Science is everywhere you look and encouraging students to use their observation skills in their everyday lives is extremely valuable. In my 6th-grade science placement, I created this biweekly assignment to guide students in this practice and give them a chance to reflect on it in a variety of ways. The goal of this assignment was to help students better connect their learning to the world around them, build their curiosity, and explore the world of science around them.

In my 7th-grade pre-algebra placement, we spent a unit discussing ratios and proportions. I believe that mathematics is often disliked because teachers do not focus on the incredible applications to real life. So often students do not see the value in what they are learning and giving them a "real world" homework problem is not a true application. Creating intriguing projects is a great way to catch students' attention and help them see the value of what they are learning. Projects like this also provide an opportunity for students' other gifts and talents to be highlighted in a different context. This model car scale drawing project is one that I developed as an assessment and practice for applying scales and proportions.

The escape room was a huge hit in my 7th-grade pre-algebra classroom! Students were put into teams of 3 and had to solve all 5 levels in order to "escape". In each level, students worked through 4 multiple choice problems in which they then had to use a decoder in order to find the code to "unlock" the next level. This was a fun and engaging way to practice conversions between percentages, decimals, and fractions!