The "Polluted" Classroom

I have a wonderful team that is overflowing with amazing teaching ideas!  One that I did, but cannot take credit for coming up with, is polluting my classroom to help introduce pollution.  After dropping my kids off at lunch, I came back and began to trash my room....if you know me at all, you will know that I am not a neat freak by any means, but in my work space, I can't handle a mess for the sake of a mess, so this was hard....I could feel my chest tightening up as I was spreading trash around my room and knocking over chairs (not really...but I like the dramatics of it).

After the trashing, I had just about enough time to heat my lunch up and take all of 1 bite of it before picking my kiddos up.  I didn't really care though because I was so excited to see their reactions.  We came back to the room, they expressed their surprise, and then expressed their displeasure when I told them they now had to clean it up. :)

It took them 15 minutes to get everything spic and span and back in place!  They didn't think that was too bad.  I explained that it only took me, 1 person, 10 minutes to make the big mess, and it took them 15 minutes X 20 people, which equated to 300 minutes, or 5 hours to clean it all up.  I asked them to think about that in terms of our environment and all the people that pollute it.  

After that we watched a 3 minute clip that showed some of the devastating effects of pollution.  I had them discuss at their tables the following questions: 

1. What is pollution?

2. Why is it bad?

3. What are different types of pollution?

4. What can we do to help?

We talked about what they discussed and then read and completed a Pollution and Conservation Mini-book. 

To get this mini-book visit my TpT store by clicking here.

This lesson was definitely one of my favorites from this year!  Students were immediately hooked (for all you Pirates out there! :) )and excited to learn more! #tlap

It's Getting HOT in Here! HEAT Activities!!

So, I'll be the first to admit that science is just not my subject....I think I'm fairly decent at teaching it, but I just don't love it.  Fortunately, I think I'm pretty good at tricking my kids into thinking otherwise by acting so excited about all the "neat" things we learn about.  One of our units we do each year is heat--fun! fun! :)

If you haven't noticed already, I am ALL about flipbooks and foldables!  I LOVE them!  It allows the kiddos to take notes without the torture of....well, just taking notes.  It's amazing that you can just fold/cut paper different ways and add a few pictures and note taking becomes fun!

There are 2 main concepts we cover when discussing heat:
1. What are the different ways heat can be produced?
2. How does heat move?

Heat Production:
For heat production, we created the foldable below.  These are perfect little organizers to add to science notebooks, or just keep on hand for review.

This is the front of the foldable:
It covers friction, electricity, mixing matter (chemical change), and burning
We put the way and a picture on each. 

INSIDE:
Under each flap- on the top, we wrote the definition or description

On the bottom- we wrote 2-3 examples

BACK:
On the back we wrote & answered 3 Essential Questions: 

1. What is heat?
2. What is thermal energy? 

3. What are the 4 ways to produce heat? 

Heat Movement:
Below is the foldable that we made to cover the movement of heat.  It talks about radiation, conduction & convection.

Front- you could definitely dress it up more! :)

Inside: We included the definition/description for each on the flaps & then on the inside drew pictures that showed examples of each. 

Hope you find these useful!  For more heat resources, check out my TPT store

I also have a Heat Unit Test and a study guide you can check out as well!

Rocks Mini Books

Trying to find new activities and things to do with my units is something that I am constantly striving to do.  This is my 6th year teaching third grade and I LOVE IT!  I would not change grade levels unless I was asked to do so! I love the age, I love the curriculum, I just LOVE it all! 

Before I started teaching, one of my college professors made a statement that stuck with me.  She said, "As a teacher, you have to decide if you're going to teach 30 years, or if you're going to teach 1 year 30 times." I knew that I wanted to teach 30 years, meaning every year, I needed to keep striving to mix things up and to better my practices.

Science has been one of the most difficult areas for me to do this in.  One things my kiddos love is completing mini books!  I love these things!  It allows the kids to read, highlight, and look back for answers.  It also gets them out of the traditional textbooks. 

With this being something I'm hoping to add to my units, this has become my new project...to create mini books for my science curriculum, and I completed my very first one tonight!

 

Rocks Mini Book

 

To view more of my new mini and/or purchase it, Click Here! :)