Fractions and Decimals- Goldfish activity is a combination of literacy and mathematics. This activity encourages literacy across the curriculum, as a fraction concept is reviewed through Dr. Seuss's book One fish, two fish leading to cooperative learning hands-on activity where students experience how we use fractions in real life to sort from a cluster. Helping students understand the relationship between mathematics and literacy at an early age is crucial for their development as a whole child and building a strong foundation of number sense. 

This resource is a remix from Illustrative Mathematics (https://goopenva.org/courses/3-md-how-heavy). This resource encourages student collaboration and allows students to have a mathematical dialogue as express their understanding of units of measure. Teachers can use objects found around the house to demonstrate mathematics in the real world. I like how this resource adds flexibility in instruction, as it allows teachers to creatively add diverse manipulatives or real-life items on the balance scale. This activity scaffolds the learning process allowing students an opportunity to experience active hands-on learning to strengthen their understanding of mathematical concepts, which provides a diverse learning experience. This resource is a valuable part of building background when introducing units of measure or equations in the early elementary years of mathematics education as it provides students a concrete example of building an equation with concrete objects.  Suggested Modification - A student recording sheet with illustrations has been added to the resource to allow all different types of learner to learn from a concrete idea to strengthen conceptual learning about building an equation. 

This gives students two different things to do with what they have learned and read about Storms and precipitation. Not only will students have a good time using stamps but they can also take what they read and interpret it into a graph. This is a very vital skill throughout school all the way up until 12 grade.

 This is a fun, quick and easy way for students practice Data Anaylsis. Students will roll a 6 sided cube with each side containing a different St. Pat’s Day image. Students will record their data on a graph. Students will then make a prediction on which image they think they will roll next based on their data. Included is an editable cube so you can choose your own images. It's not limited to St. Pat's Day.

In this science-based unit, students begin to build respect for and understanding of living things by studying the life cycles of different plants and animals. In the first bend of the unit, students continue their exploration of seasons by exploring what makes spring the season of growth and the different characteristics of living, nonliving, and dead things. In the second part of the unit, students observe and learn about plants and what seeds need in order to grow into a plant. In the third part of the unit, students observe and learn about frogs and butterflies and the process in which tadpoles turn into frogs and caterpillars transform into butterflies. In the fourth part of the unit, students learn about birds and how birds grow and change inside of an egg. The unit culminates with students studying different ways humans change the environment and coming up with solutions for ways to reduce human impact on the environment. For each bend of the unit it is incredibly important that students are able to participate in hands-on labs and activities that help them see and observe the life cycles in action. Therefore, there are multiple project days within the unit. After the projects and labs have been set up, students should be pushed to predict, observe, record, and explain the changes that they notice. Throughout the unit, students should be challenged to think critically about how the life cycles of plants and animals are similar and different, and what all living things need in order to thrive and survive.

In reading, this unit serves as a chance to review all previously taught reading strategies. With that said, one main focus of the unit is on describing the connection between ideas or pieces of information, particularly in regard to sequencing. Another focus is on describing the relationship between illustrations and the text in which they appear, and using the illustrations to deepen understanding of key details in a text. When the text demands, students should also be challenged to ask and answer questions about key details, identify the main topic, ask and answer questions about unknown words, identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text, and compare two texts on the same topic. If there are other strategies from the year that students are struggling with, plan strategic places over the course of the unit to spiral in and remediate the strategies so that students are prepared for first grade.

In writing, the main focus of this unit is on ensuring that all students are scoring a 3 or a 4 on the reading response rubric. Therefore, targeted whole-group and small-group mini-lessons should be planned based on student needs.

This activity will ask students to locate geographic regions and features on a class map using longitude and latitude measurements. Using the longitude and latitude data, students will be able to visualize geographic features in the actual location in order to analyze the living conditions of various regions.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2010256.Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.