It's testing season!!

I have really dropped the ball with this blog! Switching schools, learning two new grade levels, developing curriculum, snow, test prep..AH! I can't believe it's the end of April. This year flew, and THE EOG IS COMING!

My new position is a remediation/enrichment position. I teach "the bubble kids." These kids have a history of doing well on the NCEOG, but either just barely passed or just barely missed the cut on the 12-13 test. I LOVE IT! These kids are motivated and want to do well. It was a little bumpy at first because their schedules unfortunately say "math remediation" which has its own stigma in the eyes of a middle schooler, of course, and my class is during Encore, so they've all had to give up a more "fun" class like art or PE in order to be in my room. Fortunately I'm such a bundle of energy I've been able to make it less of a drag in their eyes and many of them have come around. If only I could get them over this homework barrier. Sadly, this position is only until the end of the year, and in the fall I will be moving to the other end of the building to each 8th grade math again. This makes me really sad because this is the perfect position for me, and my administrators/colleagues have frequently told me how pleased they are with how I've approached things. Traditionally, this class has been a workbook class. PASS! 

Since my last update (details on all in later posts):

In 6th grade:

• We wrote expressions relevant to our lives regarding our family sizes, ages, birthdays, etc.
• We created various graphs to show data about US presidents including their ages, when they died, length of term, number of children, etc

In 7th grade:

• We bought cars and homes, got jobs, got married, and started families (what!?)
• We took our significant others on dates to Chili's
• We designed our own zoos, drawn to scale

In 8th grade:

• We made a giant clothes line to compare and order real numbers and estimate irrational numbers 

• Designed our own album covers and wrote lyrics for math songs

I am loving these 21st Century Math Projects. They're awesome for the type of classroom I'm in. I'd love to continue using them next year, but it's much easier to implement when your biggest class is only 11 and you aren't the only math teacher responsible for their success. They're a little on the pricy side, but super engaging. LOVE!

In other news, I've been nominated for a Liebster, but I'll have to blog about that later.