5:45 am - first alarm sounds off. It's definitely time to rise and shine. My morning routine is inevitable now. My feet hit the floor and the day starts.
6:05 am - second alarm sounds off. This is the just in case alarm - you know, the just in case you hit 'off' instead of 'snooze' on the first alarm, alarm. But by now I am up, dressed, downstairs and making my morning breakfast shake. I have perfected my morning routine so I can get out the door in 20 minutes, if needed.
6:15 am - I'm out the door and on my way to work. 11 miles and 15 minutes later, I'm there.
6:30 am - walk into my classroom and prepare for the day. My desk is peaceful.
7:05 am - the first bell rings and the kids are rushing off the bus. The day is in full swing now!
7:20 am - homeroom time. I'm running an intervention group with the help of some of my previous honor students who are looking for service hours and having another set of students staple a packet of papers together that we will need later this week. I love that my students love to help me out.
7:37 am - 1st period. Goes smoothly - finishing up our work on changing repeating decimals into fractions.
8:22 am - 2nd period. Planning. I'm in charge of archiving our homeroom intervention documentation for my team so that's always the first thing I do. Then it's a quick run to the office to check on my mailbox, followed by checking my emails and returning parent contacts. I have a parent teacher conference after school, so I pull together the grade sheet and student work for that as well. I look ahead at what's left on my to do list, and knock a few other small things off, such as cut the exit slips apart & get the documentation ready for my target groups for the on grade level class later today.
9:13 am - 3rd period. My honors kids come back, and work on practicing the skill of changing decimals to fractions. This time I throw some terminating decimals in there just to make sure they are attending to precision (Math Practice #6). With 10 minutes left to the period, we talk about the answers, and challenging questions. Homework is passed out/discussed.
10:04 am - 4th period begins. This is a double blocked class and will roll right into 5th period. We will stick together for a full 94 minutes (two 45 minute blocks, plus the 4 minutes given between the two blocks for the change of classes). We start with our daily warm-up (3 problems of mixed review) and then roll right into our topic. We are working on subtracting integers, so our first activity is designed to compare an addition problem with a similar subtraction problem. Through this comparison, students discover they can change the subtraction problems to be addition by adding the opposite of the second value. The 2nd activity is actually take subtraction problems and change them to addition problems before finding the value. Students worked independently first, then paired up, then the pairs, paired up making quads. Each quad then shared several items with the class during whole group discussion. Once finished we switched gears completely. My students have shown a lack of fraction concept understanding. At the 7th grade level, they should be fluently doing all operations with fractions so that when it comes time to have positive and negative fractions, they can build on previous understandings. However, that's not always the case. So with that, I am going back to basics, and I'm starting with changing mixed numbers and fractions (since mixed numbers can't be multiplied or divided) and vice-versa. Today was a pre-test day so I could collect data on who exactly needed to be in this target group. Those not needing this target group will be working on an extension project during the target group time. At this point, my desk, is somewhat of a mess.
11:41 am -6th period begins. I do the same thing with this group of student students as I did with the double block of students above, but at 12:27 we go outside for recess.
12:27 pm - 7th period it's recess. Nothing like a nice fall day, the sun is shining, its awesome. The kids (all 160 of them) are playing in the bus parking lot. Some are throwing the football, some are playing soccer, some are shooting hoops, while others are standing around just enjoying talking to one another.
12:41 pm - I blow the whistle, its time to line them up and go in for lunch. Everyone lines up with their 6th period teacher and like a heard of very loud cattle, we make our way from the bus lot to the cafeteria. I make my way through the office to check my mailbox again, head to the staff lounge to get my lunch out of the fridge, and head to my classroom where I have three students waiting for me. Even though this is my duty free time, students often come to my room at lunch for extra help. These three want help working on fixing their mistakes on last week's quiz. I have them sign in on an iPad using a QR code I created to keep track students who seek my help at lunch and excuse myself to the restroom while they are signing in. After all, if I don't go now, I have to wait until the buses leave! I help the students work on their recovery questions (mostly fractions... go figure!!) and sneak in a bite or two of my lunch while helping them.
1:13 pm - 8th period, the same students I had 6th period come back and we continue where we left off when we lined up for recess.
2:05 pm - dismissal - and just like that, they are headed back on their buses. Well, most of them anyway.... a few of them are making their way to my classroom because today is Tuesday. Tuesday is MathCounts day, so some students from 6th, 7th and 8th grade have chosen to stay after school and practice math in hopes of making our school competition team. Unfortunately, for me though... I'm double booked. I've got a parent teacher conference that I must attend, so my colleague makes her way over to my classroom and runs MathCounts until I can return.
2:07 pm - Parent teacher conference. It is really nice to have a partnership and be able to share success with parents as well as reach out for helpful strategies that may help gain even more success.
2:45 pm - I am able to return to MathCounts! Man these kids are fired up about math. I just love it. We work on solving a few more problems before heading out for parent pickup at 3:15. I can no longer find the surface of my desk...
3:33 pm - "Um, Mrs. Scheetz... How late can I stay? My dad forgot today was Tuesday.... he thought it was Monday" MathCounts student. "No worries, I've done that too. How long does dad need you to stay?" I replied. "Another 15 minutes or so" the student replied. "Well, sounds like you and I can go back to my room and start our homework". I said. And off we went - the student worked on his math homework, and I worked on finding my desk.
3:50 pm - "My dad is here!" The student exclaimed. "Well, let's go meet him" I replied as I got up. Met up with dad, and laughed a little with him, as joked how it has happened to me too. I returned to my room and worked. I got the materials ready for tomorrow, made my to-do list for tomorrow, cleared my desk of the items and filed them away where they needed to be and made sure that my today's to-do list was complete.
5:00 pm - I walk out my classroom door. It's been a long day, and I've stayed later than I wanted to, but I'm making the decision not to bring home anything to work on tonight. I have to grade a few recovery papers in the morning, and look over the work from MathCounts. But... I've put in a solid 10.5 hour day. So, I figured - eh, those can wait until tomorrow. And my peaceful desk awaits for my return.
