Shapes, Fractions and Super Stars

Last week we finished up our Planes and 3-D Shapes unit in math.  One fun thing we did was design any 3-D shape and they had to label the parts and how many sides/faces, vertices, right angles, and draw the shape they made.  I passed out toothpicks and marshmallows for them to become architects.  They loved it!  I had only a few that did something other than a square, but they also realized once they made their shapes, they could EAT the leftover marshmallows! 

This week we started fractions!  I always start off with essential questions for each area I teach, so today our Math E.Q's were:

Today we only worked on the bottom E.Q.  What are the parts of a Fractions?  We talked about them and made a web of what we know.  They all came up with great facts and most of them said has to do with part of a whole!  AWESOME!  I found this great activity over that The Teacher Wife and she offered this fractions unit!  Amazing!  Click on the picture below and it will take you to her site and all that she offers there!  If you aren't a fan of yours, you totally need to be.  I love all her ideas and I am in awe of where she finds her time to do all of these activities, plus teach and do your lesson plans, grade papers, and still have a life... Amazing!

So anyway, since we are talking about the "Parts" of a fraction, I used her activity and made a poster of the fraction and then had the kids come up and work in pairs to figure out where each part went.  They loved it and the class participated as well.  Tomorrow we will be making a booklet of fractions. 

When we finished, I took down the poster and all of its parts and they had to show me what they learned.



We have our hand movements too that we use with the whole brain teaching.  We raise a fist in the air and say, "NUMERATOR" and our other arm is making a straight line, we then move our fist to the bottom and say, that's right... you guessed it... "DENOMINATOR."  They love using their hands!

On the last note... this is our last nine weeks as second graders.  These boys and girls worked so hard to reach their AR goal and I so proud of them!  Here is a picture with their AR Brain Beads on and now we are starting over with our points.  We are already rocking and rolling with our points! 

We are AR SUPER STARS!!!

We are missing 4 of the ROCK STARS... they were in the library... Hopefully this last nine weeks, they ALL will make it!  I know that can!!!