Peek at My Week: Science Genetics Unit and MORE!

Here's to another Sunday spent planning.  The goal for next week is to get a few things planned before the weekend comes! To make this post a little shorter, I am breaking it into two parts. Tomorrow, I will share my reading and writing plans for some Minilesson Magic :)

Science:

This week, we have our mini-unit on genetics scheduled. Our students need to learn the following objectives:
* Explain why organisms differ from or are similar to their parents based on the characterisitcs of the organism.
* Give examples of likenesses that are inherited and some that are not.
For my student journal pgs, click here (free and in a pdf).

Monday: Set up science journals. The label shown above will be pasted into their notebook as a divider for our first unit of study. Complete the "Mice" assessment probe to see what students already think about how traits show up in organisms.

After students think about their own explanations, we will use the explanations above to make a bar graph for how they think offspring's fur color is decided. (This assessment probe comes from Page Keeley, Uncovering Student Ideas in Science).

Use 1st page of heredity video to explain heredity.

Tuesday: Fingerprints Lab (found this gem linked for free online)

Wednesday: Observing Human Traits Lab (free from Tamra Young on TPT); explain dominant and recessive traits and draw conclusions about what traits are dominant/recessive for humans based on classroom data)

Thursday: Complete active sort around the room for Inherited vs Acquired traits and make flipbook (free materials from Jennifer Findley)

Friday: Learn about Punnett Squares with Leprechaun Genetics (free from Making it Teacher

on TPT)
Other Resources that might be thrown in w/ extra time: 
Unit Outline from Moore County (includes a smartboard file to guide the mini-unit)
Peas in a Pod (Mendelian Genetics) online freebie; Questions to go along with the reading selection included (I made these last year)
Heredity (from Brainpop)
DNA (from Brainpop)
Animated Videos that explain DNA, genes, chromosomes, protein, heredity, and traits

Math:
This week in math, I will be getting to know my students better as mathematicians. I'm using some of the journal prompts/explorations from my Math Explorations that focuses on factors. (Not only will we learn about decomposing numbers, but students will be forced to use their multiplication facts). Since my Math Explorations are aligned with the mathematical practices, I thought it would be a good way to introduce concepts like communicating in math, perseverance, using multiple methods for showing work, using different strategies, etc. We are also going to continue working on our Summer Slide questions, which we started on Friday. 
Given time, I will also begin to introduce some of our math stations. For math stations, my team decided that we would have 4 stations this year, MATH SUPERSTARS, CONCEPT FOCUS, ALGEBRAIC, and something computer-based like Moby Max. 

 Morning Meeting:

 We are going to focus on perseverance all week. We have a county-wide assessment that is designed with all tasks focusing on perseverance, so this fits in nicely with morning meeting. The kiddos may not even realize they are being assessed.
Finish Strong
Erik Weihenmayer on Oprah (start at 1:21)


Hope you enjoyed peeking at my week! Tune in tomorrow for my reading/writing minilesson ideas for the week.

Peek at My Week (this week and last!)

Hello all,
I missed Peek at My Week last week. I had all intentions of getting things shared before the week was up but I spent a lot of time on my Thinking through Reading Tests product and even revised it a little the day after I originally posted it.

If you missed my lessons on sorting question types, check it out. It's three days at least of meaningful test-prep plans with strategies that kids can use forever for all reading-type tests and even for open-ended questions. Heck, I think I will teach my QAR lessons from the beginning of the year next year.

I even had time last week to finish up a new product, Multiplying and Dividing with Decimals Task Cards. These questions are exactly like my Multiplying and Dividing Fractions task cards with the house plans theme, but the kids won't really care, will they? I teach those concepts so far apart, it will be nice for them to see the connections between decimals and fractions with these questions.

What did we do last week? You know, we worked on a lot of questions from released packets in math and used our questioning strategies on a passage a day during reading.

In science, we learned about Gregor Mendel and genetics. I had some good freebie resources I wanted to share with you in case you teach that too.
Peas in a Pod: Mendelian Genetics from Mensa for Kids. It looks like they have A LOT of other good resources that fit my science curriculum, so I will definitely be checking them out for more stuff later.
I made questions to go with the first two lessons from the Mensa for Kids Genetics lessons. You can grab it from my google docs to use with your students.

Finally, peek at my week, visually!
Morning Meeting:
Inspiring Kindness Video (song in video is GREAT!)

Hope you enjoyed peeking at my two weeks. What do you have going on?