10/09/08

Today I had looked over the speed tests that I give to the 6th graders as well as their homework and I love the comments they make on their homework and quizzes. Well, a few weeks back I was teaching multiplication with three and four digits and one of the lessons taught how you can check your answers by “casting out 9’s”. I along with many other teachers have skipped this because though it is a method of teaching the students how to check their work, it is not the most efficient at all. Further, the reasoning behind it is one that you cannot really teach to a 6th grade class, but something you have to tell them to just memorize and trust you on which doesn’t work well since most of my students want to understand. In any case, I have covered much easier and more efficient ways for them to check their answers so I have told them that if a problem tells them to multiply two numbers and then to check their work by casting out 9’s, that they are to skip that portion of the problem. Some of the students must not have heard that instruction as I learned by reading a few of my student’s comments. Today, I was looking over their homework and had to laugh at one of the student’s notes. Next to problem number 6 it read, “Dr. Drug, you did not teach us how to do this.” I was cracking up when I read this. As some of you know, the students call the teachers by their first name, so my students call me Mr. Doug. I thought I had spelled it for them, but I guess not so I’ll have to be sure to teach them the correct spelling. I am not Mr. Dang nor Dr. Drug. Though, if I had been diligent in teaching them how to spell my name, then I wouldn’t have these funny papers to grade!

After school, I got home and started doing some things around the house when I noticed the power went out. It had gone out the day before as I believe someone was checking the engine. Just a routine maintenance check to be sure that everything was working properly. So, today I thought that it had gone out for the same reason. It turns out that the generator had burned up again as some of the wires inside had scraped the outer edge of the cylinder that they are spinning inside. So, needless to say, we lost power and most likely will not have it for a few days. It isn’t that bad now though as I feel like I am fairly prepared for this since we have quite a bit of experience with losing power.