Black Light Lesson

Two weeks ago, I completed my first black light lesson!  I went up to the school on a Sunday afternoon to black out my room.  I had some black sheets to cover my windows, and that worked great.  I didn't have enough, so I had to use paper.  That did not work as well.  I will definitely be getting more sheets to do this activity again.

I put up black butcher paper on an old chalkboard in my room.  I sprayed it with 3M adhesive spray (make sure you don't get the permanent kind).  It was about $18 at Office Depot, but you only need a little bit, so this can should last me a while.  I lined the trays with 4 black lights.  I have two black light bulbs that I put in flood light holders.  I hung these at the top.  I use all the these black lights at the dances, so I already had them.  I created different shapes, and I printed them out on neon cardstock paper from Hobby Lobby.  You can catch this when scrapbook materials go on sale for 50% off!  It goes through the printer beautifully!

This is what the board looked like as a whole.

I started my class like normal.  We created a quick foldable over the lesson.  The lesson was on Transformations:  Dilations, reflections, rotations, and translations.   When it came time for the lesson, I had the kids sitting with their backs to the wall move to the floor.  I pushed the desks over.  I turned the black lights on and the the main lights off.  The kids were mesmerized!  The foldable was made with neon paper, so it glowed too!

The O is for Original and the N is for New.

We went through different examples over the different transformations.  I also used a tri-fold board and created a coordinate plane with neon crayons. I used sticky tak to hold the shapes on the board.  I used neon color pom-pom balls.

Great representations of enlargements and reductions.

 The students really liked this.  I will definitely be using this in the future for another activity.  Overall, the students acted great.  I only had issue with one kid, and the other kids told him how he needed to act before I could.  They didn't want to lose the lesson!