Prime City

Today I'm taking you out of my running world and back into my school world.  If you have children in your household who are currently in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade in Massachusetts, you may be interested in this.  For those of you who don't, you might not be as on top of the current educational goings-on in this state, so you might not be too interested in this first part, but I promise I'll make the end more exciting.  So you can always scroll down to the photos and reverse read your way up if you want.  I know that's an awful writing technique but I've already committed to it, so here we are.
This year in my city, we've decided to forgo the MCAS test in favor of the PARCC test.  There's a million reasons behind that decision, none of which I'm going to talk about right now.  But for those of you who are in a city/town who is opting into PARCC for the year, you may have realized that this test is HARD.  Believe me when I tell you I don't say that lightly.  The other day, I got a practice test that PARCC has released to the public, and brought it home to try out.  I figured if we were going to require these students to take this test in 90 minutes or less and solve every problem, I should find out if that was realistic.  As a highly-educated, well-informed, licensed elementary school teacher, the 17 questions on Unit 1 took me a total of 74 minutes to complete.  Think about this for just one second.  I know how to read in English, I can decipher questions and understand what problems are asking for even if there's more than one step, or the steps aren't explicit in the problem.  I also know how to do regular old multi-digit multiplication and long division.  Keep in mind that many of my students are not FLUENTLY SPEAKING English yet, do not necessarily read on a 4th grade level yet, and have never learned how to do long division.  (That's because it's a standard not taught in 4th grade, and it's not really a key point, but I figured I'd add it in.) To ask these poor children to take a test in 90 minutes, I feel, is setting unrealistic expectations on these students and asking them to fail from the beginning.  Look at it this way.  The MTEL has a 4 hour time limit for 100 multiple choice questions and two open-response questions.  Yet, I know plenty of adults who have caved under the pressure, not finished in time, or completely blown the test because they were too worried about the time limits.  If adults have a hard time with it, why are we putting a 90 minute time limit on a test for a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds?  It just doesn't seem fair to me.  I'm fine with the actual test, and I do think many of my students could do the actual math part, it's the reading and the time limit that are going to get in the way.  Imagine you moved to Russia and two years after being there, someone handed you a math test in Russian and told you that you had 90 minutes to take and pass the whole thing.  If that sounds crazy, just remember that many times, this is what we're being forced to ask our students to do.  Just so you can get a feel for it, here's a released PARCC test question from a previous test.

Use the information provided to answer Part A and Part B for question 3. The number of science fair projects entered for each grade in a city-wide science fair is shown. 
 City-Wide Science Fair 

   Grade    Number of Science Fair Projects
           3    462
           4    759
           5    891
Part A
The science fair projects are set up on tables. There are 99 long tables used. Each long table holds 7 projects. The rest of the projects are set up on short tables. Each short table can hold 4 projects. What is the fewest number of short tables that will be needed for the rest of the projects?
        A) 202
        B) 203
        C) 354
        D) 355

Part B
The science fair judges will be science teachers and volunteers. Each judge will only have time to view 5 science fair projects. There are 133 science teachers. What is the fewest number of volunteers needed to have enough judges for all of the projects?
       A) 290
       B) 396
       C) 422
       D) 423

Please take a moment and actually read that test question.  It's a hard question to break down, and while I'm sure my students COULD do it, I don't think they could do it in the time allotted, which I think is the real problem.  We keep talking about getting these kids college ready, but at this point, I don't even know if ANY of my students will be able to afford college when the time comes. So I'm glad we're working on improving our countries skills in STEM subjects, but I truly feel that this 90 minute time window is unfair and needs to be removed if we want these students to REALLY succeed.

Moving on from PARCC though, in a brighter spot, I've been reviewing some topics with a very small group of fourth graders at the end of the day.  These are the students that are currently not passing, but could be, if they had that extra help, so I'm revisiting some former standards to really help drive the concepts home.  The first standard we revisited was prime and composite numbers. I noticed that these students could list factors and multiples, but couldn't tell the difference between prime and composite numbers.  So for the past two days, we've focused solely on prime numbers.  Yesterday we built Prime City, an idea I came up with in the shower one morning.  Each student got a few pieces of long construction paper and bunch of small squares.  I wrote this note on the board and we got right to work.  If you can't read it, it says: Prime City.  Prime City is under construction. The construction workers are putting windows on the buildings today.  Each building can only have a prime number for the number of windows.  Help finish Prime City by putting windows on the buildings.  
The students got their construction paper and a glue stick and worked on putting windows on their buildings. They had to tell me what number each building represented and why it was a prime number.  If they couldn't tell me, they couldn't use that number. The group had a lot of fun doing this, and the cities came out awesome.  Today, to reinforce the concept, they played Prime Number Match.  This is something I came up with a lunch today and figured I might as well go with it.  It's similar to Memory, but they only keep the match if both numbers are prime.  In order to prove that their match was prime, they had to list all the factors of both numbers on a separate sheet of paper and label prime or composite.  By the end, only one student had managed to match two prime numbers, but they were having fun playing and were doing a great job of listing the factors.  I'm very interested to see how their homework comes back tomorrow, to see who really did learn the concept of prime numbers after all of this.
 Here are the pictures of Prime City and the rules for Prime Number Match, if you're interested in that.

Ok, now that we're done with that educational stuff, here's the running stuff for everyone who reads this for that.  Sorry I left it for the end, I just had to get that PARCC stuff out of the way.  Here we go.  Yesterday I did 3 miles of sprints and hill repeats on the treadmill and then did a 10 minute ab workout at home, followed by stretching.  Today I did another 3 regular miles on the treadmill, 2 flat and one at 2.0 incline.  It doesn't seem like a lot, but man, running on that treadmill at my typical outdoor pace is really a struggle.  I made it through the first mile at an 8:34 no problem and by 1.2 it was a real struggle to continue. It's just so easy to stop and jump off, since I'm not going anywhere.  I think the biggest difference is that when I'm outside, even if I stop, I still have to get back to where I started from, so eventually I have to keep moving.  Inside, I'm not actually going anywhere, so I end up stopping all the time, because, you know, whatever.  Bad habit? Definitely.  Fixable? Who knows, I've tried many times, it probably is, I'm just real bad at actually fixing it.  So, that's my running for the week so far.  I'm going to try and get 5 or 6 in tomorrow since it's supposed to be warm/rainy.  Friday I have the Disney in Concert show with my mom at night, so I'll probably skip the running and just do a regular workout instead.  But, I do need some help deciding which shoes to wear on Friday night, so leave your opinion below, after you check out both options.

Planking in the bedroom.  I never realize how much harder it is to plank in bare-feet until I do it in shoes.  (I always do my boxing workout barefoot, which includes the ab session at the end.) Hip raises/bridges are also much easier with shoes on, for the record.

OK: Shoe Choice Time

A: Mickey and Minnie Themed shoes

B: Little Mermaid Themed Shoes

I patiently await your answers.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading, even if you did scroll down and work your way backwards!

Snow place like home

Whooooeee it has been a long week or two.  Honestly, the days have all but blended together with all the snowstorms and school cancellations.  February has never seemed shorter, and that's saying a lot, since it's already the shortest month!  Seriously though, if the snow could quit, I'd be a little bit happier.  There's pretty much no place left to walk, park, or drive if another car is coming at you.  It's getting out of hand.  Yet, we are intrepid, we carry on.  What else can you do, with all this snow around and talk of another storm or two heading this way? The good news is, it's almost February vacation.  The bad news is, it's almost February vacation.  I make this next statement with the knowledge that teachers in the state of Massachusetts will be calling for my head, but it's about time we did away with February vacation.  Let's be honest, we just got back from Winter Break, and with the SEVEN snow days we've had in the past 15 days, this vacation is a bit of a joke.  What the students could really use is 5 more days of work.  Besides, we're one of the only states that still has this vacation hanging about.  I say scrap it, start school earlier than the Wednesday before Labor Day, and use March for Spring break.  It would solve SO many problems. But, who am I to change things?  Alright, aside from the snow days, there's no where to run, so I've been spending a lot of quality time with the treadmill.  I don't love it.  Also due to the snow, I missed 4 days of being able to workout.  I know, that's insane! At this point though I've made it up and I feel like I'm back on track.  Wouldn't you know it, that means I'm getting a cold.  I can feel it coming on.  My nose is stuffy/runny, my eyes are itchy, and things hurt.  Fantastic.  Nothing like a good cold to start vacation. Since I don't have a new goal in the near future, I decided to work towards upping my punches at boxing.  I started low today with a total of just over 3000 punches. My goal is to try and add on at least 100 more punches each week.  I only need to track one day, but I might track all and just pick my best.  Except Sunday's because that's a 12 round class and that would feel like cheating.
Completely out of the realm of working out, but back on the snow day thing, I made one final pair of shoes a couple of weeks ago.  I went Little Mermaid themed, just to see how it worked out,  They came out alright, but I'm not sure I love them.  However, I did want to try and fix the paint chipping problem I had on the first pair.  The paint on the rubber part of the sole chipped off as they were worn around, so I wanted to try and fix that.  I saw a trick online that if you sand the rubber with fine grain sandpaper it makes the paint more likely to absorb into the rubber, so I tried that.  It looks like the paint held up a bit better, but still chipped off in places.  At this point, I'm beginning to think it's the sealant that's chipping it off, not the actual paint.  Anyways, I'll add a picture of those in a minute.  Finally, the students at my school are number one in the city for the math program we've been doing.  Yes, that's right, number one! We're third in the state, and in the top 100 in the nation! There are some days when I feel like I'm doing a real bad job teaching, but learning this made me feel like I must be doing something right.  I'm very proud of the school and I love being able to brag about the students.  Tomorrow they're getting a special award from the school committee, which is very exciting.  So, that's it, snow city in a nutshell. Enjoy the pictures!

Punch counters

Icicles and ice dams 

Way to go Tracy School!

Snow pile...it's gotten a lot bigger since this picture

Too many snow days

Being snowed in and not having to work really is not as fun as it sounds.  I promise.  To start, now we're behind 3 more days in school.  Add that to the other reasons why we might not be on track with the curriculum mapping and suddenly we're a month behind where we're supposed to be.  In some jobs, this might not be a huge deal.  Maybe you can make it up, work a little extra, push some papers through, I don't know, I'm not a doctor.  What I do know is that my 3 - 5 grade students still have to take the district benchmark test in February.  And everyone has to take the MCAS in March and May.  So, even though we may be behind, our tests are not.  Now we're in that tricky spot where we have to decide, do we push through the topics to make sure we at least cover everything on the test, but leave more than half the class behind in terms of actually understanding, or do we keep our pace and miss covering material that shows up? Don't worry though, we'll get to make up these missed days in June.  At the end of the year.  After all the tests.  Please, tell me how much sense that makes, because I'm still not seeing it.  I'd rather give up February vacation and be able to keep the kids on track to success, than have to struggle through the end of June trying to find reasons to convince the students that what we're doing still matters.
Ok, enough about that.  Since there's absolutely no where to walk outside, that means no running either.  :( Suddenly the treadmill is my best friend.  Yesterday I got in 5 miles, yes 5, with speed included.  Today I did 3.1 with hills and speed.  I still haven't decided about the Hyannis marathon either.  I know I should probably do it, but I don't want to sign up.
Since I've been bored out of my mind after being home for the past few days, I decided to make another pair of shoes.  I mostly liked the way the first pair came out, and I wanted to try a new design.  So I went out and got another pair of cheap white canvas sneakers to design.  This pair came from H&M, so I'm not really sure how comfortable they'll be, but I really think they came out cute.  Without further ado....

Oh yea, and I finally achieved my goal of drawing a Disney Princess in way that actually looks like a Disney Princess!

Oh, and just in case you didn't believe me about the snow levels. Ignore my face, I can't smile in the cold after I wash my face apparently....

STELLAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Yup. This is my backyard. That's a fence over in the far left.

Snow day 2015

Today there was a blizzard.  It would have been a more beautiful blizzard if we had a snow blower.  But since we just have shovels, it was just a disgusting, horrendous, snowy mess.  Even the dogs were not impressed.  About an hour ago I was pretty sure it stopped snowing and I was happy that we at least got our driveway plowed out and moved the cars around a little bit. However, I've just looked outside and there seems to be more snow falling. UGH.  Since everything in life was shut down today, there was really nothing to do but sit inside and craft.  I mean, I shoveled a bit, helped walk the dogs, and made chili, but aside from that, there was nothing to do but craft.  So a few weeks ago I bought a pair of plain white shoes to paint, just to try something new.  It took me forever to decide what to put on them, but I finally did it today.  I'm not really sure how I feel about the final product.  Personally, I think it looks too amateur.  Ok, I know I'm not a professional designer/artist, but I just don't love the way they look.  I don't hate it, I just don't love it.  I feel like maybe sharpie would have been a better choice than paint.  Anyways, I guess I'll let you be the judge on this one.  And on an unrelated note, I'm fairly certain running outside is out for the next few weeks.  There's no getting over this snow.  Looks like I better learn to love the treadmill, and fast!