STEM – Life of the Rookie Teacher

ALMOST DONE!!!! Oh man, it has been a long road to get here but we officially only have 2 1/2 days left of school. I am so excited!! For the last week of school I want to do some different and fun activities to keep them motivated to finish the week out strong. Yesterday I did one of my absolute favorite activities that involves the scientific method, a little STEM, and some water bottle flipping!

I found this AMAZING activity on TPT from the shop Carly and Adam. The activity is officially called End of the Year STEM Water Bottle Flip. When my kiddos heard “water bottle flipping” they lost their minds!

The resource comes with enough pages to create 3 different packets worth of testing. You can either test different bottle sizes, different bottle shapes, or how full the bottle is to see which has the best flipping result. We did our experiment on how full the bottle is (so I only had to buy 1 pack of 24 bottles and not multiple packs.) No matter what experiment you choose, the first page in the packet is their prediction page. They form a hypothesis on which will have the best result and why. Once they make their predictions, it’s time for their favorite part.

The second part of the experiment is obviously to test and see which has the best result. For our experiment they had a recording sheet (the one below) to fill out as they went. They had to flip the bottle 20 times at each level and record if the bottle landed horizontal or vertical. After they tested the 4 levels they could easily see which had the best result.

They LOVED this part. I took them outside (because the water bottles will bust open and it saves a lot of time cleaning up) and let them go at it. They thought it was so fun and cool that they got to flip bottles in school as part of a science experiment. I also had lots of fun too, taking pictures and slow motion videos to show parents and to put in our end of the year slideshow.

When the flipping was done we came back inside to record our results. Most had vastly different results (because of all of the different variables, like how they each flipped the bottle) but it was a great discussion piece on why we had different results. They filled out their final report page and then was able to finish off the water they had left (if there was any left.)

It was such a fun activity and one of my all time favorites! I did this last year with my 4th graders and they had just as much fun. It’s an easy twist on something they love to do so they don’t really know they’re learning.

Summer is almost here and I am just hanging on. I love my kiddos but I am ready for the nice summer break. We have many activities coming up in the next couple of days that hopefully will help the days fly even more. Happy June!

For more day to day activities and lessons (and summer fun) go follow my instagram @lifeoftherookieteacher!

Happy Wednesday my fellow blog friends. This has been a crazy week already and we still have 2 more days to go until the beautiful weekend is upon us.

This week started with a bang on Monday because it was our glorious field trip day. Remember when field trips used to be the best day of the year and you looked forward to sitting on the bus with your best friends and getting to be in a small group with one of your friend’s mom because they were your chaperone? Remember how fun and exciting it was being off of campus for the day and getting to experience new things you never would have gotten to experience if you were at a different school? Yeah, field trips used to be the life. Too bad it doesn’t stay that fun and exciting when you have to play the teacher role.

For our field trip we had 2 different activities planned for the kids. The first part of our trip was taking the kiddos to a giant park where they could run and get their energy out. They would get to run, scream, and play to their heart’s content. We then had a picnic planned before our second stop. My coworkers told me that this was going to be everyone’s favorite part of the day because the park is so big and different. As soon as we arrived, however the issues began.

In a previous post a few months back I mentioned a student who should be receiving services for EBD but has never been evaluated for it. I’ve mentioned my concerns and gave examples of some of the choices she makes on a daily basis. I worked side by side with her social worker to get the process started. As of today, she is officially in the process of being evaluated. Well this little girl was not having the park whatsoever. She told me she thought the whole thing was stupid and a waste of time. She then got mad when I told her to put her lunch at the same picnic table as the rest of her group before she went off to play. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say because she took off.

When I say took off, she literally ran away from me around this giant park. It took some time of following her before she finally made her way to the gated in playground with all of the other students. Instead of enjoying the nice warm weather at the park, I spent most of my time watching and worrying that she would run off again.

The second part of our field trip was to a local Nature Center. We had been learning about adaptations in science, so at the Nature Center they focused on animal adaptations in nature. The first thing we did was go on a nature hike. Again, this activity should have been super fun and relaxing but my little girl did not want to go for a walk in the woods. She first refused to go with the group and then, once I finally got her to join us, she got upset again and ran off into the woods away from our group. This terrified me because I had no idea where she went. Luckily, the path wasn’t that long and I found her not too far from us but I couldn’t trust her to be without full on supervision for the rest of the trip.

On top of my runner, I had a nice little injury incident between the park and the Nature Center. Right after lunch, as we were getting onto the bus, three of my students were playing with sticks. I asked them to put the down and head to the bus. Well I guess I should have been more specific about putting them down because one of my students chucked the stick off to the side and hit another one of my students right in the face. She had a gash right on her eyebrow. The cut wasn’t that big but it was bleeding A LOT. (Just an FYI as well, the girl who got the cut who was bleeding is also my biggest hypochondriac and her mom is a very opinionated mom who shares everything and anything on Facebook. It was perfect.) I got to be a mini doctor on the bus to the Nature Center cleaning up her bloody face.

Needless to say, I was very happy when the day was over. Man do I miss those fun field trip days when I was the student and not the teacher. Besides all of my little incidences, however it was a very fun field trip for the students so it was worth it.

The fun part of the week so far has been a science project we worked on today in class. Along with adaptations, we have also been covering genetics. (With 3rd graders, this is super generic and basic.) We’ve done a lot of talking about how we inherit traits from our parents. We’ve learned the difference between inherited characteristics and acquired characteristics. In order for my students to get the full effect of this (as 8/9 year olds) I found this super fun activity on TPT that has students make a monster based on the traits of 2 monster parents. (I’m sure you’ve done a version of this activity at some point during your schooling but I personally think this one was pretty great.)

The activity is called HEREDITY Creature Features – Inherited and Environmental Traits. I found this on iTeachSTEM‘s shop. The activity was made for 5th-7th graders but I was able to “dumb it down” enough for my 3rd graders.

The first thing students do is flip a coin (we rolled a die) to decide if a child would receive a trait from the mom monster or the dad monster. I did an example on the board and then they took off to do their own.

Once they were finished rolling their dice to pick the traits of their monster, they got to draw them out for the class to see.

Tomorrow my plan is to have us go through all of them and talk about how our monsters are all related because they got their traits from the same parents but non are exactly alike. I honestly think they turned out super cute!!! They loved doing it and understood the difference between inherited and acquired traits.