Kaitlyn Dunn

While learning about angles in geometry, students were able to let their creativity shine. The point of the activity was for students to write their first name in capital letters. Following this, they measured all the angles in their name using a protractor. To finish the activity, students drew anything that interests them around their name! This was a good combination of math and art (MART). It gave me a good opportunity to see what students were interested in. I saw a lot of Pokemon, Harry Potter, and flowers. It was a good conversation piece and allowed me to get to know the grade 6s more!

It was such a great experience to go to the Windsor Squash and Fitness. Students learned the importance of a healthy active life style. Additionally, they learned various ways to be active and explored Squash, which many students have never heard of!

Student’s creativity truly shined as they created Banyan trees using pastels.

After learning and exploring angles, the students went on a mission throughout their classroom and the hallway to search for acute, obtuse, and right angles. In groups, they took pictures with an Ipad and created a collage on the app pic collage.

The faculty of education at the University of Windsor held 4 week sessions on mindfulness hosted by Neda Marin. This was such a wonderful opportunity for many reasons. It was a nice escape from the work at the University and gave me and opportunity to unravel and focus on self- care. I learned how to teach yoga, but more importantly I learned how to teach yoga in a unique way. Neda taught us how to teach yoga using chairs, which I thought was very informative, as realistically, not every school is equipped with yoga mats for every school.

I wanted a fun way to introduce myself, rather than standing in front of the class lecturing the students. I thought of a few interesting facts, but students had to solve the questions to figure out the answer about me. Students got into groups of 2 and excitably solved the questions! Following this, students created their own equations about them self and I solved them!

The grade 4’s and I have been learning about light and sound in their science unit while the grade 3’s were at full court press for EQAO. We have been talking about the properties of light and sound. For example, light travels in a straight line and it can be absorbed. For sound, it travels in waves or vibrations. The students and I conducted various experiments to test out the properties of light and sound. Below is a video to emphasize what a sound wave looks like. The students and I built a sound wave by taking shish-kabob sticks and placing a jujube on each end. Then we took duct tape and placed it in the middle. When one person hits an end, it creates a wave! 

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Kahoot is such a resourceful website to create quizzes for students in a fun and exciting way. I created a quiz on this website after our plant unit. The students had such a fun time answering questions to  the topics we just discussed over the past weeks about plants. For this website, each student gets an IPad and goes to kahoot.com. I airplay this website on the TV and when I login to mykahoot.com, a code will pop up on the screen. Students use this code to have access to the quiz. Once everyone has put the code in their IPad and creates a name, I begin the quiz. This is a great resource for teachers, because it keeps all the data on the website to access at any time. I can find out who got the answer right or wrong. I know who got the highest score and who needs a little extra help in certain areas. The best part about this, is that students are so excited to be quizzed!

The students created perspective art! They were required to trace their feet and hands on the sheet of paper. Next, they drew their head smaller than their hands and feet to emphasize the perspective of falling into space. Following this, the arms and legs went from being larger to smaller to continue to emphasize falling into space. The students loved this art because they were able to add their own creativity to the art. There were a few requirements like tracing their own feet and hands, but they were allowed to choose a background, hair style, eye color,  and clothes. We posted these pictures above the students locker, accompanying the students graffiti wall.

3-Act Math: It All Adds Up

The students had been learning about money for the past week. I have been apart of collaborative learning with a few teachers at my school who are doing research on 3-Act Math. Also, during a PD day on March 31st, I had the pleasure on sitting in on a 3-Act Math lesson with my associate teacher. 3-Act Math is a math lesson where students watch 3 separate videos, one at a time, to find the answer to a math problem. The first video is very brief and after students watch it once or twice, they get into groups of 1-4 and write down a t-chart that says I wonder and I notice. They fill out as much information as possible on their t-chart. The students come back to the carpet and the teacher writes down all of the math related curiosities to I wonder and I notice. Next, the class comes to a conclusion to figure out what the question to the video is from the student response. In the video we watched, the question was “what coins did he put in the bank”, which about 5 students were able to guess. Following this, the students watch the second video, or view pictures provided. With this information, they go back to their group to try and solve the problem. They put as much information as possible on their anchor chart to solve the problem. During this step, the students saw that someone put a dime and a nickle in a money jar and then blocked off the rest of the numbers. The person put money in 12 times to reach a $1.00. The only coins he used were dimes, nickles, and quarters. Students went back into their groups and problem solved. It was amazing to see how the students could work together and collaborate. They would discuss the possibilities and money combinations. My job was to facilitate students and extend their curiosities. I was very cautious about what I would say to the students, because I did not want to give away the answer. I would simply say things like “great work” or “can you think of any other money combinations?”

After the students had enough time to collaborate, problem solve, and critically think about the answer to the question, we gathered back at the carpet to watch the final video, which revealed the answer. The final answer was that the person used 7 nickles, 4 dimes, and 1 quarter. The students would have gotten this answer by using the information that he used all three coins: nickles, dimes, and quarters. He used 12 total coins and the total was $1.00. There were a total of 9 groups of students, some individual. There were 5 groups of students who got the correct answer. The other students who did not get the correct answer used only dimes and nickles and forgot to incorporate quarters. However, almost all the groups presented their findings, including the students who got the answer wrong. This allowed them to understand where they went wrong, and identify the correct answer. The 3-Act Math is a wonderful opportunity to allow students to problem solve, critically think, collaborate, and be curious. I absolutely loved watching the students solve this question because they had so much fun doing so. This is a wonderful class to sit in on and watch a love for math become a possibility.

The 3-Act Math was from a website called G Fletchy. The link to this specific 3-Act Math is https://gfletchy.com/it-all-adds-up/