3D Castles

Hi again.
Term 2 is shaping up to be a busy one! We have had parent teacher interviews, NAPLAN, cross country, running assembly, program checking as well as the everyday teaching! Never a dull moment in teaching!

But I thought I would share a little activity year 5 did today. They have been working so hard during NAPLAN in the mornings this week that I thought it would be good aswell as practical to give them a hands-on activity to do for the time period after their NAPLAN test til lunch.

We have been studying some properties of 3D shapes and I found this awesome idea off pinterest to do to reinforce some of the skills we have been looking at.

Using 3D nets the students have to plan and create a castle using certain shapes and then calculate the total number of faces/edges/vertices that their castle had!

They got pretty into it. The classroom was full of noise and cutting and glue-ing and cardboard as they developed their castles!

Here are the final products!
We had damsel's in distress, moats, bridges and lots more!
What a fun day!

What Happens First Matters

At our school we have a thing called What Happens First Matters (WHFM) which is all about getting the students engaged first thing on Monday morning as well as at the beginning of each term.

As teachers we aim to creatively design lesson openings which set the scene....creates interest....motivates and engages....set standards and declares expectations.

It is a really fun way to start the week, the scene is set straight away for meaningful and engaging learning (instead of rote learning of spelling or times tables).

One of our activities this term was called 'Tied up in Knots'. It was an game that I used to play in youth group and as a leader I play with my youth group kids. It is all about teamwork and communication to 'untie' the human knot that the students have made. Below is a little video showing what the students did.

Fun hey???

On the last week of term we had  Maths Mania morning, where the students were involved in a number of fun maths activities including...

• Multiplication Memory
• Area Hysteria (TeachThis game)
• Times Table Jenga
• Rainbow Snake (Converting measurement games - TeachThis)
• Times Table Twister

 

Times Table Twister

On the spinner board, times tables facts (answers that are written on mat circles). For example the spinner might land on 4x6 left foot green. Students have to figure out multiplication problem and then find the answer on the mat and put their left foot on it.

 

Times Table Jenga

When students pull out a block, they need to tell their peers the answer, before they place it on top and the next player goes.

Have fun trying these out!