Zombie's Mid-Winter Crack-Ups to fight the blues

Fun fact of the day: Zombies DO get sick! I am on Day 7 of my bout with the flu. The first couple days weren't so bad, so I went to work... then the flu SLAMMED me into the wall at Conference night and I called in the next day :o(  And laid on the couch all weekend and today before finally going into the doctor this afternoon.  Doc says, "Congrats! You have a flu virus. Antibiotics won't help. If you're not feeling better IN A WEEK, come back and see me again".  Thanks Doc.

If you're as down in the dumps as I am, I figured you could use some cheering up. So here are some pointless teacher memes to make you feel better. All of the pictures are linked, so click away to pin all the originals or make your own meme. I'll warn you, it's addicting :o)  Fun to insert into lessons and Smart files just to make the kids laugh.

To Teacher: From, Students

(We are covering ratios/proportions/percents/protractors for the third year in a row, not just learned it three years ago, but still true!)

To Dumbledore: From, Ministry of Magic 

(Burn!!!!!)

To Sci-Fi / Fantasy Cross-Over Fans Everywhere: From, LEEEEELUUUU

(For no reason whatsoever except an LOL. Corbin Dallas Multipass!!!)

To Snarky Students: From, Snarky Teacher

(Yup, I'm just that quick-whitted. And like any student nowadays says "May I")

To Test Anxiety: From, Math Students everywhere

(Just about everyone has seen this, but it still makes me LOL)

To my 2nd grade teacher: From, Ryan Gosling

(Everything's better laminated)

To Bad Student: From, Wise Parent

(Not so much an LOL, but a SO TRUE!!)

To Every Teacher Everywhere: From, Every Other Teacher

(LOL Yup, it's happened to all of us)

To Teacher Teams: From, annoyed Students & Parents

(Yup, this happens unintentionally more than it should... but welcome to life kids!)

To Math Teachers: One last "haha" for the road

(Yay! One I can finally use in my classroom!)

Cheers and Happy Tuesday everyone! Think HAPPY and HEALTHY thoughts :D

-Zombie

Zombie Finance Education 101: Career Project

Happy almost MLK Day everyone! We are in the midst of a cold weather smack-down in Minnesota, so severe that we *might* have a late start tomorrow. It's a bummer too, because we have our annual Martin Luther King Day of Service (I blogged about it last year, check it out!). What a conundrum it must be to have to make the decision in such a situation... risk angering parents over hypothermia at the bus stop, or risk angering the community for shortening and/or canceling one of the most meaningful days of the year. Glad it's not my call!

One of my classroom MLK Day activities is showing the Minimum Wage episode of Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days (info on the Day of Service link). This seems most appropriate this year as tax hikes just took a nice dent out of my pay check. I keep telling myself it's okay as long as everyone got the same hike... but did they? Click here to see how it affected your family. It's not quite so depressing as I was fearing. The vast majority of Americans, even the wealthy, saw increases of between .8% and 1.5% due to the expiration of one of the Social Security tax cuts. Still hurts though.

I like to torture myself even further this time of year (as if life and winter isn't depressing enough) by updating my monthly budget. Between the reduction in my salary, the impending full-day kindergarten and 3-day a week preschool costs for my two boys, and payments to various loans/bills/insurance, there is virtually NO WAY to break even each month in the foreseeable future. Unless we give up eating. Then there might be a chance. Which made me laugh in that crazy cat Joker way when a student blurted out last week that "teachers are rich". HA!! 

Enough about my own money woes. Time to give the students a reality check! As promised, I have FINALLY downloaded and then re-uploaded the Career Project resources I blogged about last spring. It turned out quite a bit differently than I had planned, mostly due to time constraints. My goal is still the same... for students to get a good idea of what jobs they would be good at, and for them to see the type and cost of education they will need to get there. Then of course what it will pay, and what lifestyle they might expect to have. As opposed to just sitting around and bashing "those rich teachers" all day. 

Day 1: Who am I?

-Print off enough copies of the Career Cluster Interest Inventory .pdf for all students. It's a four-page document that should be run back-to-front and probably stapled. You will want to hand-write on a "Name" spot on pages 1 and 3 before running the copies. Pass out to students at the beginning of the hour, explaining the goal of the assignment. I usually tell students, it's one thing to say "I want to be a doctor" or "I'm going to be a professional basketball player", but do you really know what professionals in each career do all day? What particular tasks? Because that might change your mind. Knowing what skills and tasks you like to do can better help narrow down prospective career fields.

As your students work through the survey, read-aloud may be beneficial for understanding of some of the vocab words. Also, when you get to page 3, students should rip off the top page so they don't have to keep flipping back and forth in their packet to tally their preferences. There are 16 career clusters that they will tally. For most students, their top three or four choices will emerge as clear favorites. Then they will flip over the back page and read about their top career clusters. Just off the descriptions, they may be able to decide on one or two favorites.

Day 1 Homework: Post the Career One-Stop site on your school page or pass out in some sort of assignment rubric. They can type their career cluster, or one of its key words, into a variety of search boxes to find more information about particular fields. Leave the assignment fairly open-ended, as each student may have different quantities and depths of interest that they want to pursue. They should, however, be able to find pay information, job skills and training needed, typical work environments, as well as state-specific statistics of job availability in their field. 

Day 2: What do I already know?

-Take some time to have groups share what they learned in their research. They could meet in career clusters, or share with friends/neighbors. What surprised them? What looks daunting? Did their research change or reinforce their vision of their future? Had they never thought about it before?

-Introduce Resumes. What is a Resume? What is it used for? Here are a few of my Smart file screen shots. I also have a wonderful .docx Resume template that I can't upload here. Shoot me a message on my Zombie Math Teacher Facebook page if you would like a copy.

-Describe how resumes are used to apply for jobs and get into colleges. It's important that they start thinking about how the skills and jobs and volunteering they do now (even in middle school!) are an important stepping stone to bigger things. They should know that the material that is stored in their resume will change, depending on who their target audience is. So it's good to keep a working document in a safe place, that they can edit frequently.

-Show them an example, such as this Lisa Simpson resume that I made. Ask them who they think the target audience is. (could be a college, or a high school job) 

-Talk about the content that is in each category. Is it important? What is special/unique about each bullet point? 

-Discuss the layout of a resume and HOW IMPORTANT correct spelling and grammar are, if they are going to be taken seriously. Also talk about the importance of developing and maintaining good references. 

Day 2 Homework: Create a rough draft of a resume that highlights necessary skills for the college and/or career field you researched the day before. You can include things you plan on doing that you haven't done yet. Like a high school job you might want, or an award you hope to get, or a volunteer opportunity/activity that they have done or likely will do. You may want to post the Lisa Simpson example on your school site so they have an example to work from. 

Here is a good template you could copy or attempt to print, if you don't want my original:

Day 3: Time to Shine

-Book a computer lab or laptop cart so each student has access to their own internet and/or word processing. Show them either on a Smart board or if you can control their monitors, where to find the Microsoft Word resume templates. Click here if you need a refresher or want to learn. Click here to see a demo that you can show your students. It's not particularly exciting, but it's informative. 

-Students could also be working on the Career One-Stop site listed under Day 1 during this time, either before, after or concurrently as they work on their resumes. Their rough draft homework should be the foundation of their typed resume, so I would just check them in as complete or not complete, rather than collecting them at the beginning of the hour. 

-Be sure to save time at the end of class to show students how to save their documents either to a flash drive, or upload to googledocs, or how to email it to themselves.

Day 3 Homework: Finish your working document / have a parent edit and/or add to it?

Day 4: Final Project Day

-You may want computers for today as well. A final peer edit of the resume with peer sharing and idea generating is advisable, with some time to polish and then print their final draft. They should of course email/save the final working document somewhere that they can access it later in life to update it. 

-Final reflection activity: Write a summary of the career clusters and specific careers they found in their internet research, and staple to any documents they printed from the career site. Describe how their resume will help them achieve their goals and stepping stones to achieve the career they want. Write about what they are already doing now (or should be doing now) to help them get started on the path to success. 

Possible further activities: present their career and/or resume to the class, interview someone in the field they want to work in, further research days to look at colleges, expense calculations for college/interest/loans, lifestyle and budgeting

And that's all she wrote! Have fun! If you have questions, I'd advise posting them on my Facebook page listed above. It's more interactive and then everyone can see if we post/share documents and ideas.

-Zombie out.

Zombie Box-o-Shame + Bungee Barbie 3.0

Happy mid-winter to everyone. We have reached that lonely stretch of January in which it becomes exceedingly difficult to get out of bed in the morning. The highlight of my day lately has been choosing which new pair of boots and/or colorful scarf to wear. So to spice things up, as promised, I brought in the Box of Shame. Somehow we got off on a tangent during one of my lectures about silly fake punishments and the kids insisted that we should have our very own box (or three different sized boxes) for the classroom. This box was just the right size!

Everyone wanted a picture in it during first hour... then second hour whined "how do we get into the box of shame? should we be good?? or bad???" so I settled on "good". One of my talkative boys was actually quiet for 15+ minutes straight, so I let him sit in the box of shame to do his homework at the end of the hour.  

I asked kids to make sad faces before I took their picture but most cracked up laughing instead and couldn't hold it together to look properly sad and shamed. Oh well. It was fun. We'll see how long it lasts! At least it's something new to look forward to for the week. Maybe we can turn it into a math problem by calculating the surface area to cover the outer walls and around the face opening with the blue paper ;D

We also finished our Bungee Barbie 3.0 reflection today. My 1st and 2nd hours are doing the project as an introduction to a unit on slope/proportions and scaling instead of as the culminating activity. It will be interesting how the students' perspective on y=mx+b form deepens, having this background knowledge in place that the drop distance per rubber band is an example of "slope", and the dolls' heights were an type of "y-intercept". This latest lab was the first time that students really grasped that y=mx+b form is more accurate than just solving a proportion using "criss cross multiply, divide by the lonely guy". 

It was a good time to revisit independent versus dependent variables, discrete versus continuous data, the parts to a graph (like labels, scale, title) and how to solve two-step equations. Plus having no homework the week back from break was a nice breather for both students and ME! And it's so darn fun to chuck a doll off the school balcony. 

In conclusion, I'd like to thank my giant new 20-ounce Bubba coffee mugs for getting me through the first dark and cold days of January. We are barely over two weeks away from the mid-point of the year! Yet another four months of school that has gone really slowly and really quickly at the same time. Never a dull moment. Except when grading papers. 

Zombie out.

Happy 2013 to Zombies everywhere

Santa came!!! And brought us new tech toys!!! 2013 is already looking to be another technology-o-rama in schools and homes everywhere. I am itching to get my hands on the iPad my school district is providing to any and all willing teachers who want to learn. Two neighboring districts already have one-to-one technology integration initiatives. And nearly ALL of my children's grandparents are now on Facebook! Hallelujah!!

There was a really cool pin worth reading that shows current usage stats on the top social networking media sites. It didn't list many programs that you could use in a classroom, but there were really interesting comparisons like how much Instagram is outpacing Twitter. And 625,000 people join Google + EVERY DAY!?!?  My favorite statistic was that 80% of pins on Pinterest are actually re-pins from other people's boards, which just goes to show the power of visual media in our daily lives, and how a PICTURE of a good idea can go viral in a matter of minutes. 

Like Grumpy Cat! I am seriously obsessed. If you haven't visited their website, click the kitty to check it out. They just hit 300,000 likes on Facebook. You can even make your own memes at meme.generator.net and insert them into your lessons for a laugh! I showed my students how to make their own grumpy cat memes for a brain break. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to think of a funny catch-phrase that is ironic, or mocking, or witty or just LOL.

In the midst of all this typing, I've been pushing my desk chair back and forth to the kitchen counter where my 5-year old preschooler is finally finishing his HOUR of homework from break. Good thing we checked his backpack tonight before he goes back to school tomorrow! Funny and a little hypocritical, how angry I get at my own students for procrastinating until the night before a due date... and here I am doing the same thing with my son's homework. Every time. Maybe counting and coloring just doesn't float my boat. Maybe I think it's a little absurd that he needs to know how to write ALL of his upper AND lowercase letters before he even starts kindergarten. Fortunately he enjoys it. For now anyway.

As a seventh grade teacher, I rarely assign homework for the weekend and never over a break. I leave that as a punishment for students who have missing/late work, that they are the only ones who have to think about school, while everyone else shuts their brain down for a while. We also have a three-day week this week, so I'm doing more learning labs and explorations with my math kids, and not assigning new homework until Monday.

Frankly, they can't sit still and aren't awake enough to do anything too strenuous, so I try to plan in something artistic and something kinesthetic to wake their brains up. For example, my 1st and 2nd hour are finally starting their Bungee Barbie lab, and my 3rd hour of accelerated math is working on my Star Transformations packet, which reinforces the concepts in Chapter 5 of our Holt/McDougal Course 3 math book. (Course 3 more closely mirrors the MN seventh grade standards than the actual "7th grade" book does)

My last piece of news is that, courtesy of the giant kitchen my boys got for Christmas, I now have a teenage-sized container to make a classroom BOX OF SHAME!!! Middle schoolers get so excited over pop-culture references. This one just takes the cake. The big question is, can I get my car door open wide enough to transport it to school??

If you don't know what the "box of shame" is, you must be one of maybe eight people on the planet who haven't seen Despicable Me yet. And by golly, you are TOTALLY missing out. Steve Carrell at his best, hilarious for parents and kids alike. And lots of quotable bits. And did I mention that the sequel is coming out next summer???

P.S. I already have a three-student-long waiting line to try it out. Photo ops soon to follow :)

Coordinate Graph Art for Grades 6-8: Student Work Board added

 Come visit my new pin board of student work at:

http://pinterest.com/mathbymandy/coordinate-graph-art-for-grades-6-8-student-work/

My students are really excited not only about making graph art, but about the potential for having them published on the web. I'm sticking with initials for anonymity's sake. If you have purchased my book (or want to try out the free section at my Teachers Pay Teachers site), and you'd like to add student work to my pin board, just send me a message on my Facebook page or to support@mathbymandy.com with your Pinterest user name and I will add you to the "users who can post on this page".

I'll be adding the Transformations section in a few weeks once students complete that unit in class. It includes the 5 Star Power puzzles at the end of the book. Check back in January for updates on this project! 

My current plan would be to make more Transformation puzzles, as I only have one or two for each skill (translation, reflection, rotation, dilation) and I'd like students to have more options and levels of difficulty to choose from. If you have any feedback or further suggestions for new graph art that you'd like to see, let me know! And Merry Christmas!!

What Math Zombie wants for Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to my readers all over the world! My apologies for not having posted more. I've been sick twice in three weeks (still sick now) am currently buried under a mountain of correcting papers, Christmas cards, presents to wrap and goodies to bake if/when I ever feel better. So instead of starting on this list, what am I doing? Making a new list! A Christmas wish list! For MEEEEEEE! 

First, I would like more tablets! Yes, I'm most likely getting an iPad to use in my classroom, but I want MORE! One for each of my kids. And my husband. And one for each of my students. NOW. They can do and are doing SO much with them. See above. Education, entertainment, babysitting! Everyone wins. 

Next, I would like a correcting fairy who magically shows up and either does my correcting for me, or knocks me out while I go through this tedious process, and wakes me up when the results are ready. I loooooooooove planning, and moderately love prepping/making Smart lessons... and I do love teaching on most days... and I love analyzing the results of correcting, but I absolutely loathe the tedium of correcting itself. 

Third, I would like a spell cast over my room that automatically detects students' lies and makes their noses grow like Pinocchio. No more "I don't get it" or "I had sports all night" or "I left it on the counter" or "I didn't steal her pencil!" or "I didn't draw that on my desk! I found it like this! and worst of all, "Sure I'll study and get caught up on my homework tonight!" and then NOTHING is done. I would seriously like to know... are there teachers out there who have some trick I don't know, for getting kids to do their homework? Seriously... like 10-20% daily don't have it done. And it's not a lot. Maybe 15-20 minutes of reading and note-taking. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Fourth, I want one of those time-turners that Hermione has in Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban. So I can curl up into a ball after work and take a two-hour nap without disturbing anybody or affecting anything. Or maybe can I get an energy sucker device that calms my children down and gives me even half of their surplus in the evenings? 

Fifth, I'd like to trade my stinky farting Boston Terrier in for Grumpy Cat, aka Tartar Sauce so I too, can get rich off taking hilarious pictures of my ever-frowning fur ball. What does my dog do for me? Other than fart continuously, eat ear plugs, slobber on the furniture, and bark at anything that walks by outside? 

Meanwhile, Grumpy Cat is stinking adorable even when she is crabby. How fun must it be to dress her (I'm assuming it's a her?) and take pictures of her being cute so people can make Memes and shirts and posters out of her? I tried to give credit to the owner of this adorable picture, but it redirected me to some non-functional blog. So I'll just send you to the owner's site if you want more information on this lovely meow meow.

Sixth, I'd love for this trend of increased book sales that is somehow related to Pinterest posting to continue! The teacher edition is on sale for $13.49 and the student edition is listed at $7.99. And don't forget that you can buy various chapters and products on my Teachers pay Teachers site! It's all about networking and I hate to say, I'm finding way more helpful school information on Pinterest boards than I ever did reading through posts on LinkedIn. Sorry to all you "professional networkers" out there. So, once again, here is the link to my Zombie Math Teacher Pinterest board! 

I will soon be uploading a separate Zombie Graph Art board that has student-colored pictures of all the graph art pictures from my book. Stay tuned...

Tales from Zombie Flip-Class: Volume 2

Hey all you Math Zombies out there! It is finally feeling like Minnesota, here in Minnesota. Thanksgiving day was a season in and of itself; the morning dawned at 45 degrees or so, warming up to nearly 60 by lunch time, and then the thermometer proceeded to tank for the next ten hours until it settled around 25 degrees. Huge white snow flakes blanketed the grass on our way home, reminding me that, "oh yeah, I still haven't brought the deck furniture in for the season". Oops. 

So what's new in Zombie land? Well, Flip Class is going strong! So strong, in fact, that as we start another "Week with No Homework", the kids are all super confused that we're actually taking notes IN CLASS!!!  "So yeah, it's like, you take notes on your flip lesson, and then, like, you correct your guided practice... and then if you 'get it', you start the class work... and then, like, you correct that too... and if you get that right, then you start the next flip lesson when you're ready! like awesome!"

Correcting kitty is not impressed with your lack of grammary. Or this orange pen. Or these multi-colored papers sitting in my desk spot. How rude. And where is my food, by the way???

Anyhow, Barbie 2.1 was a "smashing" success... and by that, I mean, a SMASHING success. We had an all-time high number of Barbies hitting the floor... which I attribute solely to the new brand of rubber bands we used this year that were, just, WAY too stretchy. So here are a few do's and dont's we cleared up that might help all y'all math teachers out there have a more successful jump. 

#1: BUY STURDY RUBBER BANDS. We used a 19-weight band and it was just too stretchy and too light. Which "bites" (har har) because I literally have three kleenex-box sized containers of them still left. Maybe I should start a rubber band ball.

#2: Designate a responsible rubber band buddy for each group who is in charge of wearing them on his/her wrist at all times, dispensing one at a time when needed, and NOT playing with them. AND returning them to the box at the end of the hour

#3: Designate a Barbie dropper and a Data Recorder who will perform that job the whole time. The rubber band buddy can eye-ball the initial drop depth so s/he has enough to do. But do NOT allow groups of four. You can get away with groups of two, on the other hand, by doubling up Rubber Band boy with Barbie Dropper as one job, and eye-baller / data recorder as the other. 

#4: Add a spot on the front of the packet for a silly doll name. (Yes, they spelled it like that on purpose ;)

#5: Model the foot loop slowly and repeatedly until all the "loopers" have got it down. This saves time later. AND make sure the loop around the feet is good and tight. We had one come loose  this year and the Barbie smashed right into the concrete. Which of course they found extremely hilarious. 

#6: Add some data scaffolds to Page 2 of the packet. The directions do elude to the necessity of a few 2-rubber band trials, but the space is not provided for them. So I had them try 2-4 times and then average the distance. Then we solved a simple proportion. 

**CCM, DBTLG stands for "Criss-Cross, Multiply... Divide By The Lonely Guy!*** which demonstrates how to solve a proportion. The top-right box of the proportion was empty until the student entered in the other 3 boxes of the proportion.

**Also please note, our school balcony was 531.5 cm high, so we corrected all the packet notations of 4 meters right off the bat. And even then, I told them to go with 525 cm for some added buffer length. Not that it did us much good... 

#7: Amend the data table to serve your rubber band size ahead of time. If you use the teeny tiny ones, then skip-counting by 2's is probably fine. But for our super stretchy bands, we were able to see noticeable differences in jump height with every rubber band added. We actually over-amended, as you can see at right, by adding a lot of extra data spots. We should have probably just added a second column instead, since I made them duplicate all their drops before adding another band. 

#8: Lots of scaffolding is needed for seventh graders (even accelerated ones) as to how to set up a decent scatter plot, what scale to count by on the axes, reminders of where the independent and dependent variables go, and how to plot without "connecting the dots". The data is discrete, after all. 

#9: To help students infer the y-intercept is the doll's height, without just flat-out telling them, I asked, "What would happen if Barbie bungeed with no rubber bands? But her feet were glued down?" And then I modeled it, standing her on top of the meter stick, and slowly flipping her over until her face SMACKED right into the 30-cm line. Most of them figured it out right away, once they saw it in action. 

#10: I modeled the statement for the relationship question, "I add _____ rubber bands, and Barbie goes ________  ________ cm.

#11: As this was an introductory slope-intercept unit, we did the back page together; talking about each part of y=mx+b and how it related to the experiment they had just concluded. They used a slope step on their graph to predict the rubber bands they'd need for the final jump, which in most cases was far more accurate than the 2-rubber band prediction. 

#12: Don't bother doing the "Regression Equation" step unless you've already taught them how to solve 2-step equations. I had a few that didn't remember doing this earlier in the year, and therefore couldn't solve for x in this situation either.

and lastly... #13: Take LOTS of pictures! Best day ever. 

P.S. My rubric on the first page is modified from the one provided at the Illuminations website listed above. 

So now that Barbie is over, what else can entertain us in the land of Math Zombies and snow bunnies? Well... Exponential fun is upon us! I have made a brand new Pythagorean Menu for Chapter 4 that covers exponential arithmetic, square roots, the Pythagorean Theorem, special triangles, and sine/cosine/tangent. It's a beast... but also super fun working in degrees. I have to reprogram my brain to stop marking in their homework as "2 points", but as "20 degrees". 

Note that the Flip Homework on the left is not included in the menu points. I still mark them in as 10 points per homework as either done or not done. But the bulk of each student's homework grade is his or her choice points. They have to have something from each lesson to demonstrate mastery, but once the basics are covered, the sky is the limit! Literally... my previous "highest grade ever" record of 126% was shattered this fall and now stands at 139%!!! 

It really does continually amaze me, that if we let students go above and beyond, and not set boundaries, they can really soar. This student literally took everything on every menu I gave out this fall, plus did a ton of online math gaming at one of my favorite drilling sites... www.xpmath.com  

And the funny thing is, when the high students go so much higher than the required points, the low and lazy students feel just that much more silly that they too didn't attempt some more extra credit. I keep telling them, "the more work you put into practicing math, the better you'll get at it!" and they roll their eyes, like this is some novel concept. Well, I don't find it a surprise at all, that those students that are over 100% in math, ALWAYS do really well on their tests, because they've spent so much extra time learning the material! In puzzles and word-problems and straight drill-and-practice worksheets, and review games.

One more thought on Flip-Class to leave you with... we have started "grading our flip lessons" nearly every day now. I got fed up with the shoddy notes that some students were taking, and started grading every individual part of the lesson that I'd expect them to record. So that's what they're doing tomorrow. Another "Best Flip Notes Ever". We did our first one right before conferences, and it was a fascinating performance document to show to parents. 

Here's an example of what I look for: 

+1 point - Name, date, day of week, class hour

+1 point - Number and  title of lesson, page numbers from book

+1 e.c. point - Record the lesson objective from the margins

+1 point - Summarize the real-world example that introduced the lesson

+1 point per vocab word identified 

+1 e.c. point - for any hints, tips, tricks, reminders they record from the margins

+1 point - Writing down the sub-title for each example

+1 point - Summarizing the math concept in their personal learning style 

And that usually gets to a grade of 15 or so points for the flip lesson. 

Ungraded additions (just to determine level of difficulty of class work to pick):

+1 point - each "Think & Discuss" higher-order thinking question

+1 point - each Guided Practice problem 

This gives a pretty realistic picture to me, and to the student of where they stand on concept mastery. The problems I continue to run into, are with those students who don't take good notes, even after two months practicing as a class. And those who refuse to do their homework, even when it's just reading. And those who WASTE half their class work time EVERY DAY, not doing what they're supposed to be doing; thus, leading to more real homework to be doing, when they're not done with class work by the very generous due date.

Sometimes you just have to remind yourself, "they weren't doing their homework before anyway, you just didn't see it because they weren't doing it at home, and now they're not doing it at school either." Which I guess... is better? Hmmm....