Day 152 MCAS Eve

6th Grade Math Standards: All of them

The Learning Objective: Reach your potential on the MCAS

Quote of the Day: "Everyday there are more than 3 billion people living on less than $3 per day." - from Burn Your Goals

Agenda:

1. Review the MCAS Simulation
2. Do a TurningPoint that involved 4 questions (outlined in the assessment)
3. Read The Little Engine that Could
4. Vocabulary Game (Celebrity) 
5. MCAS Pep Rally

The Assessment: The turning point asked students to find what was not true about 5x + 3

A) 5 was the coefficient
B) It was an algebraic expression
C) There were two terms
D) It was equivalent to 8x --> Around 50% of students picked this one

Students were also asked to find what two numbers were relatively prime. They had not seen this concept before, but it is in the standards. In two classes, zero percent answered it correct. I gave them another question after going over the results. The average after this second question was right around 80%. Guess I'll have to live with that.

Finally I asked what the formula for a trapezoid is and gave students an option that said they could find it on the MCAS reference sheet. This was clearly me teaching to the test with one day until the test.

Glass Half-Full Take: Every year we do a pep rally to get the students fired up about taking MCAS and lower their anxiety about the test. We showed this video of our teachers and students dancing and danced live on stage as our Title I teacher pretended to be Bruno Mars. Another of our teachers through on some old school sons (This is How We Do It) and the students waived their hands. Students had great energy and everyone enjoyed themselves.

One Regret: In my hardest class to manage I could have had a "timeout" during the vocab game to make sure everyone was playing the right way and doing what they needed to do. In the groups that I started out with playing, they flourished and got the most out of the activity. Other groups that did not have much direction were unmotivated and unproductive. This is an excellent engaging game that I have used countless times over the years and I would say 90% of the students really get into it. The classroom management portion of it in this particular class was more challenging than I was used to dealing with in years past.

Link of the Day: It is not enlightening to know that if parents do not have a high education it has an averse effect on their children. I was a little surprised to see the extent of this though. See the chart on the attachment on page 88.