Long time no post!

It feels like it has been ages since I posted! 

It probably has, and I should be studying right now anyway. 

School, SCA stuff, Kappa Delta Pi, and Life in general have been keeping me pretty busy.

Last semester I took a Curriculum/Practicum class.

I learned a ton and I had a really awesome Professor.  She had us design a Superhero, we were supposed to wear our costume to class, but, she had to cancel class that day, so we never wore our costumes. However, my mom took photos of me ready to fight bad grammar! My youngest sister designed my logo - which is a G and an Interrobang, my favorite punctuation mark! She also drew a really awesome Comic book cover of Grammatica and included a few panels in the comic book. :) 

In my high school drama class, my group wrote and performed a skit based on a meeting of
The National Organization for Women Super Heroes (NOWSH). We made Grammatica a member too!
(I was Key Girl - the Keynote speaker who held the Key to the City, etc,)

We spent half our time in the classroom learning how to create lesson plans and how to teach a direct lesson, and half our time working with real students!!!  I was in a third grade classroom!  I was there mostly for Lunchtime/recess (they get 20 minutes of recess per day - total :( ) and Math.

We got really good at writing Essential Questions.
One that is important to my developing pedagogy:

What does it mean to be a community member?

One of my assignments was to respond to a chapter in our book any way I wished.  I decided to go the artistic route (Anyone surprised?)

I also had to design my own Learning Hierarchy, 

it is inspired by William Glasser's Choice Theory.

My final project was to teach a lesson to my third graders. 

I had to wear a costume and make the lesson different than what they would normally do. (I don't have any photos of my outfit (Maybe when there is no longer any snow on the ground I will have my mom take some and I'll add them to this post.) As luck would have it my lead teacher was subbing for the principal so she had a sub in her classroom, it was a really weird dynamic in the classroom that day. (She was an ineffective teacher for many reasons I am not getting into now!)

 I became Grammatica's twin sister - Mathematica! 

Mathematica's Magic Words (for this Lesson): Qi Sept Septum! (The number 7 in Chinese, French, and Latin)

Wand swishes in a giant invisible 7.

Rabbit's Name - Epta (Greek for Rabbit)

I had the kids play a gross motor game that makes them sort themselves into groups of a certain number and use their bodies to form a specific thing (like a dragon or a car). Then they sat down and I turned my students into Mathemagicians. They each got a special magic want (I found black pre-sharpened pencils with white erasers!) to use for the lesson. 

I had them help me with a magic trick (that ended up being way above most of their abilities - although it should have been review.) 

Magic Trick:

1. Pick a number between 2-9
2. Multiply your number by 3
3. Multiply your new number by 3.
4. Your new number should be two digits, take those two digits and add them together,
5. Subtract 2 from that number and you have the Magical Number we are working with today!

I pulled a rabbit out of my hat holding a number 7 in its paws (the rabbit was made of craft foam - I will try to remember to take a photo of that too.)

Next, I shared with them a magic way "do math without really doing any math," I called it The Magic Square.  I had them fill in this chart with their magic wands. 

I asked them if they noticed any patterns in the magic squares. (They found some really interesting ones - I love how kids think!) Then we used them to find the multiples of 7. 

I gave them a new sheet and asked them to fill in the Multiplication Wheel (we did the first one together,) 

This part was interesting - I didn't tell them how to come up with the answers for the wheel, it was amazing to me how many of them did not use the magic square, but counted on their fingers instead! When they were finished I also had them color all the odd numbers red - which made it easy to determine if 7 is odd or even. When they were totally finished they were allowed to check their answers by peeking inside my magic hat (where the answer key is located! - again I will add a photo when I remember!)

The very last thing I did was give them a reinforcement activity that was optional.