Day 2: Where Does a 6th Graders Time Go?

Last year I was able to get to the syllabus, but this year we had picture day so classes were a little shorter and I was unable to get to the syllabus and the letter home from your fifth grade teacher. I would have had time to let the students start a letter and finish it at home, but the weekend was four days long, and asking for something from home under that premise is a recipe for disaster.

We went through the Procedures Recap jumpstart and I also had the students fill out information to help me get to know them better. In the information I had students fill out, I asked them the following questions:

I know it’s hard because everyday is different, but in a day, how often do you usually…. (circle one)

Play video games	0 Minutes	10 – 20 Minutes	20 Minutes – 1 Hour	1 – 2 hours	More than 2 hours
Watch Television (including YouTube and Internet based programs)	0 Minutes	10 – 20 Minutes	20 Minutes – 1 Hour	1 – 2 hours	More than 2 hours
Spend time on your phone	0 Minutes	10 – 20 Minutes	20 Minutes – 1 hour	1 – 2 hours	More than 2 hours
Exercise	0 Minutes	10 – 20 Minutes	20 Minutes – 1hour	1 -2 hours	More than 2 hours
Read a book for fun	0 Minutes	10 – 20 Minutes	20 Minutes – 1 hour	1 – 2 hours	More than 2 hours
Write for fun (can be a journal, a blog, etc. but texting does not count)	0 Minutes	10 – 20 Minutes	20 Minutes – 1 hour	1 – 2 hours	More than 2 hours

To account for the range of answers, I just took the middle number of the range (so 15 minutes for students that picked 10-20 minutes) and just wrote 120 minutes for the students that picked more than two hours. Here were the averages for each category in terms of minutes:

	Class 1	Class 2	Class 3
Video Games	48.82	42.81	11.25
Television/YouTube	67.94	65.83	54.71
Phone	51.18	47.22	40.88
Exercise	60.63	51.39	59.69
Reading	18.75	14.72	25.88
Writing	12.19	11.39	7.94

Now I should preface this by saying that if you add up the total minutes of Class 3 and Class 1 there is a huge difference in the amount of time. Perhaps class three is a class that is spending time with friends or doing activities that do not cover the six topics I listed, or more likely there is a little off in how these students perceive the time they spend in these activities. In any case, I'm going to take their responses at face value. My goal with all of this is basically to take the students from being observers to becoming creators. I think that by taking the time out of the first three we can put more into the last three.

Our culture as a whole is losing out on the potential for creativity at a time when creativity has never been more important and avenues to be creative have never been more available. The problem is that the vast majority of people are standing on the sidelines watching the game instead of playing in it. True not all of these students are walking into my classroom with a passion for mathematics and while I want to close the gap on their love for math what I really want them to walk out of my room with is a sense for what it means to be in flow or to have a purpose.

Regrets: I tried to review the syllabus in the five minutes that we had left over. It was awkward because by the time I had passed them out, we had time to read the first paragraph. Perhaps instead, what I could have done was do a little role play about retakes versus owning the grade you get in partners to introduce my grading policy. 

Link of the Day: Finland takes brilliant ideas from the United States and implements them nationwide. Unfortunately the U.S. does not take these same ideas according to Tim because the boards of education are driving decisions.