This post is a little later than usual, but there's a good reason for that - the hubby and I got away for a fabulous weekend together! This is a definite RARE occasion, but something we need to do more often! We treated ourselves to a beautiful suite (gorgeous), dined well (too well) on delicious food, shopped til we dropped (my legs are still screaming), and I even went to my first NHL game! What a GREAT time!
So, on to the math journals. We've been back at school for two weeks and, in keeping with my new year's resolution, I made sure to do at least one foldable a week. The first foldable had a New Year's theme - we made a foldable of the date 2012, and I had the students write three goals (or resolutions) inside. They needed to set one goal related to their notebooks (neatness, completeness, organization, etc.), one goal related to group work (we do a lot of paired and group activities related to problem-solving - and with my crew this year, sometimes it's not the math problem that needs solved ...), and one goal related to test preparation. I like that the students made their goals concrete by recording them, and when problem does arise, we can go back and discuss the goals they made.
With the start of our new measurement unit, and our focus on the "metric staircase" this week (see last post), I thought it was only fitting that we complete the metric staircase as a foldable in our math journals. On the outside of the foldable we recorded the metric prefixes, and on the inside we recorded the mnemonic device, "King Henry Does Usually Drink Chocolate Milk", as well as the numerical values (when the base unit is 1). The still seems a little plain to me - too much white space inside. Does anyone have any great ideas on what we could add to them? Thursday and Friday we spent a lot of time working on the actual conversions - I've got a neat conversion activity for our journals planned for Tuesday. I can't wait to share it with you in my next math journal post!
Happy Sunday!!!
With the start of our new measurement unit, and our focus on the "metric staircase" this week (see last post), I thought it was only fitting that we complete the metric staircase as a foldable in our math journals. On the outside of the foldable we recorded the metric prefixes, and on the inside we recorded the mnemonic device, "King Henry Does Usually Drink Chocolate Milk", as well as the numerical values (when the base unit is 1). The still seems a little plain to me - too much white space inside. Does anyone have any great ideas on what we could add to them? Thursday and Friday we spent a lot of time working on the actual conversions - I've got a neat conversion activity for our journals planned for Tuesday. I can't wait to share it with you in my next math journal post!
Such a great idea. I love the mnemonic device.
ReplyDeleteLaurie
Chickadee Jubilee
Thanks, Laurie! Be sure to check out my post below to get a link to a fabulous lesson I found that is based on the mnemonic device.
ReplyDeleteahh! I remember that saying from when I taught 5th grade!! wow...and I remember FOIL (you know the operation when doing problems that contain parenthesis?) - see? mnemonics DO work!!
ReplyDelete♥ Jen
The Teachers' Cauldron
Love the fun 2012 foldable - I'll be using it for our reading goals :)
ReplyDeleteWow! I love both of these foldables! The metric conversions one is great!! I will be making something similar when we get to the metric system! Thanks for sharing! I love this feature on your blog!!
ReplyDelete☼Kate
To The Square Inch
this is fun :D
ReplyDeleteVery clever! Great idea and I wish I had something like this when I was in school to help me remember these in order:)
ReplyDeleteI love your math journals with foldables in them. I am definitely borrowing this idea next year!
ReplyDeleteThe Metric Foldable is great!
ReplyDeleteI'm just wondering if the inside numbers are backwards. For instance, if you look under Kilo, it would say 0.001, but Kilo means 1,000 doesn't it?
Thank-you! I guess you could look at the numbers either way. For us, they were written in relation to the base unit. 1m = 0.001km, 1m = 1000mm.
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