biomass energy experiment + lesson

We're getting into the thick of our latest Inquiry focus, all about types of energy. All of the teachers on my team have chosen one type of energy to teach and we're setting up rotation lessons for the classes. With seven of us, this could take awhile...! But I love the idea of sharing the teaching and getting to know some of the other kids in the hallway. 

For my energy type, I'm teaching about biomass as a renewable source. Because some classes can only come in for a 45-minute block, I've started each lesson off with a really cool experiment involving biomass energy at work. Basically, I put this slide on the ActivBoard and let the kids get to work:

Note: I handled the warm water part as it had to come from a kettle.

We let that work away as we discussed the energy sources in these pictures:

This led to some great discussion. But then I asked if they knew that things like cow poo, bananas, sewer water, and corn could produce electricity. A lot of them looked at me like I'm crazy. We talked about what these things have in common and were able to come up with a definition for biomass. 

Biomass is any material made by plants or animals that we can convert into energy.

Next, their attention was quickly drawn to the experiments they had left sitting on the windowsill, and what we saw was this:

So cool! We talked about our observations, reviewed our predictions/hypotheses, and came to the conclusion that the materials inside reacted together to create a gas. Pretty smart, these third graders!

Once we decided that the living creature in the bottle was indeed the yeast, I set it up for them as if the yeast was going through a morning routine, not unlike the routines we all might go through. When we're just looking at a  little yeast granule, he does not look alive - in fact he's asleep. To wake him up, we put him in a soothing warm water shower. And how do we all feel after first waking up in the morning? Hungry! Just like our yeast. So we give him a little breakfast of sugar, and as he starts munching away, he begins to burp, letting out little bits of C02 gas, just as we do when we exhale. The kids quickly concluded that it's this carbon dioxide that rose up in the bottle to inflate the balloon. (PS - These little C02 burps are the same reason we have little air pockets in our bread!)

To show the kids some ways that biomass is actually being used throughout the world, I put an iPad at each table team with instructions to find a certain video and they rotated to watch some different examples:

This one was a hit with all that poop...

There are tons of videos out there with great examples.

As they watched, I asked the groups to be thinking about the pros and cons of biomass energy. When they thought of one, they added it to a whole-class T-chart:

By the end of the rotations, this board was Filled!

This was a good way to continue discussion about biomass energy and for eventually comparing various forms of energy. When my class had learned about geothermal energy with another teacher, we asked them to "lay it on the line" by choosing whether they thought geothermal or biomass was the most sustainable choice for energy use. (This is a great Visible Thinking routine called Tug of War.) They moved to the designated side of the room and voila, we had a great tool for debate!

'extra yarn' movie posters

I had a spare few minutes on a Language block the other day (few minutes meaning about 25... oops), so I grabbed this great book to read to the class:

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett

It's a great little story about a girl who finds a box of never-ending yarn and is able to knit sweaters for (literally) her whole town. When offered a high price to sell it, she refuses. In the end, there are some great themes to be drawn out, none of which were beyond the clever brains of my kids. They got it straight away and were really into the story.

Afterward we talked about movie posters and the short slogans or catch-phrases that appear to entice you to watch the film. The kids made movie posters to advertise this great book, complete with slogans such as, "Give kindness to receive kindness," and "Money can't buy happiness." They're still working on them otherwise I'd have pictures to show you... but it was such a fun activity and an engaging concept!

into this... rhye

Rhye - Open

Rather Sade-esque; quite beautifully intimate.

See also: the original tease

and

so many remixes on their site. I'm drawn to this one, a fun-yet-still-sensual take on The Fall.

cooperative learning with fractions vocabulary

This week my students did a great vocabulary activity to help acquaint them with some of the vocabulary related to fractions.

After some pre-assessment and introductory lessons, I had a pretty good idea of where each student was in terms of their overall understanding of fractions. Based on this, I placed them into vocabulary groups: fraction, numerator, denominator, equivalent fraction, and simplest form. When I introduced the activity, I gave students freedom to pair up in their groups, work as an entire group, or work independently. Their task was to figure out what their vocabulary meant by defining it in their own words, modeling it with pictures and/or manipulatives, and using it in a sentence. Their overall goal was to understand the term so that they could teach it to the other groups.

They used Chromebooks and dictionaries to help understand the term and wrote about it in their math notebooks. Then, I gave them all this form...

(Grab this simple worksheet)

...to document their learning. Their goal was to fill their page by asking others to explain their research, and, of course, to ultimately come to understand the terminology themselves. It was a great cooperative learning exercise and we were able to have a great reflection session afterward. We will definitely be digging deeper into the concepts of equivalency and simplification in the coming weeks, but I'm happy that they all have a beginning understanding of these difficult (for some) concepts.

main idea mystery bags

This week students brought in "mystery main idea" bags to practice investigating main idea.
While they were, of course, incredibly tempted to play with all the related objects, it was still a great exercise in helping them recognize theme and defend their ideas using evidence.
Here are just a couple that were brought in:

Spaghetti dinner

Picnic

Off to the Beach!

The South Pole

First Aid

procedural writing - giving directions

Here's a very fun, very active activity to help teach students about the importance of using detail and being specific. (Best if there is another adult around to help out!)

First, pair students up (we almost always use The Hat because the kids never want to chose their own partners anymore, which astounds me every time). Two is best, but I have one of those classes where there's always going to be a group of 3.

Have them each choose a destination in the school and a reason, and write it on a piece of paper attached to a clipboard. We used this sentence starter:
We are going to the (ES Field/washroom/canteen) because (we have PE after recess/sometimes you gotta go/we are hungry).

Then, have all of the pairs switch clipboards. Their job is to read the first sentence from the other group, and then write the very first thing that must be done in order to reach that destination by actually doing the step. Most caught on pretty quickly that all of the procedural writing pieces would start with "walking to the classroom door, turning the handle, pushing it open, and going through." (So each pair of kids walked to the door, turned the handle, pushed it open, and went through.)

Then the partners come back in the room and switch clipboards with another group. They complete that last step all over again with the new destination, doing the next step, and writing the directions down. The key is that after they complete a step and write the directions, the partners always have to come back to the class to switch clipboards.

In the end, students were walking all over the school to get to the final destinations (the reason an extra adult is so so so helpful), arguing over how specific each step should be ("Then you walk 87 steps down the hallway." "No, then you walk 94 steps down the hallway!"), and participating in so much collaborative procedural writing! They LOVED this one, and it's one I'll definitely want to do next year.

Afterward, we did a quick reflection about the learning activity itself using my huge, awesome display Venn.

Thailand

Jeff and I spent a lovely winter holiday in Thailand, taking in the craziness of Bangkok, lounging beside pools, and dipping our toes in the Andaman Sea during dinners. We've both been before, but this time we traveled to Koh Samui and Koh Yao Yai (a much lesser known and less developed island), both islands we hadn't seen before. 

Soi Rambuttri - the "little bit quieter" alternative to the jam-packed Khao San Road

A giant water monitor on Chao Phraya River. We got lucky and saw one of these in Bohol, too, but it was not nearly as big as the ones we saw in Bangkok!

Somehow we made it across this street alive!

Koh Samui 

PS - This island has the best airport we'd ever been to - it was so serene and lush, an outdoor boulevard that is so well kept - far from the usual hustle of an airport.

I had no idea the banana flower is quite so large!

Part of the walk from our bungalow to the hotel restaurant on Koh Yao Yai. 

This place was awesome! Our booking on Koh Lanta was suddenly cancelled (suddenly meaning just a day before we were meant to arrive!), and Thailand at Christmastime is not a time to be without a room. Despite that, we got lucky and were able to find a reservation at Koh Yao Yai Village, and in the end, are so happy with the change. We highly recommend this place for a quiet getaway (and it doesn't hurt that it includes an amazing breakfast buffet spread!).

In media-related news....
In my earbuds:

Mostly this, an oldie but a very goodie. My favourites here and here.

PS - Her latest.

On the Kindle:

Not usually my style, but it was awesome!

On the iPad during quiet nights in:

Funny story: On a plane to somewhere years ago, I was able to watch all of  these episodes in-flight...

all, that is, but the finale! 

Finally got around to finishing it up and can now move on to seasons 2 and 3. Love it!

Why the quiet nights in, you ask? Well, I've had to take it easy since the last vacation because we're having a baby! Beginning in June we'll be booking one extra ticket:

Gone (finally) are the days of the first trimester, which I actually feared would never end in my daze of nausea, food aversions, and constant eating!

into this... dinner belles

Can't get this song out of my head:

Dinner Belles - Til the Dawn
West Simcoe County = a must-buy.

PS - Happy New Year!

off the bookshelf: murakami's norwegian wood

Awhile ago I read this book... for the second time. The story came back to me so quickly; all the feelings that it evokes so clear again, but nothing spoiled.

Norwegian Wood by Haruko Murakami

This was Murakami's first real mainstream novel, said to be the 'book that "everyone" in Japan has read,' and a very depressing leap into stardom for the author. It is a love story, a heart-wrenching and beautiful one, and that's all. For an author who often writes non-fiction or with a flair of magical realism, this is a very different book from his others. Though these elements are totally absent in this story (Murakami argues against those that are tempted to call it loosely autobiographical), he writes a lovely reflection on human relationship and the impacts all those people we meet can have on our lives.

Norwegian Wood is narrated by Watanabe, a college student in Tokyo, who is in love with a friend from his childhood, Naoko. Their bond seems held together only by the tragic death of Watanabe's best friend, Naoko's boyfriend, when they were teenagers. He adjusts relatively well, considering, to life afterward, but Naoko struggles to understand her place in the world and becomes extremely introverted. Though he is helplessly devoted to her, Watanabe soon becomes attracted to a much more (sexually) liberated woman and struggles to retain the balance of these two relationships in a way that is understandable to his new friend.

Although I find the ending a little disjointed from the rest of the story, it's still a book I really love - one that kept me interested the whole way through. I'm a sucker for a love story!

whole-group reflections

This year, one of the key concepts I've tried to implement in the classroom is giving students an opportunity to make their thinking visible. I'm about halfway through this book:

Making Thinking Visible: 

How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, 

and Independence for All Learners

(This is the third PD book I've stacked on my nightstand...!)

We use sticky notes, reflection pages, "what we learned about (any topic)" and gallery walks. Sometimes, though, the kids get tired of always writing a reflection, no matter how simple it can be. So in the past couple weeks I've focused more on oral strategies to keep their thoughts pouring out and their energy directed appropriately. 

(These ideas are not exactly visible, but they are reflective, and if you can get the kids using that all-important question "What makes you say that?" then it will be a great exercise in deepening understandings.)

Assembly Line:
Give half the class a number and ask them to line up side by side facing the same direction. The rest of the class then stands in front of this line, facing someone; tell this line they are the "assembly line". Give them a prompt and have each person in the line share with their partner (i.e. In this lesson I learned... Something that stands out for me is... I'm wondering about... I'm confused about/have questions about...). I always try to listen in as they share! Then, tell the assembly line to take one step to the right to a new partner, with the last person joining in at the opposite end. Give the next prompt and share away.

Concentric Circles:
Similar to the Assembly Line, give half the class a number and ask them to make a tight circle in the room facing out. (This is not easy if you have a tight space, but could easily be done in the field, gym, hallway if it's big enough, etc.) The rest of the class will find a partner and sit facing that person in an outer circle. Again, give a directed prompt based on what type of reflection you're looking for and have each share with the other. Have the outer circle scoot to the left or right and share another reflection.

Simple, but it gets the kids talking and keeps them focused on learning. If we do exercises like these often enough, eventually I'll be able to say, "Please share a reflection with your partner" and they'll just hand out their thoughts without questions!

ps - Happy Saturday!

kindness.

off the bookshelf: rainbow rowell's "eleanor & park"

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

This is a love story.
It's one of those all-consuming, wishy-washy, confusing, high school love stories. 

And I don't know if I'm a realist (this is how I optimistically refer to myself) or a pessimist, but it's just not my thing. I didn't even love John Green's The Fault in our Stars, 

and I know I'm in the minority on that one. Even my gory video game-playing, comic book-reading, Walking Dead-watching husband liked that one. (Eesh - is that saying something about me?) It's about teenagers with cancer (and much more), and yes, I do feel badly about not liking it. I even decided not to write an Off the Bookshelf of it for that reason. I know the book is an inspiration to many.

It's just that high school love stories always seem too intense, or too great (as in too significant) to be real, or too one-day-this-one-day-that. It's like a roller coaster that I don't really understand. Is that because high school kids are sort of like that? And I just forget what that's like? To be fair, it has been more than a decade since I was 16. But I did have my little loves in high school, of course, like we all do. Never a love like the one that Eleanor and Park build - and certainly not as fast. It all seems too beautiful. Or too naive, I can't decide.

The other thing that really bothered me is that there are some really big issues at play here. Themes that should probably be developed just a little more, but aren't, so that their love story can take main stage. Things like a history of abuse (Eleanor's step-father), neglect (her father wants nothing to do with her), bullying, and poverty (she doesn't even own a toothbrush) are obstacles in her daily life that don't get quite the recognition that I think they should. Elanor is openly self-critical and she does reflect on these things as difficult. But I'm apt to consider them as larger than difficult, even when the author isn't. I'm not saying that Rowell's idea that love can conquer all isn't heroic and a positive statement about finding light in troubled times (even calling them "troubled times" gives me pause - it's not a big enough description for the pain). But when you're still growing and still finding who you are (and if it were me), these things would have a much larger impact on my outlook, my actions, my relationships. These themes are explored in a sort of flippant way, and I don't like that. It just doesn't seem real.

I know that people love this book. So don't let me deter you; perhaps I am a cynic. Love is a beautiful and powerful thing and I should embrace the fact that it can change us, mold us, motivate and inspire us, and in the end, be the thing we hold most dear in our lives. My own love story has done all of these things for me. So you should read it and decide for yourself.

brain break

Clearly, all my kids were pretty into this for our morning energizer:

Ylvis -  The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)