My Classroom & Science Lab

The Heart and Blood Flow

Personally, I think understanding the flow of blood can be very challenging for students especially when they are just learning the parts of the heart.  To introduce the parts of the heart, I create a bulletin board display in my classroom.  Students label the parts of the heart with a wet erase marker.  Then we use the diagram to draw arrows that indicate the pathway of blood flow.  We also add facts about each side of the heart.  I like using the bulletin board because students can always look and refer to it.

Illinois State Standards:
12.A.4b.  Describe the structures and organization of cells and tissues that underlie basic life functions including nutrition, respiration, cellular transport, biosynthesis, and reproduction.

Optical Illusion Art

So I came across this art project on Pinterest.  It turned out to be super easy and looks really cool.  I actually got tons of compliments from other teachers.

Here is the link to the original post: Step by Step Directions

It does a great job of explaining each step :)

I will say if I were to do this again, I would have students make less vertical wavy lines or use a smaller sheet of paper.  I ended up having my students trim each end of their paper because it is a very time consuming project.

Halloween Art Project

For Halloween, we did a printmaking project.  I had a little bit of background with this because we learned how to do this in my college art education class.  Luckily, we had all of the supplies tucked away in our art closet.  We used foam trays, printmaking paint (it was probably very old, but it did the job), brayers, and construction paper.  I instructed the students to carve a simple Halloween design on the back of their foam tray.  Next, they used the brayer to cover it with paint.  From there, students used their foam trays as stamps to print the image on multiple sheets of construction paper.  By making multiple prints, we were able to decorate our classroom and give some prints to PTO to decorate for the Halloween party.  This was a simple project and students gained experience with something other than colored pencils and paint.  The one thing I will keep in mind is to use foam trays/plates without any imprinted symbols or words.  The trays we used had imprints on the side we didn't carve, but it still affected some of the prints.  This resulted in some of the students having to re-carve their image on another foam plate.

The Outsiders Newspaper Article

Currently, our class is reading The Outsiders (one of my all time FAVORITE novels)!  One of the writing assignments the students work on is a newspaper article.  Students write an article describing the events of chapter 4 (when Johnny kills Bob).  Before students begin writing, we read published newspaper articles and discussed the components of a good article.  We also defined bias and students focused on being unbiased in the writing assignment.  After the pre-writing activities, students began their rough draft.  From there, I worked with the computer teacher to help students create a final draft using Microsoft Publisher.

Illinois State Standards:

Objectives:

Assessment:

Skeletal System

New bulletin board!  We just started studying the skeletal system so I thought this would be great to have in the classroom.  Today we played Simon Says with only using the correct name of bones.  It was really helpful for kids to look at the board as we played the game.  Tomorrow we are going to be in the lab observing dried rib bones and large beef bones from the butcher.  The kids are very excited!

Word Nerd

I am obsessed with breaking words apart to help myself and students understand their meaning and make connections to other words they know.  My first year of teaching I had a "Piecing Together Meaning" word wall with roots, prefixes, and suffixes.  This year, I took the same idea and spiced it up with a little bit more color and a few more examples.  This board was Pinterest inspired by these two fellow Pinners.
Root Word Foldable
Word Nerd Wall
Thanks for the inspiration!

Illinois State Standards:
4b.  Use common, grade-appropriate Greek or Latin affixes and roots as clues to the meaning of a word.

Objectives:
Students will:
-identify words with their assigned root
-define identified words and connect the definition back to the meaning of the root

Assessment: 
Students were assessed on the connections they made from the root's meaning the definition of their identified words.  Students were also quizzed on the roots.

Puzzle Piece Bulletin Board

Yay!  I am so excited to blog about student work and things we've been doing in the classroom!  This week got better with each day and my class is beginning to show more and more personality...thank goodness!  We have back to school night next Wednesday which is basically a chance to meet parents, explain expectations, and attempt to have student projects displayed.  Two weeks of school is barely any time to have projects finished and displayed, but I think I managed pretty well this year.  I had my students write "I am..." poems.  They are poems that allow students to share their feelings, likes, interests, fears, and hopes by simply plugging them into a simple template.  It surprises me how much I learn about each student by simply reading these poems.  Anyways, they emailed me their poem and I sized them so that they would fit on a puzzle piece that will soon be on a bulletin board.  The next day, they glued their poems to the puzzle piece and worked together to put the jumbo puzzle together which turned out to be a good team building activity.  Some of the puzzle pieces are pictured below.  I wanted to laminate them, but it was just too hot at school today and it was Friday :) so it's now on my Monday morning to-do list.  I can't wait to put them on the bulletin board once they are laminated!

Bulletin Board Brainstorm

I've been spending some time in my classroom this past week.  For the most part, everything has been coming together nicely.  However, I've been really stuck on what to do with one bulletin board.  Last year, it was a fun fact board and students contributed their own facts to the board.  They had a lot of fun with it, and I liked it because it was interactive.  The only thing I didn't like about it was I never really knew about the validity of the facts.  As a middle school teacher, I'm constantly reminding students to use good sources when looking for information and with this interactive board I wasn't able to monitor that.  Luckily, tonight I came across 5th Grade Rocks, 5th Grade Rules and came across a great idea for a fun and interactive bulletin board (among many other great ideas).  I am going theme the bulletin board as Wonderopolis.  This website provides tidbits of random information that I think my students would really enjoy.  I haven't gotten it all figured out, but I think I'll post a wonder and have student find a new fact about that wonder and post it on the board.  This way, the bulletin board is still interactive, but there is more guidance for students.