It's been so nice to be on spring break this week! The weather's been absolutely gorgeous the past few days - it was even supposed to hit 84 today! The only downside that I can think of is that it'll make it even harder to go back to school next week. I heard someone at the park mention that they only had 38 days of school left, though, so it hopefully won't be too bad!
I've had 2 students e-mail me while we've been out, both basically begging for grades ("Is there anything I can do? I've worked so hard."). Blah blah blah. That drives me crazy! I feel bad for saying "No, it's over. Deal with it." But then again, I give an extra credit problem every week and both students did 1. Yes, that's one problem out of 8 or 9 possible at two points each. Now I'm not feeling so bad about being the curmudgeonly old math teacher. There are definitely times when I feel like I need to get a little more of
Kate Nowak in me! I can't imagine her having trouble saying no.
I have gotten some work done while I've been home (amazingly!). As this is our first year with the Algebra 2 book, I've been working hard just to stay a section ahead of them prep-wise. But on Tuesday and Wednesday I sat for a while and wrote up notes for the whole next chapter! All ready to print and copy. Woo hoo! Last year towards the end of the year I did powerpoints and typed up notes for the kids - I think I'll hit those topics after we get through our rational exponent stuff. So in all likelihood I'm done with Algebra 2 notes for the year! Now I just get to look forward to editing stuff next year. But that's much much much better than starting all over again!
I often tag stuff on
diigo or star posts in my google reader (If you don't use this, please check it out! It's amazing.) and then forget about them. Did I say often? Make that very often. Unfortunately, I typically find them just after completing the topic in class.
Sam Shah, though, just took the time to organize all of his finds on a specific page on his blog (using the "page" option? I'll have to check that) so that he has a list of topics and what he can use for each. Definitely a must-do this summer! I'm not looking forward to that process.... though it'll be fun to find all the neat stuff that I'd forgotten about!
