Something Different at Math Enrichment

For our last week with the students at the Math Enrichment program we did centers instead of individual math lessons. Some of the centers were math focused and others were science focused. My center was science based. The students did an activity that involved an M&M and hot water and they had to make a prediction of what they thought would happen if the M&M was placed in the hot water. Most of the students were good at guessing the water would change to the color of the M&M and that the candy would start to crack and dissolve. However, what the students did not expect to happen was the M on the M&M candy peels off and floats to the top of the water. This is a neat, quick, and easy science activity I found in the Kappa Delta Pi magazine. This activity can be done with students of all different ages. I think the students in the Math Enrichment program enjoyed doing something other than math for a change. I certainly had fun teaching my first science lesson.

Since this was the last time I would be working with my student, I had her complete an evaluation of me so that I could see what she liked and what she did not like. I had my student answer fifteen questions about  my teaching abilities on a scale of 1 to 5. On one of the questions I asked my student "Would you hire Miss Chipman (me) as a teacher?" and she was supposed to circle a number one through five with one being definitely not and five being YES! To answer this question, my student wrote in additional numbers six through ten and circled the number ten. This touched my heart in so many ways. I could tell by her responses that she thoroughly enjoyed the experience of coming to the Math Enrichment program and I certainly enjoyed working with her each week.