Thank you to all that participated in the 19th annual St. Patrick's Day Graphing Project! It was a great year of counting, sorting and graphing our favorite St. Patrick's Day cereal, Lucky Charms!

As you can see by the graph below, we found out that our hypothesis was not true. We worked to prove that there were more green clovers than any other marshmallow piece. Interesting as well as that several classes commented that they did not have any Pots of Gold marshmallow pieces this year which may be why our results show only 1,052 total pieces. The "Other" pieces were reported to be unicorns by all of the classes.

If you'd like to see the results, feel free to jump over to St. Patrick's Day Graphing Project website.

☘️ Here's hoping that all of our classes had a wee bit of fun and that you'll join us again next year! Registration for 2024 will open the end of February 2024. ☘️

Malchow's Tech Bytes ~ March 8th ☘️

 Hi all! I'm excited to share that my weekly Tech Bytes is back up and running!  Thank you for being patient as I took some time away due to my dad's illness. My dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late October and mid-January we found out that continued treatment was no longer an option. With that news, my siblings and I rallied together to help take care of my dad for whatever time he had left. Unfortunately, from the time we found out until the time of his passing was less than a week. It's been a rough few months of many ups and downs as we are all learning to live in this new normal of dad not being around and helping mom to navigate unchartered territory. There has been a lot of soul searching and reflecting on the importance of family and work/life balance over the past couple of months and while my intent is not to write a novel or get too preachy, I will simply say, that life is too short... enjoy all of the moments you have with your loved ones.

With that said, I am working to get back in the swing of things and to keep the weekly newsletter and monthly EpicPals projects running. Thank you so much for sticking with my through this difficult time and for helping me to get through this time with your continued support, emails, texts and kindness! It has been soooo much appreciated!!! 

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☘️ St. Patrick's Day Project registration NOW OPEN ☘️

 St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner and I couldn't be more excited. This is one of my favorite holidays; I'm just a wee bit Scotch-Irish! I couldn't resist creating a few shenanigans in my classroom this time of year... those gosh darn leprechauns, always causing trouble thinking that I had stolen some of their gold. 😉☘️🌈

The annual St. Patrick's Day Global Graphing Project is up and running! Covid took the fun out of 2020's project, but we're back and ready to provide your class with a wee bit of fun in '21!  I encourage you to jump over to https://stpatricksdaygraphing.weebly.com/ to find out more! This was always one of my favorite activities to do with my first graders!

https://stpatricksdaygraphing.weebly.com/

This project is a great way to engage your learners while also covering a wide variety of standards including: counting, sorting, graphing, analyzing data and more! Opportunities also exist to connect with other classes through Flipgrid, a collaborative Google slide deck, or even by connecting in real-time through  Google Meet or Skype IF YOU CHOOSE. 

If you are a K-3 teacher, I HIGHLY encourage you to sign up and give it a try!

☘️ Registration is open and will be open until Sunday, March 14th! ☘️

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ March 2nd

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Malchow's Tech Bytes 👩🏻‍💻~ Feb 24th

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St. Patrick's Day Graphing Project 🍀🌈

St. Patrick's Day is just around and I couldn't be more excited.This is one of my favorite holidays (I'm a wee bit Scotch-Irish!) and there were always a few shenanigans going on in my classroom this time of year... those gosh darn leprechauns, always causing trouble thinking that I had stole some of their gold. 😉☘️🌈

If you haven't already heard about the St. Patrick's Day Lucky Charms Global Graphing Project (yikes, that was a mouthful) I encourage you to jump over to https://stpatricksdaygraphing.weebly.com/ to find out more! This was always one of my favorite activities to do with my first graders!

https://stpatricksdaygraphing.weebly.com/

This project is a great way to engage your learners while also covering a wide variety of math concepts including: counting, sorting and graphing. You'll also have the opportunity to connect with other classes through Flilpgrid a collaborative Google slide deck, or even by connecting in real-time through  Google Hangout or Skype if you choose. 

If you are a K-3 teacher, I HIGHLY encourage you to sign up and give it a try!

Registration is now open and will be open until March 14th!

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ St. Patrick's Day Edition 🍀🌈

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Malchow's Tech Bytes~ Read Across America Edition

Click here ---> Malchow's Tech Bytes Feb 25 <---

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ Feb 18th 👩🏻‍💻🍀

Click here ---> Malchow's Tech Bytes~ Feb 18th <--- 

☘️St. Patrick's Day Project ~ #SPDProject18 ☘️

St. Patrick's Day is just around and I couldn't be more excited.This is one of my favorite holidays (I'm a wee bit Scotch-Irish love the wearin' o' the green!) There were always a few shenanigans going on in my classroom this time of year... those gosh darn leprechauns, always causing trouble thinking that I had stole some of their gold. 😉☘️🌈

One of my favorite activities to part in though was the Lucky Charms graphing project that Jen Wagner hosted on her ProjectsByJen site. (If you've not checked her site out, you definitely need to take a peek. She runs some fantastic collaborative projects that will get you connecting outside the four walls of your classroom!)  Needless to say, Jen was not planning to continue the St Patrick's Day project and I just couldn't bear to see it die... so.... I've taken over the reins and am super excited to continue this fantastic opportunity for our youngest learners! 

https://stpatricksdaygraphing.weebly.com/

For those not familiar with the project, it involves having your students sort the marshmallow shapes from a box of Lucky Charms cereal. As a group we are working to try and prove that there are more ☘️green clovers☘️ than any other shape. 

This project covers multiple standards (which you can find on the site) including: 1:1 correspondence, sorting, graphing, and analyzing data. By participating in the project, you'll also be covering several of the new ISTE standards including the Global Collaborator-GC1 standard.







Also included this year is a coordinating Flipgrid board where your students can participate in several topics such as creating a math problem for others to solve, using their marshmallow pieces to create a story or simply share their favorite marshmallow piece.  






We have over 140 classrooms already signed up to take part and would love to see your 4K-3 classroom join us. For more information, or to register, check out the official St Patrick's Day Project website~ 
☘️🌈  https://stpatricksdaygraphing.weebly.com/ ☘️🌈 our hashtag is: #SPDProject18 ☘️🌈

View St. Patrick's Day Project Participant Locations in a full screen map

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ St. Patrick's Day edition

Hard to believe it is March already which means my favorite holiday is just around the corner.... St. Patrick's Day! 

Check out this week's Tech Bytes for several St. Patrick's Day resources including a collaborative Lucky Charms graphing project for 4K- 3rd grade students!

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ March 5th

Lucky Charms Graphing

Another wonderful year of participating in the St. Patrick's Day LUcky Charms graphing project hosted by Projects by Jen.

We worked hard to find out how many marshmallows were in a box of Lucky Charms. We made predictions and shared them with a Mrs. DeGroot's class (@mrsdegrootclass) class in Iowa via our Twitter feed. We then began sorting, counting, and graphing our results. When we finished we added up the total for each of the marshmallow shapes and were quite surprised by our results. Our original job was to find out if there were more hats (clovers) than any other marshmallow in the box. We not only found that to be true, but were surprised at how few we had of some of the other shapes that were in a our box. (We had an XL Sam's Club sized box)

These were our results from our box
of Lucky Charms

Later in the afternoon, we participated in a Google Hangout with Mrs. DeGroot's class to share and compare our results with theirs. Mrs. DeGroot was not able to find the same size box as we had so she bought 2 small boxes to equal the same size as our box. Would you believe that they had more marshmallows in almost every single category and that they had 200 more marshmallows all together?? We had a pretty interesting discussion after our Google Hangout about why this might be. 

We also thought we should write to General Mills to tell them about our results and ask them why the same size boxes (technically) would have such a discrepency in the number of marshmallows. My class decided that they want to buy their Lucky Charms in Iowa from now on. 

Mrs. DeGroot tweeted about our
Google Hangout call on Twitter

St Patrick's Day Tech-ified

Today we participated in the St Patrick's Day Lucky Charms graphing project from Projects By Jen. This is my 2nd year participating in this project. It's a wonderful project that is easy to implement, doesn't take much time but has a lot of bang for the buck (predicting, counting, graphing, and comparing/ contrasting, in addition to a technology integration piece if you feel so inclined) Our goal this year was to prove that there were more green clovers than any other shape.

Our class started by making our own predictions on which marshmallow shape we felt would be represented the most in our box. Each student then tweeted their prediction to our partner class for this project, Mrs DeGroot's class in IA. My kids were so excited to see Mrs. DeGroot's class' predictions come through on our class Twitter feed. What an engaging and simple way for us to connect.

In the afternoon we opened our box, sorted, graphed and ate the results. We had a great discussion about which had the most, the least etc.
Later in the afternoon we made a Skype call to Mrs. DeGroot's class in IA and shared and compared our results with theirs. We recorded their results for more discussion later but as we compared each class had to decide if they had more or less than the other class and then put their hands on their head if they had more or hands on their shoulders if they had less. It was a quick and easy way to have the whole class involved in the comparing and an easy way for kids to see each other.

When we were done Skyping, we spent a bit of time locating our buddy class on the map and discussing their location in relation to ours. Just another great integration piece.

Overall, the project was a great success and I would highly recommend to others to participate in the Projects by Jen activities . Adding the technology component truly was the highlight and really made the project come to life. I will definitely take the time to add that piece again next year as the learning and collaborating that came out of that piece was far more powerful than the graphing alone.


Here are the results from all the classes as of 3/19. We didn't prove our hypothesis at this point, but what a great discussion to have with kiddos on the scientific process and their rational for why things turned out the way they did.

Results as of March 19, 2014
Classrooms	235
Students	4,481
Marshmallows Counted	106,279
Hypothesis Correct	NO
As a GROUP -- we will be trying to prove that there are more GREEN CLOVERS than any other shape

Do you believe in leprechauns?

We had a wee bit of fun in math today with our learning targets (I will collect data. I will create a bar graph). We started by enjoying the story, The Luckiest Leprechaun: A Tail-Wagging Tale of Friendship. After reading the story, we talked just a wee bit about leprechauns and then I introduced our targets for the day along with our data collecting sheet .

Our question for the day was: "Do you believe in leprechauns? Yes? No? or Maybe?" We started by asking everyone in our class and recording their information.

Our data was interesting and we found out that more of us believed in leprechauns than not. We were curious however if that would hold true if we asked others so each kiddo thought of someone in the building that they wanted to interview. Partners then headed off together to interview their people. 

When everyone returned, we talked about the next step which was to create a bar graph of our information. We then analyzed our data and again discovered that most people believed in leprechauns. We also dug into our data a bit more and found the differences between our data. Some student's graphs showed that 9 more people believed in leprechauns than not.

This activity was a great way for my students to not only apply their mathematical thinking but for them to also incorporate skills such as interviewing, speaking loudly and clearly, working with a partner and several others.

A wee bit of Irish fun..

I love St. Patrick's Day~ maybe it's that little bit of Scotch-Irish in me that makes me love a wee bit of fun?! I also love the fact that 1st graders fall for the shenanigans hook,line, and sinker! Last week I read the story, The Luckiest Leprechaun: A Tail-Wagging Tale of Friendship. As we were reading the last page, a little note from Louie the Leprechaun fell to the floor. Louie mentioned that he had been looking for his gold in our classroom and, well, the rest is history. Each day, Louie has been doing something in our classroom: leaving a book, a message on the SMARTboard, a writing project, etc. Today in his frustration of not being able to find his gold, he asked the kids where they would hide their gold if they were leprechauns. He then left special paper and a project for them to display their answers on. He told us he'd be back tonight to see their ideas. In the meantime, Louie found out how to access our classroom blog and was a bit of a sheister when he took our 3D shape hunt pictures and put them into a Smilebox album for us, complete with little sayings on each slide. The kids were pumped about that as they could hear the Irish music playing in the hallway when they came in from recess. ( I have no idea how Louie managed that while we were gone to recess- wink, wink) Tonight I also noticed that he went on the blog and created a Voki- hmmm... a tech savvy leprechaun, what do you know!?!

Tomorrow he is leaving us a graph (Do you believe in leprechauns?) another note, and a money game to play during math game tub time. Sure glad that he's been a nice leprechaun, even if he has been sneaky. I hope he won't be upset when the kids bring their leprechaun traps to school tomorrow to try and catch him. The traps are an at home project that I encourage families to take part in each year. When the kiddos bring them in, they tell us about how they built their traps and how they work. I'll post some pics of their creations later this week.
Although we have a lot of fun with all of the tom-foolery, I've worked hard over the years to embed the silliness into our curriculum so that learning time isn't lost on fluff- hence the writing project complete with an Irish editor's checklist, a graph and money game for math, notes on the SMARTboard which we use as part of our shared reading and then respond back as part of our interactive writing, the many books he leaves for read alouds and guided reading, and the crazy note he leaves us in the computer lab which takes us to some fun St. Patrick's Day sites.  All of this is spread out a little at a time over the course of the week leading up to St. Patrick's Day. The excitement that is brewing in my class right now is exciting, a great way to spice up the winter doldrums!