Today was the First Day of Freshman Academy. This is a program set up for eighth-grade-going-on-ninth-graders who are struggling with math to earn half a credit. They come all day for two weeks during the summer doing reading and math. If they come to the after-school program during the year, they get the other half credit.
Out of about 40 students, eight chose to come. Today, Day 1, five actually showed up. And of those five, three are supposedly leaving next week to stay on campus through an Upward Bound program. That leaves us with two students. Two. 2. Dos.
I doubt the administration wants to pay me to teach two students.
So. Last week I was all excited to create my lesson plans. I looked through my twitter favorites, researched the web, and created my little heart out. All to no avail.
The eighth grade teachers said the students need a lot of work on geometry and measurement. I decided to begin with some geometry powerpoints introducing some terms and definitions. Then I read some ideas and decided to have students construct a line, line segment, point, ray, angles, and polygons out of pretzel sticks, butter creme frosting, and dots.
Out of about 40 students, eight chose to come. Today, Day 1, five actually showed up. And of those five, three are supposedly leaving next week to stay on campus through an Upward Bound program. That leaves us with two students. Two. 2. Dos.
I doubt the administration wants to pay me to teach two students.
So. Last week I was all excited to create my lesson plans. I looked through my twitter favorites, researched the web, and created my little heart out. All to no avail.
The eighth grade teachers said the students need a lot of work on geometry and measurement. I decided to begin with some geometry powerpoints introducing some terms and definitions. Then I read some ideas and decided to have students construct a line, line segment, point, ray, angles, and polygons out of pretzel sticks, butter creme frosting, and dots.
The students hated it. They complained the whole time about the frosting being too sticky, their wax paper wasn't long enough, the dots were nasty, this was stupid, are we done yet, and that they would rather be doing book work. They asked 'Where is everybody else?' They were debating what lies to tell their parents so they wouldn't have to come back tomorrow. I was shocked. How could my idea fail so quickly?
My 17-going-on-I-know-everything sister told me they didn't like it because they aren't 5 and that is lame to do and that she also would rather have done book work. What?!? I'm sorry, even as a 23-year-old, playing with food always wins over worksheets!
On the up side, I introduced the students to Wordle and they prompty became obsessed with it. I had each student give me ten words that came to mind when they thought about math. We entered them in and created our positive, uplifting, encouraging word cloud.
I let the students create their own and they did names of their friends, family, hobbies, and whatever else they could think of about themselves. They seemed to enjoy it, although probably because it requires very little work and even less math.
I am slightly discouraged.
I think I've just had my first experience learning that creative does not necessarily mean engaging.
What does an activity require to make it engaging for students?
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