"Eating Our Vegetables" in 8th-Grade Math.
There are a lot of things we hate to do, but we do them because we know it is good for us. We have heard or we say, “Eat your vegetables. They are good for you.” Well, in eighth-grade math class I often hear students say they hate doing Study Island. Study Island is a computer program that our school utilizes as an adjunct to our curriculum to help students be better thinkers and problem solvers. There are 24 challenging categories for eighth-grade math which cover the Missouri Learning Standards which are assigned to my students over the course of the school year.
Some students benefit from the “vegetables” because they try hard to understand the questions and answer them to the best of their ability. They seek help when needed. Some students remind me of when I was young and couldn’t leave the table until I finished eating my green beans. I didn’t want to eat my green beans so instead of eating them I dropped them one by one to my cat, Pumpkin, who sat on the floor beside me. One by one the beans disappeared and I thought I was good until someone asked what all those beans were doing under my chair. The traitor, Pumpkin, had not eaten them, but only scooted them under my chair. Well, it was not to my advantage that I had not eaten my vegetables.
Pictured with this article is the eighth-grade Algebra I class working on a Study Island after taking a quiz. They are benefiting from doing what is generally hated. Please encourage your eighth grader to choose to do the hard things that will in the long run be good for them.
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