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We finished up our Holiday Cookie Exchange today.  The final step was to use a set of prices to help us find the total amount we would spend at the grocery store in order to make our cookies.

We spent the remainder of time working on finishing up work that was due or Khan Academy while we listened to Pentatonix W music!

No math tomorrow.... Christmas parties!!

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See you next year!

Holiday Cookie Exchange (day 2)

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Today, my classes used their ingredient list from yesterday to determine how much of 6 different ingredients they would need to purchase.  This was limited to 6 to help with time management!  The classes were able to complete this pretty quickly.  So, they had plenty of time to finish their Countdown to STAAR for today as well.

With the extra time, I wanted to make sure they were caught up on other class work, so they could work on their Social Studies crossword puzzle, their Reading Me Book page(s) and journal, and finally get onto 5th Grade Khan.

We will finish up our Holiday Cookie Exchange activity tomorrow!

Holiday Cookie Exchange

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We started working on our faux Holiday Cookie Exchange today.  We are not actually going to be making these cookies, which is sad, but it's fun to get to work with math that is found in real life!  

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Today my classes chose 3 cookies to "make".  Before we can make the cookies, we have to make sure we have enough of the ingredients on hand.  So, I gave my students the recipes to choose from and a table that had a list of ingredients already filled out (they may have needed to add an ingredient or two that were missing from the list).  They had to go through the recipe(s) and record the amount of each ingredient needed.  After doing this for all three, they had to add the ingredients together to find the total amount of each ingredient needed.

At this point, I took up the pages to check their work.  I want their totals to be accurate before moving to the next step tomorrow.

To finish out our math class, we worked on a Countdown to STAAR.

Industrial Revolution Presentation with a Smidgen of Math

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Our main goal today was to present our inventions as though we were trying to convince investors to back us financially.  I had students come up in the same order that they had selected their invention last week.  As students came to the front, they gave me back the grading rubric and I opened up their Google Slide presentation.  Each student presented their invention using their script and slides.

While each student presented, 4 other (randomly chosen) students posed as investors and used a rubric to assess the Content, Preparation, and Presentation.  This rubric assigned a monetary amount to each item.  I will tally up the investor input and reveal the winning invention tomorrow!

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Once all of the presentations were finished, we moved into a quick math time.  We discussed a "would you rather" and completed our first estimation180 in a few weeks.  The kids were glad to get back to it!

It has also been a while since we have worked on a Countdown to STAAR, so we used our last 20 minutes on 8 math problems.

Benchmark Data and Industrial Revolution

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So today, we began with graphing our benchmark data.  I had originally hoped that students would see a +10 improvement from their 4th Grade STAAR to this 5th Grade benchmark.  However, after viewing the results, I changed my own thinking.  With only half of a year's TEKS taught, it was much more appropriate to look for 50% of the test passed.  This revelation also allowed my classes to breathe a sigh of relief!  

We spent about the first 30  minutes adding our data from our benchmark to our 5th Grade Data sheet.

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Today was also our final day of working toward completion of our Industrial Revolution Shark Tank Project from  teachsocialstudies.com .  By the end of class today, I wanted each student to have completed:

• research
• script
• Google Slide presentation

I printed each student's script for them to take home over the weekend to practice.  Presentations will given on Monday.  After viewing a few of the scripts... I can't wait!

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Industrial Revolution and Math Test

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Not much new to report today.  We began by completing our Personal Financial Literacy math assessment.  I wanted everyone to have all of the time they needed.

As students finished the assessment, they worked on researching their Industrial Revolution invention.  I had placed all of the items they need to complete the project on our Classroom:

The first item is the assignment page and rubic that I gave the classes a hard copy of yesterday.  I have this there for their information.

The second item is their research page.  This is what they needed to work with today.  They opened their own copy and began answering the questions.

They will have the entire class period tomorrow to work on their Industrial Revolution Shark Tank Presentation.

Industrial Revolution and Personal Financial Literacy Test

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Today we began by reading a newspaper article titled "An Industrial Revolution Begins" and answering 6 questions based on our reading.

Then I used the sales pitch and PowerPoint that was given in the Industrial Revolution unit I found on teachsocialstudies.com .  This was the "hook" to show the classes the type of presentation they would be doing on an invention from the Industrial Revolution.  From here, I showed them the sales pitch assignment page and I had the kids draw for the invention they would be pitching on our version of Shark Tank.

We watched a few different sales pitches from the show to see what a good presentation would look like and what elements make a good sales pitch.  I then went over the rubric that would be used to assess their presentation.

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Well, it seems like we just did this, but it is time for our end of unit assessment on Personal Financial Literacy.

Industrial Revolution AND Personal Financial Literacy

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It is my week to teach Social Studies and our topic is the Industrial Revolution.  I happened to find an activity based on the TV show "Shark Tank" that I have decided to use for this unit on the website http://teachsocialstudies.com.  The set of lesson plans will last the week and are much more interesting than basic research.  We began by reading an article from our newspaper and answering a few questions.

Then we moved onto a hands-on activity.  I modified the Industrial Revolution lesson a little, by including an American History Simulation called "Widget Assembly."  This was a fun way to introduce the idea of an assembly line.  After completing this activity, we took notes from the Google Slide presentation that was a part of the lesson plans.

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Now, it was time for math.  Today we were finally able to complete our budget sheet and find our ending monthly balance.  Once the budget was complete, I asked the kids to show their Depth of Knowledge, by answering a few questions.

How much money do you have left at the end of each month?  

What would be the responsible thing to do with this money?  Why?

How will you use what you’ve learned during this project in your life when you become an adult?

1.

2.

3.

We then attached our budget sheet and our DOK into a Kidblog post to showcase our learning:

• Dabbs:  https://kidblog.org/class/mrs-dabbs-homeroom 
• Dittrich:  https://kidblog.org/class/AWE-Dittrich
• Johnson:  https://kidblog.org/class/AWE-Johnson

Finally, we finished up our Personal Financial Literacy by determining the advantages and disadvantages of methods of payment (cash, check, credit card, debit card, money transfer, and automatic payments) by playing a Kahoot!

Math Benchmark

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Crazy day #5!  We'll see how next week goes!  

Today we began with our school wide "campfire" meeting and then the kids headed to PE.  With all the craziness going on this week, there wasn't anyone available for read alouds until 9:30.

So, we began my math benchmark at 9:30.  Lunch is at 11:45 and I still had about 15 students who needed to finish, so they all came to my room.  The rest of the students either headed to music for the afternoon (our program is tonight) or were divided into the other two classrooms to "catch up" on things for reading and science.

We finished testing in time for recess and for the remaining kids to go to band.  The last 45 minutes of our day was "catching up" the students who had been finishing their benchmark and practicing their play.

Craziness!

Personal Financial Literacy: Variable Expenses

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Crazy Day#4!  Only 30 minute classes today!

Today, we began by reviewing our +10 Goal.  Basically, I want my students to achieve +10 percentage points on their Math Benchmark tomorrow over their 4th Grade STAAR percentage.  I had students look at their goal to remind them where they would like to be!  I also explained how they would be earning STAARbucks (pretend money) based on their achievement on the benchmark.

Then we moved into our final expenses... food, clothing, and entertainment.  First, we found that our monthly variable expenses allowance should be bout 40% of our monthly net income.  After finding this information and putting it on our spreadsheet, we needed to find out how much to spend on food, clothing, and entertainment.  Due to the speed we needed to move, I showed the classes the websites I had located that gave an average monthly expenditure.

• Food
• Groceries:  http://www.loweryourspending.com/average-amount-spent-on-groceries-for-one-person-per-month.html 
• Eating out:  http://www.thesimpledollar.com/dont-eat-out-as-often-188365/
• Clothing: 
•  http://www.loweryourspending.com/average-clothing-costs-per-month-for-1-person.html
• Entertainment: 
•  http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/average-american-spends-on-entertainment/

We input this information into our budget sheet and found our final balance.

We will finish up this project tomorrow!

Personal Financial Literacy: Vehicle, Insurance, Gas

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Crazy day #3!

We took a reading benchmark until lunch.  That gave us 40 minute classes.  So, today we finished up our housing on the budget and moved into our vehicle allowance.  We are allowing ourselves 15% of our monthly income for a vehicle, insurance, and gas.  Due to our time constraint, I used the vehicle sheet provided in the project instructions.

We were able to get everything done that I wanted to!  

The Twelve Days of Christmas Costs WHAT?!?!

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Crazy day #2!!!

Our day began with 30 minute classes.  I had each of my three classes for 30 minutes.  During this time, we finished up working with our budget sheet and finding the balance after putting in our housing and utilities amounts.  I was able to show my classes an auto loan calculator and we spent a few minutes finding out our monthly payments on a dream car!

At 10:30 we lost about 15 kids to the UIL competition, so we merged the rest of the classes into two groups and had two additional rotations.  This allows me to do one of my favorite Christmas activities, "The Twelve Days of Christmas Costs WHAT?!?!"

As always, I am looking to incorporate technology activities within my lessons.  So, I assigned each student the spreadsheet through Classroom.  The spreadsheet was very generic, but I decided to do some function practice with them.  We learned how to create a multiplication function to find the total cost of each gift and the number of gifts per day.

Once we had those functions in place, we visited the PNC Christmas Price Index to find the cost of each gift.  I kept this on the screen and we did each gift together because I love to hear their astonishment at the prices and the number of gifts!

Once we had price totals and gift totals, we needed to find the total cost of all of the gifts and the total number of gifts needed.  This time we needed to use a SUM function.  The classes were thrilled to learn this and loved seeing the math happen right before their eyes!

Once we determined the total number of gifts given, I asked the classes:

If “my true love” decided that there were just too many gifts, and she decided to give one item away every day, on what day would she give away the final gift?

Next, I decided to have them present their spreadsheets on Kidblog.  So, we opened a new post and we imported an image, titled our post, and then embedded their spreadsheet using the Drive button.  Once we had the spreadsheet in, I had them copy and paste a new set of instructions:

I do not know where I got this activity from, but I would be glad to give credit!

I had the students tell me where they would send each gift and asked them to Google the gifts to get some ideas, so we were able to incorporate a little research.

Overall, the kids really enjoyed the activity!  It's always a huge hit to see just how much money was spent on "my true love" AND the number of birds she now has to care for!

If you would like to view our Kidblog presentations, please follow the links below:

• Dabbs:  https://kidblog.org/class/mrs-dabbs-homeroom 
• Dittrich:  https://kidblog.org/class/AWE-Dittrich
• Johnson:  https://kidblog.org/class/AWE-Johnson