Fabulous Fun February!
February is a fun month. From the sweet activities of Valentine’s day, to the challenges of Winter Olympics and a Worldwide Math Contest, to the excitement leading to Super Bowl Sunday and a hunt for Mystery Penpals via email, there are many exciting events scheduled for February!
World Math Day – February 1 is the first day to register, and practice begins as soon as students are registered. The goal of World Math Day is to have students around the world join together to solve math problems on March 3, to beat last year's record of 2 million students from 204 countries correctly answering 452,681,681 math problems. (The Problems Solved Scoreboard itself is a wonderful math lesson in the size of a million - how long does it take to move from 6 million to 7 million, etc)
When students log in, they create an avatar. When they start a race, they are matched with 3 other same-age students from 3 other countries (it's great fun to see all the different countries that end up racing together!) and the race is on. Students complete as many math problems as they can in 1 minute. The number of problems answered is tallied over the course of the month, and for each certain number, they can "purchase" accessories for their avatar. The program also seems to keep track of their abilities, and after they've played a few games, seems to match them with others at their level.
March 3 is the focus of the project, but the big advantage to the program is its high-energy practice of math facts, the allure of playing against other countries, and the fact that students can also log in and play at home. This free activity is only available for the month of February - and sometimes they let us have an extra couple of weeks in March.
Super Bowl Blitz In America: The Super Bowl will be played on February 7. The week leading up to it is fraught with energy and anticipation as teams play off to determine who gets to go to the championship football game in the Super Bowl. No matter what country you’re in, you can capitalize on the excitement leading up to the big day with super activities in all curricular areas at Educational World’s website.
Valentine Venn – Here’s an activity that combines analytic thinking with word analysis and attributes in a two-part Venn diagram. Students move words or names into the correct section of the Venn to figure out the attributes of each section. The activity works nicely with a SMARTBoard or overhead projector, or you can use candy word hearts on a paper Venn. You can download the Lesson Plan, and pdf Venn diagrams at http://dyna-ed.net/id8.html . If you have SMARTBoard software, send me an email and I’ll send you the SMART Notebooks for this activity.
Mystery Penpals matches two classes in unknown different parts of the world – they play "20 Questions" via email to locate each other. Your students will learn and use a wide variety of geography, map-reading, data collection and analysis, and logic and problem-solving concepts and skills to find their partner class. Nearly 40 partners from 6 countries searched for each other in Round 1 (October – December). Join us for Round 2, which begins February 15, (but you’ll want to do the warm-up activities before then, so register soon). Find all the details at http://dyna-ed.net/id2.html .
Olympic Games February 12-28 The Winter Olympics is a “Teachable Moment” that comes along only every four years. The two websites below have activities that capitalize on this special event in all curricular areas and for all grade levels.
That’s it for February’s Fabulous Fun! Stay tuned for Marvelous activities in March’s newsletter. And have fun in your classroom.
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