21st Century Teaching and Learning

STEAM Lesson

My favorite lesson...the STEAM Lesson! This lesson was SO much fun, and my students loved being able to show their creativity. In my steam lesson, we read the story, The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, and built our own truffula trees! We began with a prediction chart, and all the kids were able to predict how many "blocks tall" their truffula tree would be. 

Next, my students predicted even further what their truffula tree would look like by drawing a picture. All the creativity and imagination that shined through their drawings was amazingly unique! I even kept a few ;)

Finally, we built our truffula trees out of math blocks and put fuzz balls at the top! I was amazed at how tall some of the kids got their truffula tree to stand. They were very determined! For assessment, I used a digital storytelling app that recorded the kids' voices telling the story of how they built their truffula tree and why we should take care of trees/how trees help the environment. It was a wonderful learning experience for them, and for me. Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite authors, so it was refreshing to reread a story from my childhood, and introduce it to a new generation in a way that they understood the central theme of the story while having fun and using their math/engineering skills!

Math Lesson

For my math lesson this semester, I focused on the relationship between numbers and cardinality (the ability to recognize that the number 5 can be represented by 5 objects {blocks, turkeys, etc.}) Before I began my lesson, I read the book "10 Fat Turkeys" and played the video "5 Little Turkeys." Reading the book and showing the video allowed my students to start associating the numbers we count with to actual objects, or in this case, turkeys. 




Next, we moved to stations. I set out several turkeys with a number on the belly. The students had to read the number and count out how many "feathers" they had to put on their turkey. I used clothespins for feathers to incorporate some physical movement, and also to make this station activity seem like a fun game! 

After that, I brought out my sensory bin full of fuzz balls. I used water bottles that had feathers and eyes glued to them as our "turkeys." Each student got a turkey. I verbally told the students how many fuzzballs to "feed" our turkey, and they had to individually count each one to put in the water bottle. The kids loved this activity because they got to feel the fuzzballs and have their own "turkey to feed." Finally, for my assessment activity, I had the students glue feathers onto a construction paper turkey and write the amount of feathers they glued. It was amazing how three little activities really livened up their motivation to learn! All I had to do was make it fun ;)