I am officially on Thanksgiving Break, meaning I am sitting at home, laying in my bed, sipping hot cider (thank you Kayla Thompson :) and blogging...yes, life is rough :) I had an incredibleeeeee week in 6th grade this week and I can't wait to share it all with you. Up first, as always, teacher outfits.
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday (I got this dress at The Loft outlet for $12...can't beat that!!)
On Tuesday we worked with the kids on making inferences. We started off with this great site of "Inferences Riddles." There would be 10 clues and we would give them one by one to the kids and they would have to guess what the object was based on the clues. The site with these riddles can be found here. Then we read some articles from Time For Kids magazine and the kids had to pick out a few facts and then make two inferences from the article. It was a simple lesson, but it got the point across and the kids enjoyed it :)
On Wednesday and Thursday we continued on with our Economics unit. Wednesday we were observed by our KSU supervisor and it went really well! She had some great feedback for us and said we were naturals and that she loved our "teacher voices." SCORE! On Wednesday we focused on the importance of income, and we did this through some exerts from Lunch Money by Andrew Clements (the same author as Frindle) and a YouTube video called Alex's Lemonade Stand. If you have never seen this video, please go watch it right now. It about a 4 year old who is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and she wants to help raise money for cancer research and treatment so she starts a lemonade stand. It is such a touching story and it can be used in your classroom for so many purposes. Our kids were the most engaged I have ever seen them during this clip and they had so many questions after it was done, so I highly recommend it!
Anyway, the kids used a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast Greg, the character from Lunch Money to "Alex" from Alex's Lemonade Stand. This helped them see how income is important and what you can do with your income. We then split them into groups of 4 and they were instructed to create a business or product. The requirements for the project were:
1. Appealing name
2. Slogan
3. Advertisement
4. Sample product
We gave the kids free reign to make whatever they wanted (within reason and 6th grade appropriate!) and we were absolutely ASTONISHED at the things the kids came up with. We only gave them about 40 minutes total to meet all the requirements, so many students willingly went home to finish making their products. Here were the products we saw during the Business Share Fair today:
Duct Tape business! They made tons of sample duct tape items including...
Hair bows...
Purses...
...and wallets! Each kid in the group was in charge of making a duct tape item at home for homework. So creative!!!
This group created Cookie Monster Bracelet Kit (don't worry, they informed us that 10% of their proceeds will go to the Cookie Monster :)
Some of their sample product...everyone in the class got a handmade paper bracelet :)
This group targeted older people with "Dencher Cream." Their slogan was by far the best with a little jingle they created. LOVED IT!!
This was my personal favorite group...they created Uniqza (unique+pizza=uniquza!). The kids actually went home and used their own money to buy the ingredients, then made the cookie all by themselves. My heart about melted when I heard this! They were actually learning something from us!!!
They had a pretty cool advertisement as well :)
The final group created a cleaning robot!!
I loved this..CROC (the name of their product) stood for Cleaning Robot On Command....so stinkin' clever!!
The kids had an absolute BLAST with this lesson. They loved being creative, working in groups, and getting to share their ideas with the class. After everyone shared their product we related it back to supply and demand and how that will affect income. Keeping these things in mind, the kids voted on which business they thought would be the most successful financially and how supply and demand related to their decision. In the end, it was a close call, but Uniquza won in the end!!
Everyone got a certificate for participating and then we got to eat homemade cookie cake!!
This week was so much fun for multiple reasons, the biggest being the fact that our kids were engaged, and saw that learning could be fun. I adored watching them work on this project and my partner and I felt really accomplished in the end :) I can't believe we only have 3 days left with these kids...time flies!!
I hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving Break!
Until then,
Brittany
No comments:
Post a Comment