Scenario: It is Monday in your classroom and a productive one at that. You are gung-ho about your lesson plans- hopeful that you will get through everything this week, for once. No assemblies, no field trips, no interruptions to your flow. Suddenly there is a parent standing in the doorway with a large tray of cupcakes. You do not know how they made it past the office and, of course, all of the students are in an uproar. Chocolate or vanilla? When, when, when! Your lesson comes to an abrupt halt as you thank the parent and bring the cupcakes into your room, setting them on the counter. Now, every other kid has to sharpen their pencil. You might as well stop everything and immediately do the birthday because no one's mind is on characterization anyway.
Multiply this loss of instruction time (20 minutes- 25 if you have the kids wash their hands) by 30 kids and you could potentially lose 10 hours of instruction time in a school year, passing out napkins, eating cupcakes and singing the birthday song.
If you are like me, this is unsettling. Every minute of every day I aimed to squeeze in curriculum. For reward times we played math games. During Valentine's Day parties we played Scrabble Junior. Lining up for specials we spelled words or cited multiples. I was challenged to find a way to turn birthday treat time into something educational- hence, the birthday estimation jar!
First, get students fired up about the activity by presenting it to the whole class as a healthy option to a sugar treat. (Bonus: my district adopted a 'wellness policy' that frowned upon classroom treats that were not healthy.) Read through the flyer together, show the students the guessing jar (plastic) and the birthday gift bag that they take everything home in to bring back the next day. Give students some ideas for some real challenge estimation questions and your high kids will go to town. Example: How many groups of ten do you think are in here? Then, work to get the first student with a birthday to do the activity (many more kids will follow after seeing it once). Or even do it yourself as an example in the first weeks of school.
The birthday student gets to lead the activity. He/she shows the jar of prizes and reads the question. Students can answer on scrap paper (no names needed) and put the responses in a basket or envelope. I suggest doing this when doing lunch count or morning work. Your birthday student needs time to sort the data for the graph. Depending on grade level, the teacher can draw a quick graph on chart paper so the birthday child can graph the results at some point in the day. Then when time allows the birthday child can explain the graph to the class, and give the correct answer to the question. Depending on time and the teacher's comfort level, deep thinking questions can follow such as, "Why do you think so many kids estimated that there were over 50 items in the jar?" Or, "We figured that if the items were 2 cents each and there were 30 in the jar, it would cost 60 cents for everything. How could we quickly find the amount if the items were 4 cents each?" Last, an excellent extension question is, "Notice the side of the graph is numbered by fives? Why do you think I did that?" Talking about scale (the numbers chosen for the y-axis) does not happen often enough!
To make this activity quicker, pre-draw a simple graph on chart paper and have students estimate on small sticky-notes. They can stick their estimation right on the graph as they complete it, with just a bit of supervision from you that they don't put their notes in the wrong column. This saves collecting responses and sorting them.
This birthday estimation jar can be as simple and quick as you like or as deep and extending as time allows. It absolutely beats a worksheet on estimation and/or graphing. It is an authentic, engaging experience in estimation. And for some reason, graphing seems to be somewhat of a weakness in my building. I don't feel students have enough experience with creating graphs and really thinking about what the parts are.
This was a lengthy post. Thank you if you made it this far! I look forward to your questions and comments and would love to be of more help to you if you need me! Happy birthday!
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