Today I am proud all around. It's a good day. It's a Friday. We have Hiller Day today. (We are Hopkinton Hillers). It means students have a late start and teacher work. But, today were the underclassmen awards and my son, a junior, received one. We get a letter inviting us to the ceremony at 7:15 am but we don't know what award he is to receive. He received the English award. I am so proud.
There were about 150 kids in attendance and I have had a lot of them as students (since I live and teach in the same town.) I was so proud of them all. It was great to sit there as an audience member and know most of them by name or at least by face and then get to put a name to their face. It was fun to see siblings that have graduated come back to support their winning younger siblings. I am in my 13th year of teaching, so I do have siblings. Fun to see the resemblance in them. I see a girl walking to school each day, now I know her name. It is great to find out what areas the kids excel in whether it be robotics or wellness or art, etc. I am proud of all of them.
Today, I had three geometry classes. Yesterday's lesson introduced them to graphing sine and cosine. We "unwound" the unit circle and graphed it on the coordinate plane to discover the shape of the graph and discussed them. I talked about properties and transformations. It was too much and a little overwhelming for them to process, so there was not much success on the homework. When I checked it, they all just looked like random squiggles with no labels on the x-axis. Today's lesson was supposed to be about writing the equations of the graphs, so I made adjustments. I went through two problems on the homework to show them how to pull apart the properties and use them step by step to graph it. Then, I gave them a worksheet that asked for the properties and the graph. They were starting to see it better now. I knew that taking the time for them to better understand this direction - equation to graph, they would hopefully more easily be able to go in the other direction graph to equation, so it was worth the time and adjustment to practice.
My third class of geometry was during lunch block which is right in the middle of class. They were just starting to get in the groove and when lunch time came, they asked if they could stay! - On a Friday - to graph sine and cosine. I told them they could but reminded them they could go to lunch and refuel and come back and continue. That is what they did.
I let them work for a bit longer and they were building their understanding and making the connections! Then, I had 3 problems I was going to have them do on the board in #VNPS and #vrg but due to time, I just read the problems. They struggled with the first, used that to figure out the second, and found success with the third and most challenging one.
We usually do an ALLA after lunch (After Lunch Learning Activity) and I didn't want to give them up, so I built the time in. We played the game Cover Up from Sarah's website which she got from Frank Tapson. I had all the supplies and figured I would give it a try. What a simple yet fun game. I asked some if they had anything they would do differently after the game - taking strategy. I wish we had time to play it twice. Check it out here: COVER UP.
Here's a picture of the kids playing:
And, finally, tonight is our Relay for Life. Ours is run by high schoolers and consists mostly of middle and high school participants. They are top fundraisers in New England and do an amazing job. I am proud to have been part of the committee for 13 years since it started. This year they asked me to speak at the Survivor dinner (my mom beat thyroid cancer). They have raised close to $100,000 already and the event hasn't even happened. I am so proud of all their hard work in raising money and awareness to fight cancer. They are awesome!
It's going to be a long day but I hope the goodness continues.
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