What????? The year is almost over?

Since we have been 1:1 for two years now, one major difference I have noticed is time.  Instead of counting down the days before breaks or vacations I am trying to squeeze in a couple more things before we reach the break. Before, I remember times just trying to fill a couple days to get to the end.

I teach 7th grade math and I can remember the year before we got computers I would complain because in May after Istep what were we suppose to do.  I had crammed in everything so the kids would be ready for the test, so what do you do after.

Now I have more projects that I can possibly cover in a year with the kids.  So now instead of trying to just fill time to get us to the end, we are doing projects up til the last day.  This is a rough time of year since we all know how close it is to the end and we are done with our standardized tests.

Normally in May I felt like I was in survival mode, not this year.  We are using the nice weather to get outside and do some fun things.  Two weeks ago we had our 1st Annual Charley Creek Race where the kids designed boats and we raced them down the river.  The next day the kids connected multiple shape perimeter and area, percentages, and speed to the boats they designed.  The final week of school we are designing our own squirt gun competitions and in between days of competitions we are collecting data on the guns so we can compare and contrast the guns by using central tendencies.

I can't quite put my finger on why my attitude has changed.  Is it that I really have a good group of kids,  the fact we are 1:1, is it that we do projects not worksheets, is it the really good relationship I have with the kids since we do project based learning, or is it a combination of all of the above.  Only time will tell, but my guess is our 1:1 initiative and using pbl is the main factor.