A Go Figure Debut for Part of a Trio Who Is New!

Today’s blog post features Sarah who retired last year after 33 years of teaching. Her Teachers Pay Teachers store is called Stem to Steam Trio.

Sarah taught special education, second grade and enrichment through STEM K-4! She enjoyed having the variety! She feels she has always been good at differentiating lessons, and she loves activities that are hands-on and engaging! Her husband (middle school STEM) and her sister (elementary art) are also teachers. They enjoy bouncing ideas off each other; thus the STEM to STEAM Trio was born.

Her family has a woodworking business called Anniversary Banks (anniversarybanks.com). She and her husband have a rather nice woodworking shop where they enjoy creating. Sarah also enjoys walking, gardening, reading, and traveling. And this year, she has even taken up golf! Of course playing with their dog, Snickers, and taking her for walks ranks up there! Now that she is home, Snickers follows her around like Mary's little lamb!

Only $4.00

Sarah finds making resources for TPT is a way to keep the creative juices flowing, while at the same time helping other teachers. There are 227 resources in their store, the majority being science and STEM related. One of these is a great science WebQuest. WebQuest activities challenge students to go on-line (usually to a specific website) to find answers to specific questions. The featured WebQuest about wild turkeys is entitled Wild Turkeys WebQuest. Students use some of the knowledge they have gained while completing the WebQuest to imagine, plan and create a turkey that balances on a branch. This STEM challenge is aligned to the Next Generation Science standards of engineering and design and includes worksheets guiding the student to locate certain information from the website along with specific instructions for the challenge. Materials for the challenge are things most teachers have.

Free Item

Out of the 227 resources, six are free. The freebie featured today is an award sampler. It contains three colorful awards that target 21st Century Skills! They are sure to make students of any age smile! They can be used at an end of the year celebration or given out sporadically throughout the year to reward and encourage students!

In addition, Sarah is a collaborator on the collaborative blog called Stem Activities for Kids. There you will find posts on STEM, science, technology, engineering and math. There are even STEM activities for little learners. This is one blog that you ought to take the time to visit!

Dump and Divide or Better Known As Converting Fractions to Decimals

When working with fractions, my remedial math college students are never quite sure which number to divide by. This same thing often occurred when I taught middle school and high school. So the question I had to answer was, "How can I help my students remember what number goes where?"

First, the student must understand and know the vocabulary for the three parts of a division problem. As seen in the problem above, each part is correctly named and identified.

Side Note: The symbol separating the dividend from the divisor in a long division problem is a straight vertical bar with an attached vinculum (you might have to look this word up) extending to the left, but it seems to have no established name of its own. Therefore, it can simply be called the "long division symbol" or the division bracket. I wish it were named something fancier, but sometimes plain and straight forward is the best!
Now let's look at a fraction that the student is asked to rewrite as a decimal. The fraction on your right is two-fifths and is read from top to bottom as two divided by five. That's easy enough, but when my students enter this into their calculators, many will put in the 5 first, and then press the

division sign, followed by the 2. Of course, they get the wrong answer. Now let's look at the dump and divide method.

First, dump the 2 into the calculator. Then press the division sign; then divide by 5. The answer is 0.4.

I am aware that many of students are not allowed to use calculators; so, let's look at how this method would work using the division bracket. We will use the same fraction of 2/5 and the same phrase, dump and divide.

First, take the numerator and dump it inside the division bracket. (Note: Use N side instead of inside so that numerator and N side both start with "N".) Now place the 5 outside of the long division bracket and divide. The answer is still .4.

Dump and Divide will also work when a division problem is written horizontally as a number sentence such as: 15 ÷ 3. First, reading left to right, dump 15 into the division bracket. Now place the 3 on the outside. Ask, "How many groups of three are in 15?" The answer is 5.

Try using Dump and Divide with your students, and then let me know how it works. You can e-mail by clicking on the page entitled Contact Me or just leave a comment.

Something Else to Think About:  Since many students do not know

their multiplication tables, reducing fractions is almost an

Divisibility Rules

impossible task. The divisibility rules, if learned and understood, can be an excellent math tool. The resource, Using Digital Root to Reduce Fractions, contains four easy to understand divisibility rules as well as the digital root rules for 3, 6, and 9. A clarification of what digital root is and how to find it is explained. Also contained in the resource is a dividing check off list for the student. Download the preview to view the first divisibility rule plus three samples from the student check off list.

October - Is It "Fall" or "Autumn"?

It's finally October, one of my favorite months of the year. October means football (Ohio State, of course), cooler weather and gorgeous leaves. (It is also when my husband and I were married.) In October, we see the leaves turning colors, and the deciduous trees shedding their leaves.

Another name for fall is autumn, a rather odd name to me.  Through research, I discovered that the word autumn is from the Old French autumpne, automne, which came from the Latin autumnus. Autumn has been in general use since the 1960's and means the season that follows summer and comes before winter.

Fall is the most common usage among those in the United States; however, the word autumn is often interchanged with fall in many countries including the U.S.A. It marks the transition from summer into winter, in September if you live in the Northern Hemisphere or in March if you live in the Southern Hemisphere.  It also denotes when the days are noticeably shorter and the temperatures finally start to cool off. In North America, autumn is considered to officially start with the September equinox. This year that was September 23rd.

With all of that said, the leaves in our neighbor's yard have already begun to fall into ours which aggravates my husband because he is the one who gets to rake them. Maybe focusing on some activities using leaves will divert his attention away from the thought of raking to science investigations.  

Remember ironing leaves between wax paper?  We did that in school when I was a little girl (eons and eons ago).  Here is how to do it.

1. Find different sizes and colors of leaves.
2. Tear off two sheets about the same size of waxed paper.
3. Set the iron on "dry".  No water or steam here!
4. The heat level of the iron should be medium.
5. Place leaves on one piece of the waxed paper.
6. Lay the other piece on top.
7. Iron away!

You can also use this activity to identify leaves.  According to my husband who knows trees, leaves and birds from his college studies, we "waxed" a maple leaf, sweet gum leaf, elm leaf, cottonwood leaf (the state tree of Kansas - they are everywhere), and two he doesn't recognize because they come from some unknown ornamental shrubs.

Maybe you would like to use leaves as a science investigation in your classroom.  I have one in my Teacher

Leaf Investigation

Pay Teachers store that is a six lesson science performance demonstration for the primary grades. The inquiry guides the primary student through the scientific method and includes 1) exploration time, 2) writing a good investigative question, 3) making a prediction, 4) designing a plan, 5) gathering the data, and 6) writing a conclusion based on the data. Be-leaf me, your students will have fun!

(A preview of the investigation is available. Just click on the title under the resource cover.) 

Using Bloom's in Geometry Class

As one of their assignments, my college students are required to create a practice test using pre-selected math vocabulary. This activity prompts them to review, look up definitions and apply the information to create ten good multiple choice questions while at the same time studying and assessing the material. Since I want the questions to be more than Level 1 (Remembering) or Level II (Understanding) of Bloom's Taxonomy, I give them the following handout to help them visualize the different levels.  My students find it to be simple, self explanatory, easy to understand and to the point.

Level I - Remembering


 What is this shape called?



Level II - Understanding

Circle the shape that is a triangle.



Level III - Applying

       Enclose this circle in a square.




Level IV - Analyzing


 What specific shapes were used to draw this picture?



Level V - Evaluating

How is the picture above like a real truck?  How is it  different?

Level VI - Creating

Create a new picture using five different geometric shapes.
(You may use the same shape more than once, but you must use five
different geometric shapes.)

Using Bloom's in Math

As teachers, we are only limited by our imagination as to the activities we ask our students to complete to help them prepare for a test. However, we still need to teach and provide information so the students can complete these types of tasks successfully. With the aid of the above chart, my students create well written practice tests using a variety of levels of Bloom's. When the task is completed, my students have also reviewed and studied for their next math exam. I consider that as time well spent!

If you would like a copy of the above chart in a similar but more detailed format, it is available on Teachers Pay Teachers as a FREE resource.