March 16's class

I just realized that I did not blog on my last class meeting!
I enjoyed this class because it gave us an opportunity to work in groups to explore real life situations and problems. I am always looking for real-world application problems for my class to explore, so that they can see that math does exist outside of my classroom!
The weather was beautiful and it was nice to get a chance to take advantage of one of the first warm spring days :)
I also had an opportunity to get on Sketchpad, something that I haven't done a whole lot this semester because I have favored LOGO.

Getting Back into the Swing of Things...

The past couple of weeks have been very hectic! Parent/teacher conferences went very smoothly, and I am relieved that they are behind me. Now comes the big push towards the end of the year. Normally this is the time of year where I let my hair down and try to incorporate some different things, but with one more round of ISTEP looming on the horizon, I don't feel as relaxed as usual.
Last week, of course, was our spring break. On the first Monday back, my kids are typically comatose, but today they have been wired! I am having a hard time keeping up with them! It feels as though it has been forever since I have been in front of a computer doing actual work :)
Mary and I did arrange a time to come into school over our spring break, though, so that we could get some work done for this class and Dr. Stump's class (that we are also in the process of wrapping up). It was nice to come in, relaxed and refreshed, to get some work done. Although we have a lot left to complete, we are making progress and it felt good to get some work accomplished.
No rest for the weary though, and it is time to get back to work!

ISTEP

Today was, thankfully, the last day of ISTEP. I think that it's safe to say that it has been an exhausting week for everyone. I feel so bad for the kids in my class. They have worked so hard to prepare for this round of testing, and it broke my heart to watch their faces as they started the test. It was far beyond anything that we had practiced in class, and the stress was visible on most of their faces.
As a teacher, I was blown away. I had to read many of the Math questions again to make sure that I understood them and, were I to have solved them, I would have needed scratch paper. Each question required 4-5 steps and appeared to assess multiple standards, making it difficult to track which standards the student had mastered and which ones they were deficient in. And that was only Monday!
Tuesday, Wednesday, and today's tests assessed English/Language Arts skills. Each test had a lot of reading and writing, amounting to over an hour a day. By the end of today's testing period, I was totally burnt out. I think that to say my students felt the same, would be the understatement of the century...
It was unlike any test I had ever seen before, and I am so thankful that it is behind us.

Spring Break Plans

I have an opportunity to go to Ohio for a visit over my spring break, so it appears that I will not be in class on March 23 after all.
It is not a beach and it probably won't be warm, but it is a much needed change of scenery :)