Oreo Turns 100....so let's celebrate!

Did you know that the Oreo cookie is turning 100 years old on March 6?  Yeah, I didn't either...until I received a link to Nabisco in my email box (that is what happens when you have toddlers in the house...you sign up for all sorts of random websites ;) )   I guess I never really thought about when they were invented....just knew they were yummy.  :)

In honor of this delicious centennial, I wanted to share with you the OREO Project that my class participated in earlier this year.  I found this AWESOME site online called Projects by Jen.   Jen Wagner was a teacher who began creating online projects to connect teachers and classrooms all over the country (and world!)  She has many different on-going projects, but the one that caught my eye this year was the O.R.E.O. Project....Our Really Exciting Online Project!

This project was a data gathering mission for my students.  Our day started with the students posing an inquiry question:  How many Oreos can we stack before the tower falls?

They hypothesized that we would be able to stack somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 cookies.

The student then began slowly stacking Oreos, one by one, until the tower they were building could no longer stand.  Once the stack fell, the students told our wonderful parent volunteers their cookie total, and gave it a second try.  

Each student in the class had two chances to create the tallest tower they could.  Our largest tower was 21 cookies high!  My students had a BLAST doing this.  (they STILL talk about it.....5 months later!)

Once the stacking was done, we all went back to our classroom and started to look at the data that was collected.  The students helped me to find the mean (average) of the entire class stacks so we could turn our data into the main OREO 2011 Project. 

Our mean was 17!



They then found the mean, median, mode, range, and outliers for the data set of the students sitting at their table groups.  The kids worked together to get this info...helping each other to look at the data and figure it all out!

Here is the worksheet I created for our class to use.  It is just a simple chart for them to record their information, as well as space to do the math work.  Easy Peesy!

They then created triple bar graphs, showing the two stacks, as well as the mean, for each member of their table. 





The end of the day found us creating sculptures with the Oreos we had used in the earlier parts of the day. The students were so creative!  They made snowmen, elephants, bats, whales, people, Mickey Mouse, a table with people eating...the list goes on and on!

To accompany these sculptures (and bring even MORE standards in) the students created Bubble Maps describing the creations.  They then wrote descriptive paragraphs using the adjectives from the Bubble Maps.

Here is the final draft paper the students used.  To display on the wall, they cut the circle out, as well as a black piece of construction paper and created the "sandwich" style of the Oreo!  It came out cute :)

So there you have it!  The O.R.E.O. Project was a HIT in my class!  I highly recommend it for everyone.  Even if you didn't participate in it this year, you can always follow the guidelines and do it yourself in your room.  Then head on over to Projects by Jen and sign up for next year!