Sunday, May 13, 2012

Only *8* more days!!!

I can't believe that we only have 8 more student days left in the school year (plus an extra day for report cards, but I don't have to write lesson plans for that)! This year has just flown by. I remember thinking in August, "This is going to be the first school year, in the history of schools, that will actually never end." Now here we are in May, and there is an end in sight--crazy!

One of my goals for next year is to (finally) get organized. In my defense, I'm doing way better than last year. (I actually forgot to turn in my kiddos' spring picture money because my desk ate it. And, I didn't realize it until the orders came in, and my students wanted to know where their pictures were. I then panicked and fled to the office, hoping that by some miracle, the photographer would be able to still get them their prints. Not my finest moment. But, the kids did get their pictures. And I did not lose the picture money this year. Lesson learned). Despite the fact that I'm doing better and can typically see my desk at least once a week, I have a long way to go. For example, this is what my desk looked like around 3:00 on Friday:

Yeah, not good.

I did at least uncover a small area before I left.


And I've done better about keeping up with grading, and not waiting until midterms or report card grades were due to grade and enter a mountain of homework.

But part of that is because I have a small group of girls who think that grading is the best free time activity ever. And who am I to take away their fun?

In other news, my kids having been having a meltdown over our current math concept. Take a guess. What do you think we're learning right now that is throwing my 6th graders into a tizzy.

Have your guess ready?

Measurement.

That's right, my kids are acting as though they've never even seen a ruler before. And don't get them started on converting units. And those magic flip books I had them make with all of the conversions in them. They've magically disappeared. How can they possibly convert if they don't have the conversions?!  And metric conversions, the easiest conversion in the universe? You would have thought that I had grown antlers and was singing the lesson in Chinese. Not good.

So, because I am the nicest person in the world, I have created a conversion cheat sheet for them to use for their test that's coming up this week. I can only hope that the tests won't be the disaster that I'm half expecting them to be.

I uploaded my cheat sheet to TpT, so you can download it for a buck if you think it would be helpful for your kiddos!



And last, but not least, I have a RtI meeting tomorrow for one of my students, so I'll be having what I hope will be my last sub of the year. The meeting is only 30 minutes, but I know the damage that my kids can do in 30 minutes. Wish me luck.



Have a fabulous Monday!



4 comments:

  1. We have 6 days left counting today! So excited to be almost done, but sad at the same time. I'm glad my desk isn't the only one that's messy. Once I'm done with annual reviews, my desk will be semi clean. My 8th graders act like they have never heard of conversions, but I tell them all the time you did this in 6th and 7th grade. We are getting ready for finals! Have a great week

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    1. I can't name how many times this year my students acted like they had never heard of a math concept! You can't tell me that as a 6th grader, you don't know double digit multiplication! I know you know it! (Thankfully) We don't have finals, so we're just winding down. It's gradually turning from me teaching all the time to a few more "fun" activities instead!

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  2. We have four days left too! It's hard to be finished, but at the same time I'm so eager!

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