Mrs. Chamberland’s class participated in the great O.R.E.O. Project this year! These second graders used their estimation, counting, and graphing skills during this project. They submitted their results online, and compared the number of oreos they stacked with people all over the world!
Take a look at an example graph they made in Excel!
A few weeks ago, students at Oak Grove and Clearbrook went Oreo crazy! They brought in packages of the yummy cookies and tried to stack the tallest towers. But it wasn’t just for fun…it was part of a global project with students all over the world participating! You can learn more about the Oreo Project on Jen Wagner’s website. This was the 12th year of the project, and this time 15,501 students participated from 719 different classes.
After stacking oreos, different grade levels participated in different activities with the oreos, from science to math to writing. Many classes created Excel Spreadsheets showing the average cookie stack, or the mode, median, mean, and range of the stacks. They even used excel formulas for their calculations!
A few examples of their spreadsheets are shown below!
Mrs. Beir’s Class (Clearbrook — 3rd Grade)
Mrs. Hushour’s Class (Clearbrook — 3rd Grade)
Mrs. Bralley’s Class (Oak Grove — 3rd Grade)
Mrs. Sharp’s Block 1 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
Mrs. Sharp’s Block 2 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
Mrs. Mortez’s Block 1 Class (Oak Grove –5th Grade)
Mrs. Mortez’s Block 2 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
Mrs. Grave’s Class (Clearbrook — 5th Grade)
Mrs. Hudson’s Class (Clearbrook — 5th Grade)
Want an easy back to school activity that will help you begin to know your students? Try Wordle! Here’s an example of an About Me activity using it. Please remember to use only first names if you do this with your students.
The instructional ideas for this resource are endless. You can find some of these ideas in this post, Wordle Word Clouds. I also suggest taking a look at the ideas Tom Barrett has collected from many other educators below:
Finally, you may want to check out Jen Wagner’s Guess the Wordle Wiki. There she posts different Wordles throughout the week, and students are encouraged to guess their subject using the words in the Wordle (Monday is an easy wordle, Wednesday is a little harder, Friday is the hardest). She will also be adding a Thursday Wordle that will be about a book (librarians, this might appeal to you)!
If you have your students create Wordles, make sure you direct them to this exact URL (http://www.wordle.net/create) so they bypass the gallery of other Wordles. While most of the examples in the gallery are usually okay, from time to time inappropriate words do appear there. By going straight to the “Create” area, you lessen the chance that students run across inappropriate words. :)
If you have never used Wordle before and would like some help as you explore it with your students, please contact me!
Looking for a way to bring real-world learning into your classroom with projects? Well, there are tons of things you can try out this year, from a small, one-time project, to a year-long project. Some contain extensive use of technology while others have very little. I’ve found some great ones recently I just had to share with you…I’m looking for classrooms willing to try one or more of them out!
Jennifer Wagner organizes on projects all year long with teachers around the world on her Projects with Jen Ning (and yes, this is probably blocked at school…but don’t worry…it’s safe). The third grade at G.W. Carver participated in one of her projects last February called From Me To You 2008. They really enjoyed it, so I’m trying to get other teachers to try out some of her other projects. Here’s a few upcoming projects that really caught my eye:
For older grades, Storychasers might be a fun way for your students to improve their writing skills while learning more about their families and community. It is described as “a multi-state (and potentially multi-national) educational collaborative empowering students and teachers to responsibly record and share stories of local, regional and global interest as citizen journalists. There are a variety of types of stories your students can collect, including biographies, careers, and (the one that REALLY caught my eye) ghost stories.
