Radical Clock Makeover

Well, today was the last Saturday School of the semester.   And, it was my most productive Saturday School yet.  When I agreed to supervise Saturday School, I was pretty excited that I would be getting paid to do work that I would normally be doing on Saturdays, anyway.  Well, that and supervising students who needed to make up absences.  Keeping teenagers busy who don’t want to be there and don’t have anything to work on is a full-time job, however. 

Today, while they were busy with word searches, books to read, essays to write, math questions to solve, and coloring sheets to keep them busy, I got caught up on all of my grading!

I even had time to transform my classroom clock.  This was inspired by a pin uploaded by Bethany Pearson.  When we get back from Christmas Break, my Algebra 1 students will be starting to study exponents and radicals.  I thought this would be a fun way to preview the topic of radicals.  It even sparked a great conversation in Saturday School.  One student said that it was easy to figure out what number it was because you just divided by two.  Some other students quickly jumped in the conversation to correct him.

  I’m so excited to see my students’ reactions to my radical clock on Monday!

I replaced each number with a sticky note whose square root will simplify to the correct number on the clock.

Another exciting piece of news: my manual pencil sharpener is back in action!  A few weeks ago, the handle to my pencil sharpener went missing.  I assumed it had been stolen.  It wouldn’t be the first time a student has stolen something from my classroom.  Earlier this year, I had a student steal a bell off of my desk.  When a student told me who stole it, I tracked down the student, and the gave it back to me.  But, a few days later, it disappeared again.  Months later, it has still not
returned. 

Anyway…back to the pencil sharpener.  A student went to use it today, and he immediately started questioning me about why the pencil sharpener wouldn’t work.  I told him that someone had stolen the handle, and he would have to use the electric pencil sharpener instead.  For some reason, he proceeded to take apart the manual pencil sharpener.  Inside the part of the sharpener that usually holds the pencil shavings, he found the missing handle.  Now, why in the world would someone feel the need to dismantle my pencil sharpener and hide part of it inside it?  Oh well, I’m just happy to have it back in service.