More Pizza Pizzaz!

Inferring... continued
This morning, the children were excited to get back into inferring! I gave each group of two another page from the story, No David! by David McPhail. The children were required to fill out a chart just as they did yesterday. After sharing all their inferences with the class, I read the book aloud to them. They just thought it was hysterical, especially the part when David is running down the street naked! They had so much to say about that pic! I am so impressed by their inferring abilities! Wow!

Because I think they are ready, the students will be inferring independently tomorrow. I am going to start by showing them the book, David Goes to School. Instead of David's mother saying, "No!", his teacher is the one speaking. To get ready, I minimized all of the pictures from the book and pasted each one of them onto large ledger-sized paper that has the same chart on it (I infer/I think... and I know this because...) Each student will receive their own page with a different picture from the text, and will be required to fill it out. I created an Inferring Rubric in order to assess their learning. I had hoped to upload it here, but have been unsuccessful. For the past hour, I have been trying to figure out how to attach a word and pdf file to this blog, but I can't seem to figure out how. So, I won't be able to show you the charts or rubric that I made... however, I promise to take pictures. If I can figure out how to attach them so that you can download and print or save for yourself, I will. Sorry! Bummer!

Math Scrapbooks and Pizza Fractions!
As mentioned in a previous post, my student teacher prepared Math scrapbooks for the students. This is a very simple concept and is working quite nicely. The students received a picture of the pizzas that they discussed yesterday with my student teacher. They were required to write the fraction for each pizza and then explain what they have learned so far about fractions. Some of them were stuck, but many of them were able to explain their thinking - or at least something about fractions that they didn't know before.

Once the students were finished with their scrapbook entries, they were given the opportunity to visit a Math centre. Since we have been working for the past month on mass, capacity, greater than and less than, as well as fraction concepts, these were the types of centres made available to the children. My absolute favourite is the first one below.

Pizza Math - my student teacher visited Gabriel's Pizzeria and they graciously donated six small boxes to our classroom! Thank you Gabriel's! My coop students prepared six different pizzas, with different toppings. They were created so beautifully! I am so thankful for all of the help! 

All of the pizzas were divided in either halves, quarters, thirds or eights! The children had a lovely worksheet, created by Ms. Huot, my student teacher, to keep them on-track. Instead of photocopying one for each child, we laminated five and used dry-erase markers so that they could be re-used. The instructions were to count the slices in each box, determine the fraction of slices that have pepperoni, mushrooms, olives and green peppers. They did a fabulous job!

Children filled this out while they visited this center.
They were required to show their completed copy when they finished.

What is the fraction of slices that has pepperoni? What is the fraction of slices that has olives?

Don't these look great?

 The sixth box gave children the opportunity to create their own pizza with toppings. When they finished creating their pizza masterpiece, they had to write the fraction of slices that had each of the toppings.

An opportunity for creativity. Students take ownership when they are involved in the "making."

Smart Board - Another centre that was available was the Smart Board. Thank goodness for Smart Exchange. We find lots of great gems on that site!

Mass - The next center was where the children could use a variety of materials to balance two different objects. They had to draw pictures of the objects they used and then write about their findings.

Students busy at work!

Mass worksheet

Capacity - The children had the opportunity to work with four different containers. They were required to predict how many scoops of beans it would take to fill each container and then test their predictions. When they finished writing down their findings, they had to compare the capacity of each of the containers and order them from greatest to least.

This was a bit messy, but the children enjoyed it!

Greater Than/Less Than - Finally, we had a greater than and less than centre. Here is a pic of just a portion of this centre. Not too exciting. The part missing is a much more exciting, with crocodiles and numbers! Maybe I will have a chance to post another time... didn't get a pic!

Greater than/Less than

Garbage Audit = GROSSE!
Our school was involved in a garbage/recycling audit yesterday! The grade 5 students collected and sorted through all of the garbage and recycling that was collected in the school. This was done to determine if we place items into the proper bins. Are we recycling effectively? Is the Boomerang lunch program working? Are we creating too much trash?

Today we had the opportunity to visit the gym where all of the garbage was sorted and on display. It was kind of disgusting, to be honest, but it was a good learning experience, and interesting to see what we are doing and what we aren't' doing right!

YUCK! Kudos to the students and staff who sorted. 

Until next time,

Amanda