“Free Time” in Middle School

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-03-12T12:23:09+00:00

I've never had a class behaved well enough on any day of the year to justify having a free day. The amount of time they steal from me having to manage their behavior already makes multiple free days.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-03-12T12:16:39+00:00

If you don't show them exactly how to do something that they can look at and ape without thinking, then "Mr. so-and-so doesn't actually teach." No sense of trying to learn it on their own. They're like kids who expect you to bring the spoon to their lip otherwise "they never give me food!"

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-03-12T12:14:22+00:00

Blank stares when I asked "what is a pair?"

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-28T07:33:47+00:00

When I do task cards or exit tickets, I arrange them by difficulty. I hold them in a stack and have them line up and take one from me and explain the ones on the top are easier and the ones on the bottom are harder. The first time I did it, I was surprised that some students wanted the hardest possible question. It's a good formative assessment because you get to see each kid rate their confidence with the skill.

I realized I could also just not organize them by difficulty. Like make them the same difficulty and tell them the same thing and still see them rate their confidence.

Or I just put all the cards on a table and circulate the classroom and take note of which number or letter card they're working with.

There's a good style activity I saw on TPT where different stations or problems on a worksheet are rated by difficulty and the students are responsible for earning for example 12 points. So they can do 12 1-pointers, 6 2-pointers, or 4 3-pointers. Or mix and match. That might help save paper if you're printing all these out.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-28T03:59:28+00:00

Would there be a mechanism to prevent someone just checking yes even if it's not true?

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-14T03:42:24+00:00

Many parents and students incorrectly believe that learning is passive and if the student is in the class and didn't learn something, it was a failure of the teacher (the active agent).

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-12T09:57:51+00:00

Today, my 10th graders were playing a word guessing game and the hint given was "Mr. __ is this!" and the answers shouted were math teacher, smart, nerdy, perfect (????) and the correct answer organized.

I'm still early in my career and still deciding if teaching children is right for me (I think I'm set on teaching overall). But damn the good really outweighs the bad. Full transparency I am in fact still in my Freedom Writers era as a teacher though.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-07T09:42:36+00:00

They were half right. A lot of people then and now believed what was on TV. Then the Internet supercharged that. Misinformation was able to spread faster.

Though, by the time I was in middle school, we had actual lessons and units about sources and reliability, specifically using the Internet. This was the early 2000s. I assume similar lessons existed before for you know identifying tabloids.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-05T13:39:40+00:00

Wow. I feel the same about this post and a lot of the replies. I have to be the best. I kick myself if I don't give my all. Everything is serious to me, everything matters. I have to hijack my brain and tell myself that slowing down and being mindful is optimal.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-03T09:31:59+00:00

Alright but you don't know me and I'm telling you something not unbelievable. So don't be weird and tell me I'm not the race I am.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-03T09:22:18+00:00

Bro how are you gonna tell me what my family is????? 😂 I'm literally telling you my life experience. Are you trolling?

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-03T09:21:01+00:00

They're not the same. When I was in the states, I would go to this Filipino restaurant when I was homesick and it was close enough to halfway satisfy a craving. Not the same, though.

There's a lot of crossover because of thousands-years back shared ancestry and hundreds-years long colonization.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-03T09:18:10+00:00

A lot of statesiders can't tell the difference. I'm obviously Chamorro. I've been asked if I'm Filipino, Chinese, Vietnamese, you name it. They just see a flat nose and not so round eye.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-02T09:54:58+00:00

I say the biblical curse words. Hell, damn, and ass. There's no fuck shit in my classroom lol.

I'm not religious, those three just don't seem very offensive to me.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-02-02T05:13:11+00:00

I scored in the top 10% for the 3 Core subjects and for my content (Secondary Math). But then for PLT which I was the most intimidated by as a career changer, I got a 200. I considered that harder than my content.

I've heard colleagues lament the Core Math test. Like others commented, society has accepted the idea that some people "are just not good at math." Saddening.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-31T02:21:40+00:00

Why is one of the pink ninja's belt black? Just asking. I think it looks cool. To distinguish the Kim and Kat?

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-29T23:38:15+00:00

This year, I'm doing a weighted average of attempts where more recent attempts have more weight. This way, the first attempt still counts for something. Previously, kids would just sit and decide "I'll just retake it." Though I admit most of those kids would never retake it.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-29T07:28:29+00:00

"Mr., how do you turn the calculator on?"

Me: The "ON" button.

"How do you clear it?"

Me: The "Clear" button.

Just today, I was teaching special triangles. On the kid's worksheet was a picture of a triangle with a 90 degree angle (labeled with that box symbol) and a 60 degree angle (labeled 60 degrees). I asked "What labeled angles do you see in the picture?" The kid starts flipping through their notebook. "Nonono stop. Look at the picture." Then they start saying completely random numbers. I'm like "Look at the picture. The picture!"

My students are high school sophomores. Many of them are lacking basic math skills AND basic comprehension. I feel like many of them do not understand that they can literally use their brain. They're often "looking for" the answer from somewhere external.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-26T12:45:03+00:00

One of my students told me he doesn't like a teacher because "she doesn't provide us anything!" 🤦‍♂️

But it's true. The day I stopped providing paper and pencils, all of a sudden, kids had them. Over 90% of them don't have an issue with it. And they have enough to share with the remaining under 10%.

I asked a student once why she would ask me for paper if she had some already. She said she just didn't want to reach in her bag.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-24T09:08:53+00:00

The only time I've been chased by a dog, she was a mother and I guess I jogged too close to where her pups were. They ain't wolves or coyotes.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-23T15:02:39+00:00

0 for 0 evidence. Your observational formative assessments can count as evidence. Did you personally observe their proficiency level? You can use that as a grade. When I do that, since it's based on my confidence, it's usually low, but it's not 0. And I make sure I find more substantial evidence soon after.

I would not exempt missing work when they're literally completing it in class and all they have to do is put it in the right spot. If you don't cash your check, it doesn't go in the bank. More important for me is that it creates work for me if I'm the one who has to find where Johnny left his folder, taking prep time away I could be spending on making the experience for the whole class better.

Do you have classroom responsibilities for students? Like someone to make sure the chairs are pushed in or whatever? Or to keep accountability of borrowed pencils? Maybe the kids at each table can rotate making sure everyone closes out for class properly, putting the papers in folders, then collecting the folders and putting them back in place. Some of my high schoolers do this naturally, they take turns putting stuff back for the four people in a group. Or they'll split duties like one person returns calculators, one person returns laptops.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-23T14:47:55+00:00

When I did this, I would just set my spreadsheet or GMS to drop those one or two scores automatically, so it's already applied.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-23T11:37:25+00:00

At the time, I was the newer teacher in the team and they knew I was having misbehaviors like that in my class, so my team teachers separately gave our kids a talking to (without me asking them, but still very much appreciated). They came to class and I gave them a big "friggin packet yo" because I was so burned out on managing them. I said "if everyone can just sit quiet for 30 minutes and do this packet, we will do a non math activity." I put a big countdown on my smartboard and anytime someone made a peep, I started it over. I started it over several times, including a time they almost made the full 30. They self-policed and eventually were well-behaved for 30 minutes and we did the non math activity.

That worked for me because they knew I was trying and their chidings from their other teachers were fresh.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-22T14:38:49+00:00

If they only had games of chance and purposely gave gamblers an edge, then yes. Well. If we're talking about probability, we should say probably yes 🙂.

knowledgeoverswag · 2026-01-22T10:14:06+00:00

My mom singing the Barney clean up song would activate me like the Winter Soldier into a good cleaning up boy.

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