We connected the model with manipulatives to the algorithm.  The steps are Divide, Multiply, Subtract, and then Bring down.  If there are no more numbers to bring down, that is your remainder.  The remainder can never be larger than the number you are dividing by.