Five Fives

Just like last year, my IB junior class meets every day for an hour and a half.  At the end of a full five days of classes, their brains are filled to capacity so I try to reserve half an hour for "Friday Funday"/"Fun Friday" (there's some debate about what to call it).

Last year with 10 students we played games such as Mafia, Psychiatrist, and Three on a Couch.  Some of those games don't work as well with 17 students, so I need to come up with some new ideas.  Out of desperation last Friday, I wrote the numbers 0-20 on the board and asked them to create each number using exactly five 5s.  They could use any mathematical operation but no other numbers and each of the numbers 0-20 could only be created once.

I didn't know if they would be interested, particularly because I didn't have any prizes for the person who made the most numbers.  However, as soon as I said "go" they started racing to the board to claim the "easy" numbers.  They never got frustrated on the tough numbers (like 17) and finished 0-20 with ten minutes to spare.  I suggested they work on 21-30 but figured they would be bored by now.  Nope - they finished those numbers too and even requested to work on four 4s sometime!  These kids genuinely love math and watching their faces light up when then solve a problem (even ones as simple as these) is one of my greatest joys this year.

Note: I've had some questions about my 1990 outfit in the last post.  I was wearing my exercise pants, so those weird streaks on my legs are from the flash hitting the reflectors!

Resurrecting My Blog

So...we're two weeks from the end of the first quarter and I'm just now writing my first blog entry!  It's been a busy and tough year so far (details to follow) and I haven't felt much like thinking about school in my spare time.  But a combination of the high spirits induced by the start of a three-day weekend and the nagging of some faithful readers led me to finally get on here and write something.

I thought I'd start by sharing some photos of me from Homecoming Spirit Week.  These costumes aren't quite up to the level of the Mullenator, but they're still pretty good/embarrassing.  Every day that week my students starting laughing at me when they walked in the room, so I think that's a sign of success.

Decade Day - If only I had been able to find a scrunchie and my old globe earrings, I would have looked exactly the same as I did in 1990.

Teacher-Student Swap Day - The teachers got way more into this one than the students.  The teens dressed as gym teachers so that they could wear sweats.  We raided the lost and found, borrowed clothes from our students, and wrote ourselves fake shoe passes for not having the correct uniform shoes.

My favorite part of the day was accidentally sneaking up on students who would jump out of their skin when they realized that the person standing behind them was a teacher and not a student!