Math Mondays: Summer School
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.
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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