Jeopardy!

As it turns out, that geography resource I developed while student teaching came in handy again while teaching the third grade. We revisited some of the old lessons, like writing a constructed response, and vocabulary, but the real upgrade to this unit plan was the assessment. I am proud to take credit for the interactive Jeopardy! game I programmed and wrote all of the questions/answers to.

It was a huge success. Each student was given the test (without the answers) on an individual computer and recorded their answers on an answer sheet. We then played as a class (using the version with answers) to check ourselves.

Have a peak at a few screenshots! (Though they really don't give the whole interactive experience justice.)

 

US Regions in clay

While on my 6 week stint teaching 3rd grade, and with full access to my own pottery studio, I decided to take the craft into the classroom as we studied our U.S. regions. Each student was given a slab of clay and asked to represent one of the regions. Here was the result prior to firing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to snag a picture afterwards. I think they did a pretty snazzy job!

Van Gogh's sunflowers

In honor of the changing seasons, we read the fantastic story of Van Gogh titled Camille and the Sunflowers by Laurence Anholt.

Then, it was our turn to create our very own sunflower oil "paintings". Here are a few samples of our work.