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!
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| 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?
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?
I am continually awed by your creativity, use of current and beloved oldies to engage your scientists, mathematicians, social scientists, readers, writers, and THINKERS!! Truly, if every teacher would answer the call to get to really know their learners, seek ways to meaningfully engage them to stretch to their full potential, and "don't stop believing", we would have a refreshing revolution in education. Hats off to you Alysha!!
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