Math Mondays: Summer School

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In my first year teaching, I pretty much took whatever was offered.  For me that was teaching secondary social studies, science, and PE.  I had no major plans (or money) to travel in the summer, so I applied to teach in a program for disadvantaged youth.  The subject: Math.  

 Math was always my strength as a student, so I was happy to teach it, especially in a program focused on catching students up.  These were the kids I got into teaching to work with.  I was so excited to get placed in the program.  I was tasked with teaching a year of pre-Algebra in 8 intensive weeks.  It was math all day long.  

 My first week was not disastrous but it was LONG.  Filling a whole day with math work was mentally exhausting on the students.  I realized by the third day that it was time to get creative.  That first weekend I looked at all my topics and decided that we could cover a lot of the material through projects and reinforcement of concepts.  It was in this program that I started developing projects that integrated art and real-world applications.  We designed rooms and played with tessellations.  And while some days were still long, they mostly were fun, and I was so proud of the hard work my students put in.

 I continued to teach math for multiple summers after that despite teaching history all year long.  In both I discovered the joy of getting creative in working with students to create student-centered learning.   

 Check out the other creative summer school teaching ideas from fellow teacher bloggers in the links below.

 Math Mondays is a weekly post sharing tips, ideas, resources, and products for teaching math.  If you have questions or think there is something I should share, you can leave me a message on Facebook or at the store in the question and answer section.

 

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