Dare to Dream: Travel!

The timing of this part of the TpT Seller Challenge is perfect! One of the things I would like to continue to do is travel...and as I write this post I am sitting on the other side of the world in Port Douglas, Australia. My wife's family and I have had the great opportunity of traveling around Australia for the two weeks! We began our journey in Sydney, which might just be my favorite part of I vacation this far. It's hard not to love Sydney with views like this!

Sunrise in Sydney

Sydney Opera House

During the next part of our trip, we traveled to Uluru, where we did a lot of hiking and learned about the culture of the Anango people. One of the dinners, we went to a "grill your own" restaurant that was amazing! The picture shows my grilled emu, crocodile, kangaroo, and prawns. Here are a couple of shots from Uluru!

For the final days of our trip, we are in Port Douglas. The two highlights (other than the early morning crossword puzzles with our awesome beach view) has been going to the Wildlife Habitat and snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef!

With our trip coming to an end, one of my dreams is to continue to travel. I have had some great opportunities to explore different areas of the country and world and I hope to be able to continue doing that!

TpT Seller Challenge and More 6th Grade Math!

It has been a busy start to the summer! I have been busy creating and organizing some things (several of them FREE!) for my TpT store and now the #TpTsellerchallenge has motivated me to revamp some of my product covers! First off, lets get to the free stuff! I spent a day organizing all of my Challenge of the Week problems for 6th grade math and creating an answer key. You can click on my Challenge of the Week tab above for more info on how I use these. Here is a link to the free document! Enjoy!

Challenge of the Week Problems

I also spent some time creating a new set of Math Scavenger Hunts for 6th grade math. I am mad at myself for not trying this type of activity until the end of this school year. As a said in my last post, my students loved doing these and kept begging to do more of them. I can't wait to use these more often next year! I linked the pictures below to the Math Scavenger Hunt Bundle, but you can also find the Math Scavenger Hunt: Number System for free in my TpT store!

Math Scavenger Hunt Bundle

And last, but not least, I just found out about and joined the TpT Seller Challenge! The first challenge has inspired me to make a new cover for my free "Math Curse" Challenge Questions. I love reading this book to my students every year and then letting them try to answer some of the crazy and creative questions from the book! If you haven't seen the book before, I highly recommend finding a copy. It is a great book for upper elementary and middle school students! Below are the before and after pictures of my covers! Click the picture to grab your free copy of the question sheet that I give to my students!

Friday Freebie - Math Scavenger Hunt: Expressions & Equations

Summer is here! With our school year coming to an end with a half day yesterday, I was able to take down the final countdown post-it from the fridge. As you can see, we didn't have too stressful of a schedule in 6th grade math for the final day! It always love getting to meet the incoming 6th graders during our Bump-Up Day. Now it is time to look forward to some time off, lots of baseball, and a trip to Australia this summer! I am going to try something this summer that I have been thinking about doing for a while now. I've decided that I am going to post one FREE product from my TPT store every Friday for the entire day.

While enjoying my first day of summer, I have also been working on creating some new scavenger hunts to use next year! I first tried one of these at the end of this year as a review and I wish I would have done it sooner. The 6th graders loved solving the scavenger hunt problems and I even had a student ask on the last day of school if we could do another one! My plan is to create a scavenger hunt for each 6th grade standard, as well as some end of year review scavenger hunts! I have a few of them up in my store already...and tomorrow I plan on making my Math Scavenger Hunt: Expressions & Equations free for the entire day! Each scavenger hunt includes 12 question posters, a student record sheet, and an answer key. Be sure to grab your copy from my TPT store tomorrow (Store: Alex O'Connor)!

Stay tuned for more Friday Freebies from my TPT store! Have a great start to your summer everyone!

Volume Review Activity for 6th Grade Math

A rainy Friday night has given me a chance to get back in the blogging world (I coach baseball, so the the free nights these days are few and far between!). In 6th grade math, we just finished up our unit on volume. During my first few years of teaching, I found that this is an area that 6th graders often struggle to grasp right away. I decided to spend an extra couple of days reviewing and practicing how to find the volume of rectangular prisms, triangular prisms, pyramids, cylinders, and cones! The question was...what should we do to help review?

It's amazing how sometimes the last minute teaching ideas often turn out the best! This was one of those "night before" ideas that I thought I'd give a try. To start, I spent about 15 minutes creating these volume posters on five pieces of poster board.

After taping the five posters up around the room, I gave each student five post-it notes. I had them label their post-it notes with the five different figures. Then, I divided the class into five groups...each group starting at a different poster. I gave each group 3-4 minutes to find the volume of their shape. Each student was required to show their work on their own post-it, but I encouraged them to work with their group members if they got stuck. I made sure to emphasize that if they got done early they should help out their group members who were still working! Here are some pictures of my students hard at work!

After having all five groups rotate to each station, I had students place their five post-it notes on the matching poster. I had them wait to do this step at the end (rather then as they did each problem) so that other groups wouldn't see the work that they had done. Here are the five posters with their post-it notes attached!

After placing their post-it notes on the posters, I brought the class back together. Giving them three minutes to walk around the room, I had them look for two specific things. Number one...things that we did well as a class. Number two...any mistakes they saw and how to correct them. This final step of the activity was very insightful. Before having them walk around, I made sure to stress the idea that if they could find another student's mistake and explain how to fix it, that it showed that they really understood the concept. I was impressed by how many students could do this!

This was such an easy and effective review activity that I had to share! I also love how it could be applied to almost any concept. I plan on using this structure for a review activity at the end of each of my units!

Blueprint Project for Upper Elementary Math

Every year I look forward to our geometry units for several reasons. Not only is it one of my favorite subjects to teach, I also get to introduce our Blueprint Project to the sixth graders! After seeing (and somehow remembering!) the previous year's blueprints out in the hallway, the current sixth graders have been asking throughout the year, "When are we going to do those blueprint projects?" Now that we have wrapped up the entire project, I wanted to take some time to write about the projects from start to finish! The link below is a free copy of the packet I give to students at the beginning of the project. Although this is free, you will also need some additional materials for each student (poster board, graph paper, colored pencils, Sharpies, etc.).

Blueprint Project

The first step of the Blueprint Project is for students to create a building of their choice on a piece of graphs paper. Often times, this is their favorite part! They love the open-ended nature of being able to design any type of building, with anything in it. Lots of students design dream houses, but I always look forward to seeing the creativity of the students when picking the type of building. I have seen everything from animal rescue centers to aquariums! On their graph paper blueprints, they must have all angles/wall lengths measured and labeled. In addition, I require the students to double each of their lengths and write this in parenthesis. This is very helpful later on when they are enlarging their blueprints! Here is a picture of one of my students designing their blueprint.

Once their graph paper blueprint is drawn and labeled, each student gets a large piece of poster board. On the poster board, they must enlarge their original blueprint to twice the size. I have used other scale factors before but have found that having everyone multiply by two ensures that it will fit on the poster board! It is extremely important to stress accuracy when measuring and drawing the angles and lengths. If the students aren't accurate, then they will have wall lengths or angles that don't line up on their final blueprint! Here are a few pictures of my students working on their final blueprints. I am always amazed at the detail some of my students include on their projects!

Finally, the last stage of the blueprints...adding colors and detail! Once all of their walls are drawn in pencil, the students can begin to add details, outline their walls with Sharpies, and use colored pencil to add some color. All of the details do not need to be measured (couches, tables, chairs, etc.). Here are some of the creative designs my students came up with this year! Some of my students really spent a lot of time outside of class making their projects look great!

As always, I'd love to hear any questions you might have about the projects! If you are thinking of trying out the project with your students, let me know and I'd be happy to provide some useful tips when introducing the Blueprint Project for the first time. Have a great week everyone!

Pi Day Challenge (that doesn't involve memorizing numbers!)

Every year it seems like I've added one new thing to our Pi Day festivities in sixth grade math! This time, it was a result of Pi Day falling on a Saturday (and the ultimate Pi Day at that...3.1415 = 3/14 in the year 15). On Saturday, 3/14, I am challenging my students to send me an email at exactly 9:26am with 53 seconds with the subject 3.141592653...

3.141592653...= 3/14/15 at 9:26:53

And the best part? The winner is going to get 3.14 packs of gum! Needless to say, this was quite the motivation for the sixth graders! Stay tuned for more Pi Day festivities (pictures included) as well as a post about our Blueprint Projects we are just finishing up! Happy Pi Day everyone!