So before we could FEAST in Feast Week, we had to have a feast, and that meant we had to make it! So Friday afternoon, before our big party, we got busy making things. Remember, our appetizers were party pickles, sausage snack wraps, fruit, and guacamole. We got into our tribes to work.
Check out our culinary creations:
If you missed any of the previous parts of this tale, check out the Feast Week tag for parts 1-5. Next up: THE FEAST!!
This week’s warm-ups are geometry related, as we are at the beginning of a 2D geometry unit now. My hope was that they were review, since they’ve had similar units for many years. And for the most part, they were. Oh, and you’ll notice there are only 3 this week; the morning schedules were a little rushed on Tuesday and Friday, so we skipped them those days.
Monday
And speaking of having done it before, my kindergartener is actually talking about these very things right now, too! When I shared this question with him, he was able to tell me which were polygons and which were not! The definition was simpler in kindergarten, but the idea was the same. Cool!
Wednesday
This one was pretty easy, but was a conversation starter for that day. It helped us take the next step to putting quadrilaterals into categories.
Thursday
When we first talked about this one, we were unclear about the definition for a parallelogram. We spent our group time on Thursday clarifying this.
What do you know about geometry? What questions would you ask for a geometry math warm-up? Share some with us in the comments!
Remember when we were in the middle of our fraction unit and we were dividing? Think about the problem about bows: Avery had 6 yards of ribbon. He’s making bows for packages, and each bow uses 1/3 of a yard of ribbon. How many bows can he make? Then think about how we all said 1/18 for the answer? I’ll remind you of how we solved it:
Today your job is to create a fraction problem with division. I’m not going to tell you what the answer has to be–I want you to figure out that part, too! You can divide a whole number by a fraction (like this one), or you can divide a fraction by a whole number if you remember how to do that. Remember to make sure your story makes sense, that you have an answer that is LOGICAL, and that you sign your names so we know who’s amazing thinking it is! Good luck, friends!
Today’s ActivActivity is related to the Math Warm-up we had the other day:
Your job today is to come up with a story that uses FRACTIONS and has an answer of 3/4. Work together with your group to write one, and if you have time after that one, write another! Leave your story in the comments for this post, and be sure to leave your names!
Good morning, friends! So here we go: our first in-the-moment and let’s-show-our-thinking-on-the-blog post! As we get started this morning, follow these directions:
Now you try! Think of a specific, measurable goal for YOU for 2013, and leave your idea as a comment on this post. Don’t forget to leave your name! Good luck and happy goal planning, friends! I can’t wait to see what FABULOUS things you come up with. 🙂
This was the first week of a new Masters class. And while I try to find something to apply in every class I take, this might be the best one yet, as it’s related to technology!
While I am by no means an expert, I do consider myself to be reasonably tech-savvy. It hasn’t always been that way, but over the last year and a half to two years, I’ve been jumping in and trying things that I’ve never done before–blogging, kid-blogging, Twitter (for my own learning), my class Facebook page and Twitter feed, as well as just learning to use new apps on the iPads at school (for myself and my students). It’s been great fun to try new things and see them immediately helpful to my students. I think my favorite part has been the impact that my blog has had on the world. Ok, maybe not impact necessarily, but it’s definitely encouraging when people around the world that you don’t even know read, comment on and retweet things you post! Makes what I write feel more meaningful and is motivating to keep me going. 🙂
So since I’ve already been on this technology journey for a while, many of the things we read and watched for class this week were review. But, like with most things in life, if you pay close attention, you fill find something that you can learn. And I did! Let me tell you about it…
This week we watched a series of videos from Darren Wilson, a teacher and tech-leader in Texas, about Inspired Classrooms. While much of what we shared were things I was already doing, I did catch one thing that was FABULOUS and that I will start using even as soon as tomorrow!
One of his main suggestions was to use a class blog to document and record learning, but also (here’s the new thing) as a place to give assignments. What?? I’d never thought of that before, but as soon as he said it, I knew it was something I had to try! Up to this point, I’ve only used my blog as an after-the-fact place to reflect on things I’ve done, to share experiences with our families and other readers around the world or to record what we’re learning for a later date. His suggestion, instead, was to use the blog as a place to share in-the-moment type things, to post articles, projects or assignment directions. In small groups, kiddos would read the post, do what it says and then “turn in” their work by posting a comment with their thoughts. Duh!? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? So simple but so powerful.
And so that’s what I’m going to do tomorrow. I shared the idea with my kids and they also thought it was a FABULOUS one! And, like they do with most things, had a great idea for how we could use it: as a rotation in our math schedule. We already have a station that is Activ Activity–usually a game or flipchart activity that they do as a group on the Activ Board. Sammy suggested that I could post their directions for that activity on the blog and they could give their answer during that station. Brilliant!
Please be sure to check back soon to see how it went! I am pretty sure it’ll be great, because I know the kids who’ll be doing the work, and they’re pretty great. 🙂
Hopefully if you’re here, then you’ve been along for the first parts of the journey, but if not, you can catch up on the beginning of Feast Week, the fractions involved, the meal planning, and the way our plan was derailed before I go on. It’s been quite a journey already, that’s for sure!
After we had figured out exactly what we would finally buy, we had to decide where to shop and then head there to get what we needed. Part of the job after they totaled up their appetizer cost was to determine whether it was a better idea to shop at Schnucks or Dierbergs for our ingredients. Overwhelmingly, they decided that Schnucks was a better option for us. And so to Schunucks we went! Yes, you heard me right: I put 20 5th graders on a bus and took them to the grocery store. And I did it by myself (along with Mrs. Hong and her class). And they were great. 🙂
I wonder how many people were confused by the sight of a school bus at the grocery store!
We started by having a quick grocery store overview lesson–we talked about the general area where everything was, talked about the expectations (which were the same as at school!) and made a place to meet when we were finished. And then they set off with their shopping lists to get what they needed.
While they shopped I ran around wandered around the store to make sure everyone was doing ok (remember, this was the week before Christmas–the place was a madhouse!) and finding what they needed. I cannot even tell you how proud I am of these kids. Completely on their own, they maneuvered a really large store, politely made their way through crowds and even made smart shopping decisions–everything we bought was on sale! We were all finished and back to our meeting spot in just about half an hour, which was record time, I think!
Our original budget was around $97, and we made it out of there even under by a few dollars! We spent right around $94, and like I mentioned before, EVERYTHING they chose was on sale. The best part to me was when a group figured out that it was more cost effective to buy bags of 4 avocados that were 2/$5 than individually at 10/$10. That’s some savvy shopping!
Check out that receipt! My favorite part is at the bottom: “YOU SAVED $35.97.” Nice!
Congrats on a job well done, 5th graders! You are grocery store superstars!
Next step–Part 6: Now We Cook!
The first parts of our Feast Week journey can be found here, here, and here. 🙂
Do you know Murphy? Isn’t it his law that says that anything that can go wrong will? Well he was present on the third day of Feast Week….
By Wednesday we were supposed to be ready to get our budget proposal to Mrs. Sisul so that we could be ready to shop on Thursday. That was the plan, but then the plans had to change.
Like I mentioned before, we had decided to make 5 yummy appetizers. We had figured out our shopping lists and figured out how much one batch of our goodies would cost. And then we started multiplying. And realized we were in trouble…
We first figured out how to change our recipes to feed 20 (before we figured it out for 85) and we noticed something:
We were using a favorite recipe of mine (from Catherine at weelicious.com) as an example and were figuring out how much of everything we’d need to feed 20, which meant we had to multiply our numbers by 5. It was pretty easy work since most of the ingredients were cans or whole numbers. When we got to the olive oil we got to display our fabulous fraction knowledge to create 5/3 which we simplified to 1 2/3 cups.
Ok, so all was well until we talked about how much it would cost us. We started sharing our numbers from the day before for single batches of each recipe. Some were around $5, but one was close to $15 for just one small amount. We quickly figured out that if we were going to create the amount we needed for 85 people, we’d be multiplying the original numbers by 40! That suddenly sounded really expensive…
We went back to our tribes and revisited our numbers. After adding together the total amounts for all five appetizers, to feed all of us we were going to be spending over $500! Obviously that was not going to work. Mrs. Sisul loves us and thinks 5th grade is pretty great, but we were sure she wasn’t going to help us create a meal that cost that much–with all of the other things we figured it’d be almost $2000!
Then we had to make some decisions:
Ultimately (while it was a hard decision to make and some actually had their feelings hurt a little), we decided to go with the things that were the most cost-effective: least amount of money for the biggest amount of food. We decided to do sausage snack wraps, which are just little pigs-in-a-blanket, because they made 48 in one batch; party pickles (pickles wrapped in ham with cream cheese inside) also made many servings for not much money; guacamole, although we decided to ditch our original recipe and just use salsa and avocados instead of making it all “from scratch”; and fruit–but we abandoned the dip that was going to go with it and picked things we found in the add that was cheap for a lot (oranges, kiwi and apples).
After we reworked our numbers with our new plan, we were PLEASED to find out that we no longer had a budget proposal of $500, but of only $97.84! And even after whittling it down by 4/5 (fractions, nice right?), we knew we could still get our goodies for less at the store by buying store brands instead of only choosing the major brands that were in the ads.
I can’t wait to tell you about our shopping trip! Yep, you heard me right–we went on a field trip to the grocery store. And we lived to tell about it. 🙂
Ready for Part 5? Check it out here.
Happy New Year! I don’t know about you, but I was able to enjoy 16 days off between 2nd quarter and now and it was FABULOUS! What a great gift to be able to spend two whole weeks with my family! And now I am reenergized and ready to get back into a school groove. 🙂
So you know, if you’ve been here before, that math warm-ups are part of that groove. This week I decided to revisit some older concepts (and by old I just mean beginning of the year–to a 5th grader that’s like an eternity ago!) just to remind them that they still need to know how to do this stuff! Thankfully, most had not forgotten.
Monday
Ok, so I guess I lied about them all being oldies-but-goodies. This one was actually based on a problem from an end-of-unit assessment that pretty much everyone got wrong! I really needed to reiterate the fact that it’s really important to think LOGICALLY when you’re doing math. The answer to that problem that most people said–1/18–doesn’t make ANY sense! How the heck do I make 1/18 of a bow?!
Tuesday
Again, I wanted to make sure they had a solid understanding of the difference and the connection between multiplying and dividing fractions.
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
This one ended up being a lot easier than I first anticipated. I was really close to making it have the “rules” of being a fraction problem, but decided to give them a try with a less complicated one until they tackled a more difficult one. There were promises for more of these next week where they can stretch their creative math muscles! Can’t wait to see what they do. 🙂
If you haven’t checked them out yet, be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 of our Feast Week journey. 🙂 If you have, welcome back!
While we thought it would never actually arrive, December 17–the first day of Feast Week–finally came and we were ready to get started! Our kiddos had done such an amazing job with all that they had to learn about fractions, and were now ready to apply that to a real-world situation. They were super excited and very motivated.
Our class was responsible for appetizers. While they were a little sad because they wanted to do dessert (everyone did, really!), they came with really great suggestions for what we could make for our portion of the meal. Everyone came with family-favorite recipes from home, and we had some decisions to make about which we were going to use. We got into our tribes to make these decisions, and narrowed the list down to these yummy choices:
The next step was to shop for ingredients. Using the circulars from Schnucks and Dierbergs, tribes got busy finding ingredients and figuring out how much their recipe would cost using these directions:
As with everything they do, kiddos took on this job with much seriousness and concentration. They had to feed 85 people after all!
Read about Part 4 of Feast Week here!
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 