Farewell~

December 23rd was my last day of teaching 6th grade math! I have resigned from the DOE as of last month. I love all of my students and wish each and every last one of them the best in their educational careers, and with whomever their next math teacher will be. As I mentioned last post, and also evidenced by the insane amount of students who bum-rushed me (this includes 7th graders) on the last day, I've made a humongous impact on their learning as well as their lives. When the bell rang, over 30+ students came out of nowhere and were in my room yelling and shouting, each for a hug. I gave every last one of them a hug.

When I saw students literally cry and hug me, it made me realize just how much of an important part I was in their daily life. An entire year can pass, and they will never forget the experiences they shared with you! As a teacher, you realize that some students do not have any element of consistency in their life other than you. Just one moment with them can change their entire future, and it's almost like students need someone they can believe in. Perhaps they are level 1's, or level 2's, or 3's or 4's. But, a love for respecting oneself and each other, an inspiration to succeed in school, and a newfound love and appreciation for math...What number does that equate to? How can you quantify that? And I love each and every one of them.

I will continue to update this blog with math topics and any other videos/explanations that we covered in class before the year. Below are some of the well-wishes and farewells my students gave me along with some hilarious videos of my students trolling me!

The Impact of a Teacher

Readers! I can't get rid of them! And that's fine. Clearly they don't plan on getting rid of me anytime soon and it looks like we've found a place in each other's hearts. That lasts forever. It's amazing to see the impact I made on this cohort whom never stop short of entering my room (it's like a party!) to chat and kick it!

GCF Word Problems

It has been such a while since I've made a post! My nephews were victims of a major car accident days ago and are currently recovering.  I am also sick with the flu and wasn't able to teach yesterday.

We've been going over GCF word problems in class! Today I had students look at the following task from Illustrative Mathematics: Bake Sale Task


The idea is for students to gain the understanding that the cookies can be arranged into different numbers of bags based on the factors of the total number of cookies. Example:

48 Chocolate Chip Cookies can be arranged in the following ways:

 

Later students develop an understanding that if they are to arrange the vanilla wafers and the chocolate chip cookies into bags with the same amount of cookies in each bag and none left over, that the only way to do so would be by using common factors of 48 and 64.