Mini Water Cycle Fun

As many of you know, last year I retired from full-time teaching. But I often miss working with children; children are my inspiration and the classroom is my laboratory! So I accepted a position at a local school to work with kids during their year round intersession program, and I had the pleasure of teaching science to 5th graders for 3 days. I had a wonderful time teaching them about the water cycle and weather. One activity we did was adapted from a terrific idea shared with me by Pat Calfee, my workshop director.

When Pat was teaching 2nd grade, she used plastic rotisserie chicken containers to have each team create a mini water cycle (see photos on the left). Because 5th graders need to know the full water cycle including transpiration and run-off,  I added a rock to represent a mountain, grass for the vegetation, and a small pond made from alluminum foil and filled with water. To power up the water cycle, normally you close the container and put it in the sun. Because it was rainy on the day we were doing this (Murphy's law!), I brought a large lamp from home that gave off a lot of heat and put the containers under the lamp. Soon we were observing evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and run-off!

Those containers were a super way to give students hands-on experience creating a water cycle. It was wonderful to be able to have something concrete to observe when discussing these concepts.

Another way to observe a water cycle in action is to create a Cloud in a Jar. This is a teacher demo since it involves boiling water and a lit match, but it's a fun way for students to observe how clouds form. You can find the directions for this activity in my Science File Cabinet on Teaching Resources. The directions include a set of follow-up questions to help students grasp the essential concepts.

What are your favorite activities to teach the water cycle? Please share!

 

Daily Report Homework Solution

Do you have a few students who can't seem to complete assignments and turn them in on time? Yet when you talk to their parents, you hear the story, "But he said he finished all his homework!" Sadly, these students may feel they are telling the truth because they forgot they even HAD homework. The problem with this scenario is that the problem can't be solved without the parents and teacher working together closely for a few weeks to find out where the system is breaking down. Parents can't make sure kids are doing homework if they don't know about assignments until the end of each week or, worse, when mid-term reports come out.

I created this Daily Report to help me stay in touch with parents and to make sure that problems are caught right away. Each day the student writes his or her homework down in a notebook or planner and brings it to show me along with this Daily Report form. I complete the boxes by writing an S, N, or U to show how the student's day has gone, and the student takes it home his or her parents to sign. If parents will set up simple incentives, like allowing the child to stay up late on Friday for a certain number of Satisfactory ratings, this report works very well to stop problems in their tracks.

You can download this Daily Report by clicking on the image above or by going to my Odds N Ends page on Teaching Resources. It's not something you want to use all year, but it is quite effective for getting students back on track. I hope you find it to be useful!

Featured Freebies on Teaching Resources!

If you've visited my Teaching Resources site, you know that there are dozens and dozens of free printables in my virtual File Cabinet. But the problem is that you have to click on the file names and wait for a PDF to open to see what each file looks like. That takes time, and not having an image means you can't "pin" anything if you are using Pinterest to gather teaching ideas.

So I've decided to feature several free files on each page and create images of those Featured Freebies. I've already created a row of freebie images on several pages. Here's the one on my Odds N Ends page.

See how easy it is to find something you like at a glance? If you're a Pinterest fan, you can easily pin these images to any of your boards. I've just started some boards there myself; feel free to follow me there if you have an account.

Here's where I need your help. I don't know which items should be featured because I have no way of knowing which files are most helpful to teachers. Over the next few days and weeks I'll be posting questions on my Teaching Resources page on Facebook about each page as I begin to set up the Featured Freebie section. Let me know which items on the page you think should be featured and why. Have you used some of those items with your students? If so, I would love to hear about your experiences!

Today I'm going to begin working on my Cooperative Learning page. So if you have any preferences for what goes in the Featured Freebie section, please let me know by writing your suggestions on this blog post or posting them on Facebook. In fact, if you read this post before Friday, October 28th, you can enter a Facebook contest by posting your thoughts there! You could win $20 worth of teaching materials from my site! Thanks for your help!

Welcome to Corkboard Connections!

Several months ago I decided to create a new blog directly on my Teaching Resources website. I came up with a name, Corkboard Connections, because I want my blog to be a place to connect with other educators, and the "corkboard" theme was a reference to the corkboard background on my website. To make a long story short, I hired a web designer who is working on building a blog into my site with Drupal. We did a little work on it and played with some design ideas, and then the project stalled.

I hope to have my Corkboard Connections Blog working on my site before too long, but in the meantime I've created a blog with the same name on Blogger. This one will serve as a temporary blog until I get the one on my website working. I'm excited to finally launch my new blog!