Lessons With Coffee

Dear friends and readers I have some wonderfully fantastic news. My girls increased their multiplication fact fluency from 18 percent measured on February 17th, to 88.3% (and yes....they deserve that dang .3 percent!!!) on Friday March 28th! As it stands now the boys have a final total of 64.6% (they also deserve the .6% ☺ ) I am so dang proud of them.  All of them.  Even the boys.  hehehe It started in 2nd hour.  2 hour is my co-taught special education class.  I have 37 girls in there 15 of them have ieps and 9 504 plans.  Ironically the rest of the girls are all labeled GT.  It is one of the most difficult sets of students that I have ever had to differentiate for!  The girls came in on Friday ready to take the test...ready to kick the boys butts.  I asked if they wanted me to explain the homework first or if they wanted to take the test.  THEY ALL SAID TAKE THE TEST. Three minutes on the clock. Pencils up.... 3.....

And that sucks. If you have read my blog you know that this year I teach 3 classes of just 6th grade girls and 2 classes of just 7th grade boys and one class of just 8th grade boys.   We are a gender segregated school. Anyway.  We also have TERRIBLE test scores.  Our scores are so bad, the students that are placed in the "advanced" classes...are students who are scoring at proficient. It is pretty bad.  I would say of my seventy-two 6th graders, maybe 12 are really proficient at their multiplication facts. I watch students skip count, I watch students make tally marks, I watch students make arrays.   As I start teaching students how to simplify expressions using the distributive property, I am looking at these children and wondering how are you going to factor binomials if you have to count on your hands 9x5?!?!?!?!?!?!  I CAN NOT STAND lattice multiplication (this subject is sore, and worth it is own post), but for crying out loud I ...