As a first year teacher, it is sometimes difficult to manage all of the "stuff" that I have to do. But my goal, as a teacher, is first and foremost to educate children. Not only do I strive everyday to teach the 31 fifth graders in my class, but it is my desire to make learning fun and exciting for them. Is it time-consuming to make learning fun?...Well yes...but, it's time well spent!
One morning, not too long ago, I went to Starbucks and received my Grande Chai Tea Latte in the prettiest cup I have seen! Adorned with hearts and words that represent love, my coffee cup that morning, inspired me to do an activity with my students!
Since we had just learned about figurative language, I thought that making our own coffee cups using metaphor might be a fun activity. I modeled an example of my own, and then the kids took it from there. While these are only some of the examples, and some students are still working on their coffee cup, I was impressed and pleased with the poetry that was created during this activity!
Happiness is...everything green...
Dreams are...like an accomplishment, night art, potential...
So last week…catastrophe struck! After spending 11 hours making a great idea come to fruition, I was devastated after losing it and my trust in technology was broken. While I was so stressed by the whole situation, in the long run…as always…it was TIME WELL SPENT! Here’s how it all happened…
As I was thinking about how I would teach my students about figurative language, I was listening to my John Denver Pandora station. One of my favorite songs of his, “Annie’s Song” came on, and I realized that music and songs are full of figurative language. I mean, just in the first verse alone of John Denver’s ode to his wife, there are 5 similes!
“You fill up my senses
Like a night in a forest
Like the mountains in springtime
Like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses
Come fill me again”
Now, I am under no illusion that, while I may LOVE John Denver, my students are not going to be able to relate to his songs at this point in their lives. If I was going to use music to teach my students about figurative language, I’d have to find something with which they could connect. That’s when I started perusing my iTunes library. And then, just like a light bulb turning on, it came to me! …GLEE!
I love the music on GLEE, and so do the kids, so why not? After listening to all of the GLEE soundtracks on my computer, I was able to find enough examples of figurative language to create a listening center through which my students rotated through this past week in Guided Reading.While the YouTube videos in this blog were not included in the student slideshow, the audio files were, and they loved listening to the tracks and listening for figurative language. I realized I have some future singing sensations in my class, and since they will be going to middle school next year where students start to realize who they are (just like on GLEE), I think that this was an activity to which many of the students made a connection.
Two weeks ago, I was sitting in my apartment planning my lessons for the week, and I was watching my all-time favorite show as I worked!
First of all, I guess I owe my awesome friend Cody a big thanks for not being mad at me for still having his “I Love Lucy” season one DVDs that I borrowed about a year ago for a lesson during student teaching. Without having those DVDs I don’t think I would have been inspired to plan the math centers that were such a big hit with my students! So thanks Cody…you’re the best!
Cody and I on our way to the HPU Halloween Dance our sophomore year!
Well, anyway, as I watched Lucille Ball work her magic, I realized that this is the kind of television kids should be watching: television with good CLEAN humor! It absolutely kills me when students ask me if I have seen the latest episode of such shows as Family Guy, shows that even I find inappropriate.
So my wheels started turning…could I make some fraction centers that revolved around some of my favorite Lucy moments? Of course I could…and I DID!
On the first day of our “Lucy Centers” we watched a clip that any Lucy fan would remember well! I showed the students a clip from the episode when Lucy and Ricky and the Mertz’s travel to Italy, and Lucy ends up at a vineyard stomping grapes with a very serious Italian woman. After we watched the clip, I paired up the students and gave each student a bag with some purple and green grapes. As a pair they had to work through an activity where they found fractions with their grapes and had to practice adding them to their partner’s fractions. When they were finished, they had some fraction word problems about Lucy to complete.
On the second day of our “Lucy Centers”, we watched what is in my opinion, the funniest scene from any Lucy episode. We watched the tango scene from an episode where Lucy and Ethel are trying to trick Ricky and Fred by planting some store-bought eggs into the hen house that is turning out to be a business “flop”. While Lucy is sneaking out to the hen house, her shirt full of eggs, Ricky comes into the scene wanting to practice the tango that they are supposed to perform at a PTA fundraiser. Well, the rest is history…! After we all had a good laugh, I gave small student groups a bag of plastic Easter eggs. Each colored egg had a number written on the inside of the egg and this symbolized how many of that color egg they had total. The number on the slip of paper in each egg symbolized the amount of that colore egg that was found to be “cracked”. After compiling a chart with all of the fraction information, the students had to complete some addition and subtraction problems with their fractions.
On the last day of our “Lucy Centers”, we watched probably, the most memorable Lucy moment ever. From the episode when the men try to become homemakers while the women go out and get jobs, the scene where Lucy and Ethel try to keep up with the conveyor belt in the candy factory was one that many of the students actually recognized! After we watched the clip, I gave each student a box of candy hearts and they had to find out what fraction of the box was represented by each color. After they recorded their fractions, they had to add fractions for different colors and then come up with their own fraction word problem using their data.
Overall, it was simply a FUN week in math when we completed the “Lucy Centers”! The students seemed to enjoy it as much as I did, and while the educational benefits of making centers enjoyable is undeniable, one of the other rewards of completing these centers actually came this week when one of my students said this…
“Ms. Christian, I watched “I Love Lucy” the other morning before school, and that’s just a really good show!”
EXTRA CREDIT: Here...try these Lucy problems from our Grappling with Grapes center!
1. If Lucy stomps 3/12 of the grapes and the Italian woman stomps 9/36 of the grapes, what fraction of grapes did they stomp in all?
2. If the Italian woman throws 4/24 of the grapes in the vat at Lucy, and Lucy throws 2/6 of the grapes in the vat at the Italian woman, what fraction of the grapes in the vat were thrown in the grape fight?
3. If Lucy stomps 1 ½ vats full of grapes one day, and 3 ¾ vats full of grapes the next day, how many total vats of grapes did she stomp?
