A Day in the Life

One of the blogging challenges this week is "A Day in the Life."

I LOVE reading about the days other teacher's have. I like seeing how different other schedules are and but how everything is basically the same. I tried to be as detailed as possible. Enjoy!

Wednesday January 13

6:00--Alarm goes off. For the first time. I am one of those, hit the snooze button.
6:09--Alarm goes off. Hit Snooze
6:18--Alarm goes off. Turn it off. I lay in bed a check email and convince myself it is time to move.
6:23--I actually get out of bed. My husband is out of town, so I have the bathroom all to myself.
6:45--Wake up my daughter. She is cranky in the mornings and doesn't like waking up so early. Who does?
7:00--Take out the trash and leave the house.
7:03--Drop off daughter at day care
7:35--Arrive at work. I am not a fan of the commute, but it does allow me to listen to books or podcasts. This morning, I am listening to "Dad is Fat" by Jim Gaffigan.
7:37--Enter classroom, set stuff down. Finish a letter to my Destination Imagination students and parents about future practice dates.
7:50--Head to break room to put away lunch, make oatmeal for breakfast, fill up water cup.
8:00--Students are dismissed to classes at 8am for early start. It is my week for duty for my team. Students work on homework or work on iLearn during this time.
8:30--Most of the buses have arrived and my team mates come pick up their homeroom students.
8:40--Announcements
8:45--School officially starts.
8:45-10:20--Advanced 6th grade math. We do Daily Math Review, we have a lesson where I introduce ratios, and we do some guided math/stations.

10:20-11:00--Next class. 6th grade math. This class is broken up by lunch. We do basically the same outline as the previous class.
11:00--Lunch. I do not work during lunch. I eat in the break room. My group of lunch teachers is not a negative bunch, so no need to avoid the break room!
11:30--Pick up class and continue math class.
11:30-12:45 Finish 2nd lunch period
12:45-1:55--Third class. 6th grade math. Similar schedule. With this class, I save Daily Math Review (the warm up) for the very end of the day. It calms them down after coming back from PE.
2:00-3:10 Fine Arts/PE for students Conference for me.

Conference--No official meetings today. I copy the Destination Imagination letter for my teams. Copy some stations for guided math. I respond to emails, I attempt to clean off my desk a little bit--it doesn't stay clean for long. I meet with my math team to plan a tentative schedule for everything we need to cover during our ratio and proportion unit. I check my box.

3:10--Pick up my students from Fine Arts PE.
3:15-3:45--Second part of third period. This is the hardest part of the day. Students are hyper from FAPE and think the day is over.
3:45--dismissal starts. We dismiss students from our rooms. Car riders and walkers leave first. Then buses are dismissed one at time as they arrive. Usually all the buses are gone by 4:30. Since I have early duty this week, I send my students to my team mates team at 4. A normal day, I would go home. But...
4:00--Destination Imagination practice starts. It is a competition for all grade levels where students solve a challenge and present it on competition day.
5:00--Practice Over. Kids leave. I leave
5:10--Stop at grocery store.
5:45--Pick up daughter.
5:50--Arrive at Home.
6:00-8:30--Eat dinner. Watch Frozen (daughter's current favorite movie). Play with daughter. Ignore the cleaning I should do. Shower.
8:30--Put daughter to bed. She only lets me put her to bed when my husband is not home. If he is, I am not allowed to put her to bed, only Daddy can.
8:40--Sit in the dark and read on my ipad until I am sure my daughter is asleep and I can turn on the TV.
8:50-10:30--Watch Netflix/Hulu. Tonight I watch Superstore on Hulu and Bones on Netflix. As I watch TV, I am working on lesson plans. I make some ratio notes for my students. Research activities for equivalent ratios. I am moving really slow tonight, so it takes me forever to make the notes.

Around 10:30, my husband comes home. I check on my daughter, read a bit in bed and go to sleep around 11. 

100 Minutes to Teach Math!

I have three math classes and each class lasts 100 minutes. It is a ridiculously long time to teach math compared to 50 minutes, but I fill every minute of every class period. I do not know how I could fit everything into a shorter amount of time.

Not every 6th grader loves doing math for 100 minutes. I have to break up the class period with several activities to keep their interest. 

Time	Activity
15 minutes	Daily Math Review Consists of 4 computation-only problems. The students practice the same types of problem every day for 2 weeks and then they take a quiz. After students work in groups, we grade it together. This week, students are working on integer operations, exponents, and ordering rational numbers.
30 minutes	Whole Group Instruction Introduce topics, do whole group activities, add to the interactive math notebook This is not always direct instruction. Whole group instruction looks different every day. Students may learn about manipulatives (most recently Algebra Tiles). They may also work together to come up with their own rules for the math they are learning.
45 minutes	Math Stations & Small Group Instruction Students work in heterogeneous groups working on fact fluency, iLearn (a math website that all my students have an account to), and practice skills learned in previous weeks with games, task cards, stations, etc. While students work, I pull homogeneous groups to work on the new skill introduced in whole group instruction. I have 5-6 groups per class that I pull depending on the class and how much time I have to pull them all. We do 2-3 rotations in 45 minutes.
10 minutes	Exit Ticket Practice problems, writing in mathematics, Plickers questions… it varies.

This would be on a normal day. Of course everyday is not perfect. Some days there are tests, or pictures, or field trips. Someday I don't do whole group instruction at all and just do small group instruction. 

Because we spend so much time every day doing math, I don't give a whole lot of homework. Maybe one homework assignment a week, and usually not problems. I like to assign mini-project that students would actually want to do and where they can use their own creativity.