Oreo Cookie Moon Phases Lab

Last week, I promised my very difficult, out of control 8th grade class a lab activity if they would be quiet and pass a Moon Phases quiz.


Well, they weren't exactly super quiet, but for the 20 kids that passed the quiz... they were able to participate in the Oreo Cookie Moon Phase Lab.

The lab went surprisingly okay... as okay as it can be for a troubled 8th grade group of almost ALL BOYS.  (Honestly, when they put this group of kids together, someone should of slapped somebody because you can't get a worse group of troublemakers together.)

I found a great worksheet to use with the Moon Phase Lab, but if you google Oreo Cookie Moon Phases Worksheet - you'll have a lot of options to choose from that will fit your class/curriculum/etc.  I made my students partner up and gave each student four oreo cookies... this way I could save some money and buy a few less oreos.  Each partner had to make half of the moon phases with their cookies, then check their partner's work and copy over what they made on to their final paper.

I had my students use toothpicks for the scraping because that seemed like the easiest and handiest tool to use.

Final Thoughts?  It was a good lab, I would refrigerate the cookies before hand because as you can tell from this picture, the frosting gets pretty nasty by the end.  My students were very happy because they got to eat the cookies at the end (except, they expected me to buy them milk too!) and they were able to finally stop complaining about the lack of labs in my class.

Animal Classification Foldable

I actually meant to upload this post awhile back, but then State Testing madness and prep hit... so I didn't get a chance to post this.

My students were studying Animal Classification Systems and I decided to have them make this foldable that would help them practice seeing and using the 8 levels of classification!

I started out by using an animal they were all familiar with - the average house cat.  I pulled up the official classification levels for a house cat as my prep to the lesson.

To start, I told them the quick story of "Sparky" my mom's cat that she rescued from death... who repaid her kindness by peeing all over my parents house.  They all loved to hear about Sparky!  Then, we started folding.  I did a common flap fold - this time separating the fold into eight "windows."



Actual directions:

1. Fold in half - Hot Dog Style
2. Place one finger on the paper and fold your top flap back... up to your fingertip.  This will leave a small unfolded/uncut section for your title.  You can see in the pic to the left - this section is where you put your title!
3. Cut!  In half, in half again and so on, until you have four bottom flaps.  Then repeat to the top section.  I numbered my flaps, which helped them see what they needed to end up with.
   
   (I always model each one of these steps in front of the class before my students fold or start to cut.  Then I walk the room to make sure they are folding/cutting correctly.  Usually, I'm able to fix the problems before they mess it up so badly they need a new paper.)

We filled in the information together and this is what mine looked like!  Honestly, I wish they didn't turn in this so early... it would have been great for their Animal Projects they're working on now.   

What is everyone else's favorite foldable to use in class?!

Hello, Hello

Yeah, I know... I've been really GONE lately.  Life has been crazy, but I'm hoping that it has settled down to the point where I can blog again.

I just created a Middle School Animal Research Project and uploaded it over at my TpT store.  Check it out!  I had to make it because I searched Google and Pinterest alike to no avail.  Sometimes, you just gotta make what you're looking for.

I'm planning on trying and uploading all my forms and documents that I've created for my classroom to my TpT store this summer.  Maybe you guys will be interested in my obsessive form creation abilities! :)

In other news... my son on Easter was so super cute that I just have to share him.  Dance!  Dance!

Finally Treading Water...

Hello my Middle School friends!

I am about halfway moved into my new classroom at my new/old school. According to my school district, because I was a "voluntary" transfer I did not receive any prep days to move my classroom and to prepare for my new students. It's been a bit of a whirlwind since Monday 3:30pm, when I found out that I was moving into my new class on Wednesday.

In addition, I also switched content levels from 7th grade Language Arts/Social Studies to 7th grade Math/Science (and an EXTRA 8th grade Science thrown in! Eeeep!)

So... madness.

Luckily, my new students are VERY sweet and have been working nicely the past three days. (Except for my 8th graders, but they're another blog post.) That's a bit off my shoulders. When I get online access to their information, that will be another step in the right direction.

My new students have been telling me that they're very upset that all the other science classes have been able to do Lab Experiments and since they have had a sub, they've been left out. So I promised them that we would start some Lab Safety next week to prepare for lab experiments. I made these Lab Safety "Licenses" that I'll share with everyone.

Also, a shout out to Middle School Math Rules! and her great One-Step Equation idea. Her group lesson for solving Equations is in my plans for next week and I already kinda prepped them using colors in math today. I had my students take a colored pencil for their inequalities and start boxing all the key words (like, more than, less than, etc) in the problems to make their inequality words really POP! They seemed to enjoy doing something a little different.