Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

It is no secret in my class that I like to drink diet coke from a bottle versus a can (mainly because I fear things falling into the open can). I also like my diet coke SUPER COLD. The other day I grabbed one from Walmart and thought to myself, "I wonder if there is a difference in temperature between soda in a can or in a bottle?" (and do they loose temperature at the same rate). I thought I could tie this question in nicely with our unit on light we just started. We have been exploring properties of light (it contains energy) and what happens when it hits objects. Using information we have studied students would be introduced to the question and then they would have to make a hypothesis. I thought it would be a nice easy classroom experiment. All you have to do is take a cold 12 oz bottle of diet coke and a cold 12 oz can of diet coke and then have students record the temperature of each every 5 minutes for about twenty minutes and discuss the results and what part light ...

In my previous post I talk about science fair preparation, in this one I am going to address how I handle science fair grading. I give a homework grade for the question they turn in during the planning phase (doesn't matter if it is a "good question" or not...they get the full points). I know some teachers require that students turn in their materials and procedures list at benchmark points but I don't. My life is busy enough without adding yet more things I have to review and grade! I figure if they have a decent question they will be fine. I have absolutely no interest in micromanaging their science project. The only requirement I have is if they change their question to run it by me first. I have a grading rubric but it works slightly differently. All children who turn in a project get a 70% automatically (I don't ever fail a child if they made some attempt and I never make a science fair project such a large amount of their final grade that they can never reco...

I apologize for not posting recently. Most of my notebooking has simply been a repeat of previous years with some tweaking. I'm trying to avoid repeat posts but that has left me with no material for this year! Luckily we went off schedule this past week in preparation of our upcoming science fair and I thought I would do a post about that. Our district had isolated community judges for our science fair years ago and set up a schedule for all the schools (for the sake of organizing the judges time). Unfortunately our school got one of the worst dates (right after Thanksgiving break). Science fair projects are mandatory in grades 4 and 5 and, up until this year optional in the lower grades. This year the lower grades are encouraged to do a class project but nothing except 4 th and 5 th grade projects will be accepted into the science fair. This means that the first time a child is introduced to a science fair project is in my grade level (4 th ). No pressure! Students learn about ...

We got one of "those" emails at school yesterday....the one that tells us we can't have a Halloween party. No problem....we've been getting those for years. Most teachers plan a party but don't make any reference to Halloween thus being able to say, "We aren't having a Halloween party." (I love that teachers can find the loop holes in just about anything! We are like miniature lawyers in the classroom when wording is vague :) In our school district we are about to go on a week fall break and it is the end of the quarter so our parties are called an "End of Quarter" party (and we have four of them a year). Other teachers are calling their "party" a Fun Friday. This email was a little different and seemed to indicate that ALL parties were not allowed. Whoa!!!!!! That caused a little stir in our world (mostly because notices have gone out to parents, children are excited about it, etc.). The emails started flying back and forth....

A friend of mine showed me this pop up site that I thought was pretty cool. It could easily be incorporated into a notebook...particularly the animal ones in conjunction with learning about the animal in science There are some boat ones that I thought might be fun if you studied explorers in Social Studies. I am not sure how hard they are to make but I thought I would give it a try and see if I think fourth graders (and myself) are up for the challenge :)

I saw this in a classroom and really liked the set up. She had a parent volunteer make it for her after explaining what she needed. The volunteer had taken a cut down sheet of poster board and laminated it. She used double sided tape and plastic sheet protectors. The orange one was for one subject area and the purple is for another that she teaches. She simply slides in the standards, objective, and essential question in the plastic sheet protectors. Those are mostly on display for the folks coming in to observe. She does a more "child friendly" version of these on her flipcharts at the beginning of her lessons.

I had made the larger one in the last picture at a science professional development program at Roper Mountain Science Center in Greenville , SC. One of the teachers in the class said that she made them on a smaller scale with empty soda/water bottles so I thought I would give it a shot. Teacher Tips: - Have students bring in the bottles. Collect until you have enough. Kids love doing contributing to a project and mine always asked if we had enough yet. - I took all of the bottles home in a large trash bag and precut all the tops while watching tv (and made the drainage holes). I kept the top and base together by using small cut pieces of packaging tape so that students had a matching top and bottom (they would just take off the tape when we started the project). - I modeled what I did at home in front of the students in case they wanted to make one on their own at home. - Make extras of EVERYTHING (bottles and cut pieces of duct tape). - Pour aquarium gravel into a shoe box and have ...