Sick Daze - a thought.

Our principal called for five days of emergency plans from all of us, plans that could be used at any time in the school year for, well, an emergency.

I'm a math teacher and it's difficult for me to plan THAT far ahead with any specificity - who knows what the sub can or can't explain, what the kids can or can't figure out - so our department is going to try something along these lines:

Instead of some worksheet that might or might not get completed or understood, we're going to collect articles and other readings, bind them into those folders with fasteners and leave 30 of those in the corner of the room. We'll include some questions and leave instructions to "have them read article number 13 and discuss the questions afterwards." It's not a math assignment but it's not a day off either.

Things like "The Median isn't the Message" by SJ Gould, "Flatland" by Abbott, "Clever Hans the Math Horse" from dangerouslyirrelevant.com, Asimov on Physics, and other articles and pieces that have some connection to math.

It should be an interesting change of pace and we feel it will be good for the students to read short pieces with a different tone and focus than what they might get from the English or History Department.

Reading such as this isn't in the same vein as Sustained Silent Reading, (or Self-Selected Reading if you'd rather) but we also have to placate our principal who foams at the mouth if we aren't DOING SOMETHING about our math test scores.