Figting vainly the old ennui...

The end of the year is rough. I feel like I've reached a point with my students, especially in math, where they don't care about anything. Unlike a month or two ago, I can't draw them into a lesson by making it about something relevant, telling a clever story, or including a fun activity. They don't care about those things either. Especially not with this lat ditch effort to cover percents. There are a few kids, who if you challenge them, will get into something. I had three students working at the front of the board on solving problems involving percents that they actually had to reason to solve, not just plug things in, and they were into it, and they were working together. The rest of the class was really chaotic. I had to ask one student to sit back down in her seat three or four times. Part of the difficulty was that all of the students were in different places in their work. We were working through a packet on percents, and some students were done the first day, while others were struggling. So those that finished, I had to find more things for them to do. But those who were working, and did have things to focus on weren't. They were confused, and not necessarily paying attention, I was repeating myself over and over again.

This sort of end of the year ennui seems unavoidable. Unless you have something that students are intrinsically motivated in, which some classes, by their nature more frequently have those types of subjects (such as the Musical, which performs in two weeks). So what's a teacher to do. My cooperating teacher recommends sticking to work sheets. Keep them busy, with things that engaged the lower learning levels. Higher order thinking isn't accessible for them at this point.

Obviously it depends on the class. My 8th period didn't have nearly so much trouble focusing as my 4th period, but they are learning to add and subtract negative numbers, not exactly a task requiring analytical thinking.

So the question is, are students at a total loss for deep thought and analytical thinking this near the end of the school year?