Last Saturday a nice crowd joined me for a short accordion workshop, the first of what I hope will be a few months of these free, mini workshops to give us all some more practice with accordion folds.
The time was so short and it went so fast that it almost seemed like it didn’t happen at all. But I know it happened, mostly because I received some sweet notes, and even some photos afterwards.
Next session will be building upon this past one, so if you plan to come, and you missed out, take a look at the handout above.
This Saturday will be the same time -4 pm EST-, same zoom link as last week. I will show up about 10 minutes early if anyone want to chat, then by 2 minutes after the hour, demonstration starts, then zoom kicks us out at 30 minutes after the hour.
Paula Krieg is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
I’m once again revisiting accordions and number lines, because they are both infinity fun. What I’ve attempted to do here is to create a classroom friendly accordion book whose pages are pockets which can contain changing content, in this case a variety of number lines.
What makes this project classroom friendly is that it is designed to be used with a ubiquitous material: standard sized, standard weight copy paper. It requires a few simple folds, and very few materials. I’ve made templates that can be printed out, but lacking the resource of a copy machine, this can all be easily constructed without my templates.
Endless accordion with pockets.
The accordion is made from units of full-size sheets of paper, folded, then attached together. For the basic number line I recommend using 6 papers, which will result in 12 pockets. Since zero through 10 needs 11 pockets, the extra pocket at the end conveniently implies “dot dot dot …. on and on …to be continued. ”
The shows where the fold lines occur.
A full sheet of 8.5″ x 11″ (or A4) is folded so it ends up looking like the picture below:
Two pockets from one sheet of paper
The tabs at the side are there to create an attachment surface for other the next pockets.
Attaching pockets together
The tabs of adjoining papers can be attached with glue, tape, sewing, paper fasteners, staples or paper clips. I ch0ose paper clips.
One piece of paper, folded, has room for four numbers
The cards with the numbers are also made from sheets of uncut, folded paper. They are folded so that they are just a bit narrower than the pockets. Once they’ve been folded they can be glued (or taped etc) shut but I don’t bother doing this, as they seem to stay together just fine without gluing.
Counting by 10’s
One set of numbers can make four different number lines.
Counting by ones
I’m providing links to PDF’s. There’s a PDF for the pocket, which I recommend that you make 6 copies of. This template is in black and white only. I hand colored in the dividing lines.
As for the numbers, I have one full color PDF here, and one that has the black and white outlines of the numbers if you prefer to let have your students color in the numbers themselves. At the moment I only have files for paper measured in inches, but in the next day or two I will update with A4 versions as well.
Tonight I’m finishing up gathering supplies for the first day of what is always my most challenging, and most satisfying, school visit of the my teaching-artist season. I have been visiting schools in the Adirondacks for many years, but I have spent the most time in this one particular school. I get to work with nine grade levels, pre-K through 7th grade. I need to create nine completely different projects, which will go from beginning to completion over six days, spread out through the month of March.
In the interest of finishing up the details, and getting to bed (last night, daylight savings time kicked in, so getting up tomorrow morning will be a challenge) I am going to list the nine projects for the nine grade levels, then I’m going to try to write about them over the course of the month.
Here goes.
PreK: the teachers asked that we do a project with the students’ names. We’ll thread beads and cover weight papers on to shoelace-tipped yarn, write a letter on one side of the card, and a picture which starts with that letter on the back. See photo above,
Kindergarten: Accordion Book with pockets, a variation of structure in the picture below.
An Accordion Book with Pockets for Kindergarten Sight Words
First Grade: A folding triptych about Alaska and an animal that lives in Alaska. Will include a pop-up, a pocket to hold research papers, and a poetry page. We’ll color the sky with Northern Lights.
Second Grade: A book that folds up like a valise, that has pockets within for a “passport,” a folding map, postcards, a boarding ticket, and little books with information about a country that the student is studying.
Third Grade: We’ll make a journal for the students to use however they want.
Fourth Grade: This is the class that will be making a Zero to One Fractions book that I’ve been writing about
Fifth Grade: I still have some planning to do on this project, but it will likely be a social studies based project made from units of an Origami Base, which opens and closes in a dynamic way.
Sixth Grade: This group will use tabloid size papers, folded in half, and bound, in four separate sections, with large rubber bands. The students will use these with their English teacher, between now and the end of the year, as a memory catcher.
Seventh Grade: We’ll fold down and trim a large, 35″ x 23 ” paper into an 8.75″ x 5.75″ pamphlet, which students will sew, glue in to a hinge piece, add soft covers, and decorate. The book will go with them to their English class, for content to be added between now and the end of the school year.
I keep everything organized ( I hope) in a notebook that I can make in about five minutes, that looks like this.
Hopefully I will be posting all of these projects. But now it’s time to wrap things up for the night.
Here’s the rest of what I started in my last post about this book with the narrow accordion spine. What I like about combining this structure with fractions is that it makes a concrete (ok, paper) connection between the relationship of different “families” of fractions to each other. For instance, just by looking at the pages when the book is expanded, as it is in the photo above, it’s clear that two-fifths is bigger than one-fourth, and 2/2 is the same as 3/3.
After making the accordion spine in the last post, there’s actually one more step, because I needed not four, but five accordion folds.
To make the fifth accordion, start by folding just one edge over to meet the closest crease.
To make the fifth accordion pleat the students folded one of the edges to the closest crease, pressed down the fold then turned the paper over and brought the crease up to the master fold. Done.
Accordion spine with covers
Now the covers go on….
pages of fractions, 8″ x 5 1/2″
…and the pages go in. After a conversation with my wise special ed friend teacher, Melanie, I decided to label the left side of the pages with part of the fraction that each slice of paper singularly represents.
Gluing pages into Fractions Book
Students cut the papers to their appropriate sizes (on the lines that were printed onto the papers). This step, to my surprise, didn’t take long and went quite smoothly. There was the occasional leaking out of glue that made some pages stick a bit to each other, but that was easily fixed.
The students labeled the right, exposed edge of the fractions book, with the fractions written sequentially. This allows them to compare fractional amounts, like they can see compare 2/3 to 3/5 visually.
Now it’s time to decorate the cover, using 2 inch squares to cut into fraction pieces.
And decorated they did.
The only thing left to do, if they choose, is to write on the blank parts of the pages, perhaps adding in math facts.
A big thank you to the teachers who trusted me when I said, hey, we can do a fractions book…I’m sure they had no idea what I was talking about. And it worked out so well! Everyone was happy.
Playful Bookbinding and Paper Works 