We only have 8 more days of school left!! This week we are having fun learning about watermelon through literacy and math activities. Below is a picture of some of my students participating in a cooperative learning activity. I like to call it Circle of Friends, as I learned in my SIOP training. It is the same structure as Kagan's Inside-Outside Circle. I have my inside circle of students facing outwards with their math supplies: watermelon ten frame, black beans, and white beans. My outside circle faces the inside circle, and they are the ones who moved every 3 minutes. The one blond boy was looking at the timer (Kagan's Timer Tools)... something new that I was using.
Here is a closer view of what my students were doing. Partner A was telling an addition story problem to 10, while Partner B checked with the beans. Then both partners documented their work in their watermelon addition books. Then they reversed roles. They were told to do this until the timer rang. Then the outer circle had to rotate to a new partner. At first, they only had time for one math story to ten. The novelty of the timer was distracting! I haven't used it much. I plan to use it more in the new school year.
Afterwards, my students told me their results of how many ways they figured out to make ten. Here is a sample of my sloppy quick chart. I wish I thought ahead and made a pretty chart for this blog, but this is the real deal! The next time I think I will prepare my chart ahead of time and have my students draw the pictures to match the math sentences.
This is one of my literacy centers where students read and match numbers to numerals.
My students wrote personal connections to what watermelon reminded them of. I shared some personal connections and a Saveur magazine article on watermelon. Below are some samples of their watermelon craftivity. The writing is inside the flap of their watermelon.
We also had a watermelon seed spitting contest. Our class watermelon did not have many seeds. So I had my students use black beans instead. I printed out 14 large enormous seeds and placed them in a line. We watched to see where each seed landed. We placed them back where they first landed. After all the spitting, we compared how many times our seeds landed on certain enormous seeds.
Here is a worksheet I created to have my students keep track of their measuring observations. This particular child came to school already writing with lovely penmanship!
Here are two examples of my students' work on the back of their watermelon seed measurement.
Today, we played Kagan's Quiz-Quiz-Trade with changing a sound in a word to make a new word. Partner A was the taller person who went first. Then it was Partner B's turn. Afterwards they traded cards and high fived each other before finding a new partner.
Here is my poetry center with one of the watermelon poems. Below is a basket of my students' poetry folders. They read and illustrate the poem of the week during literacy centers.
These activities can be found on my TPT unit. Click on the picture to find out more about it.
Are you ready for the summer? I feel like I am not ready for all that end-of-the-year cleaning and reorganizing... but somehow I do manage every year! Have a great end of your school year!
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