3-D Shape Community Project

I have a student teacher this spring (who is awesome) and one of the requirements she has is to teach a week-long unit.  We use Everyday Math, so our curriculum spirals, meaning that we never spend a full week on the same topic.  Our Language Arts curriculum is scripted, so not much wiggle room for creativity in her planning there.  We decided to choose a skill that we had not yet introduced in math and run with it.  I can always catch up with Everyday Math later.

Our Language Arts unit for the week was community and she decided to focus on 3-D shapes as her unit.  After teaching 3 lesson on 3-D shapes and having 8 days down in our community unit (our units are 10 days long), we began to build our 3-D shape community.  Students collected items such as boxes (rectangular prisms) and milk & juice cartons (cubes with pyramids on top) to make our community.  My student teacher covered the boxes for them using bulletin board paper. Students then made a list of places in our community and "went to town' (no pun intended) on the community.

They did a great job and 85% of them were able to name all the shapes we focused on in our community!  Families, staff and other classes were invited to see our community and learn from our learning.

They came up with the "standing" grass on their own.  I think this one needs to make a lawn mower!