A disappointment stumbling block.... (sigh)

Well I must admit I thought we were rocking along in math class, and then I get to test day. I realize two things:

1) The kids don't know the material like I thought they did.

2) Since so many of them don't get it, I know the problem is me.

So today I am spending time trying to find a million ways to teach my kids about positive and negative integers and about greatest common factor and least common multiple (this for my 6th graders) so that we can retest on Wednesday. I feel bad for the kids that completely aced my test, but I'm more worried about the ones that failed dramatically. 20%, 30%, and yes I even had a 0%.

It is official. Come Monday I will be off track on the lesson plan the teacher has left for me to teach. It is also official that my teacher will be coming back November 16th, and I need to ensure when she comes back in it was like she never left. There is a lot of pressure for a long term substitute. It is much more different than if it was your own class of kids. Whatever I get off schedule with will impact her future teaching, and I can't afford to just keep moving because in Math, everything builds upon itself, especially at this level.

I must admit it was a disappointing week, but this is my first lesson in really modifying, adapting, and overcoming so that my kids can succeed. Wish me luck!

Oh and if you have any suggestions about where to look for great interactive lesson plans, drop me a comment! I'm all ears!

Comments

Inspiration and a Smart Pen

I finally figured out how to work my little interactive white board tablet in my room. I used it on Friday and my kids loved it. I like it to, and it was really my inspiration behind getting my Echo smart pen. When trying to figure out how to use my interactive white board tablet (we will call it IWBT) I thought well I'll just google it and go from there. Turns out... it isn't made anymore. Never the less, I was able to figure out what I was doing, and it is great for my classroom. It operates a lot like a Think Pad. At any rate, I've seen several blog post referring to smart pens and LiveScribe on several blogs I subscribe to and I thought I would check it out. I found an Echo pen in Best Buy and fell in love. I was on a spending splurge today and decided this was going to go one of two ways. I either was going to get an iPad, or a Smart Pen. Well... I got the Smart Pen. So I've been sitting at home and right now the new drivers are being done on my new p

Spiral Review In All Its Glory (Decimal of the Day)

The school district I am in has cumulative tests covering everything taught each six weeks. The twist is, these tests are made by administrators and not teachers. This really isn't a problem to me. It is a learning tool for me and a teachable moment for my students on the importance of all material covered in class. We as teachers can really get bogged down in the variables of a test like this. By that I mean, oh the test question was worded funny or well they were only given one chance to show mastery on this, my students are _______ fill in the blanks, thoughts, and reasoning. The one thing my school district did was have us put our scores up standard by standard right next to every other teacher in the district who had to teach the same thing we did. My oh my did I fall short! I say I fell short even though I had great reasoning as to why my scores looked the way they did... but upon further reflection I decided to take responsibility for what I was seeing. My

Incorporating Literacy Into Math...and what about Fortnite?

The name of the game is engagement, but let us all be honest with each other; if you aren't targeted about your engagement, then it is just fluff. I think I spend about 1/2 of my waking hours thinking of ways I could incorporate cross-curricular and real-world items into my lesson plans. Shouldn't we all be though? Well... maybe not spend 1/2 your waking hours thinking about it, but definitely incorporating cross-curricular and real-world items into your classroom. I always tell my parents life is not a worksheet, but let's be honest... sometimes you ARE stuck with using them! I like to break away as much as possible! Sometimes though, those angelic (cough) students of mine could care less. We know they don't! They don't care how much of our own money we spent, how long we spent planning something just for them, the only thing they care about is whether it is fun, and not "boring". I would like to invite some chat and thought into thi

Teaching Mrs. Ryan

Search This Blog