What Do Sheep In A Jeep Have To Do With Math & Science?

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

My Students

You cannot talk a child into learning, or tell a child to understand. They must actually be involved in the learning experience. Using literature and hands on learning makes Science and Math come alive. Without your help, many activities will have to be boring worksheets...STEM is all about this!

My 95% poverty students struggle to simply make it into my classroom each day.

They drive past nice neighborhoods and travel into the projects where many of them manage to not only survive, but bloom. Living in what has some of the richest people in the country, doesn't help my students when they come to a school where even the basics that most people have in class does not exist. I want to have my students experience Science and Math outside of the textbook like other students do. They hear about this experiments and their eyes light up when they actually get to use their minds fully as well. We completed a Project WILD experiment the other day and it was heart warming to hear them question and delve into Science! They need to be able to do this more often.

My Project

Sheep in a Jeep is a short book that mixed with small toy jeeps I purchased and small sheep, teach my students about Newton's first law of gravity. A force in motion stays in motion or at rest at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force. How do 5th graders comprehend this law? They do with sheep who all fall out of the jeep until they are secured by a force. They learn it by timing their jeeps as they accelerate. They learn about it by actually participating in experiments. How do they learn about coordinates? They do so by using hands on whiteboards and playing the game "Battleship!" How do they learn about the life cycle? They hatch butterflies. How do they understand digestion? They read Hoot and then dissect owl pellets. Is it possible that I have the next person who makes a giant scientific discovery in my classroom? Of course it is, but it will take them actually experiencing these projects for it to come alive for them.

This summer, I was blessed to be chosen to attend the Mickelson Exxon/Mobile Academy in New Jersey.

This honor taught me more ways to use hands on teaching to motivate and teach my students. However, upon my return to reality, I realized that without help from YOU, I cannot teach most of what I learned as I do not have the materials and supplies I need. I went from an academy where all the materials we needed were provided back to a campus where I must provide anything beyond the text.