Arrays, arrays, and arrays!!! PLUS Water Cycle!!!

We did a little bit of multiplication this week....
We have been having unit tests every week, whether for math or science... so I figured the kids needed a little bit of sweetness in their work...
So I picked these two books to review about arrays and talk more about multiplication:

 

 

We worked on some vocabulary words such as arrays, factors, and product. Then we read a little bit of both books, and at the end we added a little bit of fun and sweetness to our work.

 

Students received 12 Hershey Kisses to create different arrays with them, and record their arrays on their math journal. After they recorded the different arrays, I gave them a legal size of black construction paper and a sheet that contained about 25 Hershey Kisses clip art. They were working in partners to create different arrays with the amount given. At the end of the day, I let students take the chocolate home and eat them there :)

Unfortunately, I can't give you my copy because I do not have any permission from whoever did the clipart; HOWEVER, I can tell you that I just looked up on Google "Hershey Kisses coloring" and I found the one I used for this activity.

 

Here are some pictures of what my students created:

On this same week we had some minutes left to do something different.... The idea started when I saw Amy Lemons post about area, you can click HERE to go to her post. However, I used this idea differently, we create robots so we could make arrays.... here are some pictures of what my students did... I think they turned out pretty cute :)

On this same week, we have been learning about the water cycle (more of a review for 3rd graders) and each stage of it (we went in more depth to describe each stage). We created a foldable to write about each stage and we illustrated the water cycle on our journals. As an independent/assessment, students illustrated on a legal size construction paper the water cycle, and labeled each stage. I think they turned out pretty good, and I especially liked the one that had a wave.. :)

This is what we have done in a nutshell :) I am hoping my week will be smother and I will be feeling better to keep posting things.... Thank you to all that keep reading and stopping by my blog :)
I know I have not been very good at posting weekly, but I hope that you understand that even when we try, we can't control our health and that things happen in life :)
I wish you all a engaging and fun rest of a week!!

Tally marks, pictographs, and more graphs!!! :)

I am still alive, I promise!!!!
I am still recuperating from being sick, but this last week has been crazyyyyyy!!! We have been taking our Benchmark tests, WHICH they were a mirror to the STAAR.... ahhhh!!! Anywayssssss.. those were my excuses for not posting for the past two weekends!!
On another note, I would like to start sharing with y'all some of the hard work my students have been doing in class... Three weeks ago we started talking about bar graphs and creating them, here is my blog post http://brincaintobilingualnicolau.blogspot.com/2013/10/oue-busy-week-and-facebook-first-friday.html
These pictures are from two weeks ago (a week after my last post), when we were reviewing bar graphs and starting to compare them with pictographs....

My fantastic team partner gave me this idea... After talking and comparing the two types of bars, students did their own poll... They created their topic, their options so others can vote... Then, they went around the room to ask their classmates and record their answers by creating a tally mark chart... After they finished with the Tally Mark Chart, they proceeded to create their pictograph (including a key), and their bar graph....

   

 

 

 

This week was so much fun and the students did have a great time creating their own graphs. There were very engaged and had a great time working on their own bar graphs...

 

Thank you for stopping by my blog, I will be writing another post for the following week and thing we did!!! :)

 

Our busy week and Facebook First Friday Freebie!! :)

Hello everyone! :)
Well this past week, has definitely been a better than the previous weeks... Except that I got severe allergies (thank you Texas), but I have been able to feel better with medicine and rest. My kitchen floor has also been updated with tiles, so you can imagine the amount of cleaning I had to do after (sign).... Nevertheless, it has been productive and fun in class! So here we go:

1. We have been talking about money and reviewing the value of coins by making a foldable. This is a picture of my journal; however, instead of stickers, you can always use the front and back coin stamps that you can find at teachers stores :)

We also wrote word problems in our journals that included money concepts, so we wrote a list of words that refers to money

 

 

On the same week, we started talking about bar graphs and their scale. I brought three different types of candy for students to eat and to vote for their favorite to create a bar graph with sticky notes. This was our result:

 

 

I was surprised three students liked the Jelly Beans the best, I personally dislike Jelly Beans... like a lot! I only bought them to get to know their taste, and apparently most of them have the same as me ;) They absolutely loveeeeeedd the skittles! I would have bought snickers (because they are my favorite candy of all!), but I couldn't bring them since it has peanuts inside :(

 

Anyways, after finishing our bar graph and talking about strategies on how to represent information on bar graphs, I asked students to get in partners and create their own bar graph using their Chex Mix bag. I simply placed some Chex Mix in a zip lock and pass it over to each partner so they could create a bar graph to represent how many of each type they had in their bag. These are some examples of their hard work, I was so pleased to see their work and see them so engaged on this activity :)

  

We will start reviewing and creating pictographs next week, so stay tuned!

Lastly, I wanted to share with y'all my new Facebook Friday Freebie! I cannot believe we are already in October! So for this moth, I decided making a match game for community helpers. I have a friend who teaches younger students and she gave me the idea :) I created this activity in both English and Spanish, and for those that teach DUAL LANGUAGE Classrooms! This can be useful if you print both English and Spanish word versions and they have to match the community helpers in English with the community helpers in Spanish :)
Click on this LINK to see instructions on how to follow my Facebook and have access to my Facebook Freebies! :)

Have an awesome weekend friends!! I will be grading and writing lesson plans!! :) Wooohoooo ;)