Maths Lesson, FlipVideo Style

Considering I've had the past two days off, I got to catch up on a lot of my Google Reader subscriptions and feeds. I came across this great site full of Flip Camera resources by means of a Tweet from a friend and I actually had time to check out the link.

There were a few PDFs on that site, and one of them was a Scavenger Hunt guide. So I clicked on through it and found some good lists dealing with Math and Language Arts.

When we weren't having snow ice days, our math group was just getting the hang of naming special polygons and understanding the differences between them. With the four FlipVideo cameras in my room, plus an extra one in the building, I wanted to try this tomorrow.

Since I've got five Flips, I can have five groups with about four/five kids in each one. Have them bring their notebooks with the descriptors of each polygon we've studied and send them out with the task. Find as many polygons and document them on the FlipVideo camera in fifteen minutes around the school.

And then it hit me. I could just see some kids shooting for two seconds at a rhombus painted on the wall and then onto the next shape. I wanted them to discover and support their findings while they were there and capture that on the video.

I needed an example. Well, since we didn't have school today, I couldn't pull a random kid to stand in for my demo, so I had my roommate film me and I did one.

I'll let you know how it goes. And I'll probably upload the student vids to the school website when they're complete.

NEW

Yesterday (Sunday) I went into my classroom and was planning on getting organized and prepared for the upcoming week. Instead, I spent the next six hours rearranging furniture and cataloging my books.

I generally rearrange student desks/teams every quarter, but this time I didn't stop with the kids' desk. I traded in my "big" table for a skinnier one and finally moved in the shelf from the room next door that I was using. I set up my five-armed lamp and moved some book shelves around, too.

[Insert new classroom pictures here]

There was a part in my room where the book shelves blocked a small area out of my sight, and one of my students has been drawn to that place in the past few weeks. So I knew I had to address that issue. In doing so, I found that I needed to reorganize my classroom library due to the vast amount of new books I had collected since the start of the year.

[Insert new bookshelf pictures here]

When my kids arrived today, I had them all sit on the rug. I didn't pay much attention to where I positioned the kids, so I knew I had some tweaking to do before they settled in. After a few minutes of assessing who was seated with whom, I moved a few students next to friends so that they had the opportunity to be with buddies before we got into testing season where everyone will be their own island for two weeks.

In going along with the new room, we proceeded to take the rest of the morning to clean out all of our subject folders and desks. It was a good process for the class, and I think it got them feeling refreshed.

We threw out old papers and failed ideas. Students relived 100% spelling tests and found long-lost library books. One of my kids found a cutie that was given to him on Halloween. It was pretty gross.

Although it took a good chunk of our morning, we still found time to do our Math Fluency progress monitoring before heading off to Art.

***This blog post is part of my new month's resolution to tweet and blog more***

The Kane Chronicles, Book Two - Details Released

The second book in Rick Riordan's Egyptian Mythology series, The Kane Chronicles, debuted it's cover art and official title today. The follow up to The Red Pyramid will be The Throne of Fire. You can view Rick's post over on his blog to view the cover art.

For the next 24 hours, though, you can also read the first chapter of the book on USAToday.com.

The Throne of Fire will be released on May 3. Looks like it would be a great summer read for you 3rd - 5th graders.