The past few months at school have been absolutely crazy, yet so rewarding! Our school recently slipped into an “F” position overall on our school report card due to EOG proficiency last year. Because of this, everyone has been working very hard to increase test scores and overall student performance! We’ve implemented new programs including Ram Time Remediation, After School Academy, and D.E.A.R. Time. All of these programs have required a lot of work from teachers, myself included, at our school. Because of this, I’ve gotten a little behind on my Kenan Fellows duties (oops!). However, I’m excited for what the new semester will bring!
After our [super short] Christmas break I now feel refreshed and rejuvenated! Tomorrow we start a brand new topic, which makes a great starting point for the new year. As I think about the weeks to come I look forward to all the mini challenges/PBL tasks I have planned for my students. Before we took our break I began teaching the basics of rates, ratios, and proportions (Lesson 1 of my KFP). Tomorrow we will start practicing plotting points on the coordinate grid because I’ve noticed that this is a major gap with my students. Learning how to utilize the coordinate plane will help tremendously as we move into proportional relationships, and as they get ready for 8th grade! My plan is to implement my lesson on Demand Flow Technology (Lesson 2 of my KFP) within the next few weeks as we cover proportional relationships. Through this lesson students will understand how manufacturing industries utilize DFT in order to decrease unit rate and increase production time. I’ve put a lot of thought into this lesson so I hope my students enjoy it!
The Kenan Fellow/Mentor partnership has been key throughout the process of developing my Kenan Fellows Product. I worked with many professionals this past summer including engineers, accountants, managers, and production line workers. One of the major projects I had while at Hyster-Yale was working on an actual lesson plan for HR to use as a training for employees on Demand Flow Technology. Working on this assignment was one of the many “ah-ha” moments I had during my internship because it all really clicked with my 7th grade math curriculum. Mary P was someone I spent a lot of time with and she was the one who gave me the assignment to create the lesson plan. We have been in contact recently and she has actually requested to come into my classroom to talk to my students about Demand Flow Technology! I’m hoping that we can work things out so that she can come visit us! Maybe we will be able to take a class field trip to HY soon too?!