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Tuesday, January 03, 2012

How was your first day back?

Ladies and gentlemen -- I present to you -- INTERACTIVE MONDAY! (On Tuesday, yes; I'm a little behind.)

So my question today is How was your first day back? This might have been yesterday, it might have been today, it might not be till NEXT Monday. At any rate, once it's over, come back here and answer the question!

As for me, it was a really good first day back. Sure, I didn't do anything that I had on my lesson plan. This was because our copies hadn't been made, so I couldn't give the new unit pre-test as planed. However, it made it possible for me to hold a fun little review game that let the kids work in teams to refresh their memories on concepts like polygons, congruency, and estimating.

I'm going to try to encourage the kids to start looking for and sharing real-world examples of math usage, so I started today by telling the kids about how my wife is pregnant and that when we went to the doctor we learned that it usually takes about 40 weeks for the baby to come, and we've already passed 21 weeks. Then I asked them how I could have figured out how many weeks we still had before the baby's arrival. Many of them of course said ADD!

I had to inform them that if anyone told my wife that she still had 61 weeks of pregnancy, she would chop my head off.

We're starting a unit on fractions, so this should be an interesting few weeks.

Looking forward to hearing how YOUR first day back went!

4 comments:

HappyChyck said...

Mine was a great first day back, too! Anticipating that everyone, myself included, would be slow moving (and thinking), I spent the first 10 minutes of each class having the students share things they did over the break. It felt good being in the classroom with these students I enjoy.

They are not without fault, though. I spent TOO MUCH time grading their persuasive essays over the break, so the next order of business was about how they were going to revise them. Kind of a bummer for them to come back to face a beast they thought they killed already. Muwhahaha!

I hope the rest of your week is equally great!

Anonymous said...

Once we got over the shock and awe of getting back and the news of a forthcoming test this week, everything went fairly smoothly. My 7th graders were back in fine form after lunch, so the 2 weeks off only created a minor disturbance in the force.
I did have an ah ha moment. I told the students to expect their favorite shows to be interrupted by news of the Iowa caucuses. And then it hit me: this is 'popular sovereignty' at its finest, a concept we spend all year trying to teach.
Thank you Brian Williams et al. I am looking forward to finding out how many of many of my students changed channels when they saw you.

Melissa B. said...

All I can say about the last two days is that I think I'm still asleep!

Mister Teacher said...

Happy, it WAS nice to be back with the kids you enjoy. I even tried to have a little pep talk with a few of the kids that I DON'T enjoy, telling them it's a brand new year and a new chance to stop being such lazy lumps. Well, I put it friendlier than that...

Anon, and did any of them mention Mr. Williams the next day? ;)

Scribe, have you woken up yet? hehehe