A Peek Into My Week - Mar 17 - Mar 21

Next week is going to be short but crazy!  We ended our third quarter on Friday, so we will be having Parent Teacher conferences on Wednesday and Thursday - that means half day craziness.  Friday I will have a sub because my hubby is having a procedure to reduce his migraines.  He has tried everything from physical therapy to meds to botox - with no relief!  We are really hoping this works!  With 6 boys to keep after - migraines are just not a part of the plan!

I am linking up with Mrs Laffin's Laughings to share a few things we have planned for next week:

Reading/Science

Animal Presentations

The students have been hard at work putting together their animal research reports and boards.  We will present them this week.

We used this Animal Research Project from forkin4th.

Conferences

When I hold conferences, I try to have the student run the conference if possible.  I have them complete the sheets below which I found from Lesson Plan SOS.  This really helps them guide what they tell their parents and I have found the students to be VERY honest.  Their reflections usually match their grades closely, and light bulbs seem to go off in many of their heads about their work habits.

They are often tougher on themselves then I would be, but that is often a great teaching point in itself!



 I also ask them to write a short note to their parents telling them one thing that they are proud of this quarter and one thing that they are still working on.  It works great for the conference and is also as a mini-assessment.

I also found these forms from Ms. York's class that I think I might use this year.

Do you have your students write self-reflections for conferences?  Do you have any other tips for having successful conferences?

Math

Due to the short week, we will be reviewing fractions - St. Patrick's Day style!

Wacky St. Patrick's Day Fraction Fun

and

This one is a FREEBIE!

Tried It Tuesday - Hands on Converting Improper Fractions

I am linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried it Tuesday to share a way that I taught some of my students how to convert improper fractions starting with a hands on method and moving to more abstract thinking.  

I had the students use fraction strip pieces to model the problem, in this case 7 different 1/5 pieces.

Then I had the students place them along a whole unit.  In this case they could see it was equal to one whole and 2 1/5 pieces or 1 2/5.

After we practiced some problems using the manipulatives, I had them convert it to drawing.  The drawing above is no where near to scale, but I told them as long as they understand that they are equal parts it is ok to just make a rough sketch.  They drew out figures representing fifths, and then filled the in to get the 7/5.  Again, they could see that it equaled 1 2/5.

We began to get a bit more abstract by not drawing out the original "pieces" but instead labeling the wholes above.

As the students got better, they were able to skip count and draw boxes as representations.  I think this was so much easier to explain conceptually rather than starting with the idea of dividing the numerator by the denominator (which is how I was taught).  They actually understood WHY you divide the numerator by the denominator.

Since I learned math a very traditional algorithm way, I love trying new hands on ways to explain mathematical concepts! How do you incorporate concrete methods into your math lessons?