WANTED: #OLDMANWINTER

Exploring 2D Geometry 2013

We've spent the past 2 weeks looking at 2D shapes and their properties and all the cool things we can learn from them such as angles, area, perimeter, etc.

It's been a fun exploration! We've learned so much!

Some of our learning has taken us off on tangents.
For instance, what is that thing used for, anyway?

Do you know what this is?!?

I could have easily told them the answer, but instead two students took it upon themselves to research this thingamajig and find out how to use it and apply it to what we were doing in class!

Jacob, the researcher

Jacob & Innis went on the search & then taught the class all about it & how to use it!

In other areas of the class we were busy trying to construct triangles with specific angles, trying to prove our statements about triangles:

(Can a triangle with one 60 degree angle only have 60 degree angles?!!? Or can a right angle triangle have a 60 degree angle as one of its angles?!?!)

 We learned so much through hands-on, self-directed exploration that it was a unit we're feeling really good about!

Here are some links to pages we used to further our learning, too!
http://www.mathsisfun.com/triangle.html

http://www.coolmath.com/reference/triangles-types.html

Parallelograms



We also noticed the importance of triangles in engineering and building.




Anyone recognize this?

A little game of "What is it?!"

We've been working on descriptive writing in class. I'm trying to get my students to have more creative confidence in their writing! I, nor their classmates, can't be giving them all their ideas all the time. So, I decided to try a "Pull an item from the bag, Hide it, Write about it" activity. It was kind of fun! Here are some examples of their very descriptive writing:

First day, first post of a new year!

Welcome back to school!
What could we have done that was blog-worthy on the very first day of school?


Today we got into the routine of our silent reading time each day. As a follow-up to our silent reading (where you could hear a pin drop, and students were asking for more time to read!) our crazy teacher handed out baggies that contained play-doh, a pencil, a piece of lined paper and a piece of unlined paper. We were given a number and if we had the number 1, we had to write about what we read:

If we were given the number 2, we had to draw what we were reading about:

And finally, if we were given the number 3, then we had to create something that showed what we were reading about:

And, as their teacher, I just have to say... these kids are impressive! LOL! Right from the first day!

Hope you all enjoyed the day! Welcome Back!