Mathsational

This month I'm joining in the #MTBoSBlogsplosion by @ExploreMTBoS.  The final week's prompt is to write about failure.  So many of us blog about our successes.  This is so important because we feel validated and we share great lessons.  We all grow together by sharing our best lessons.  We can make advancements in our teaching working collectively than we can working alone.  That said, as an outsider, it can be deceiving.  Math teachers all over the world are posting awesome lessons every day and it can make you feel inferior.  Maybe you only have one blog/tweet worthy lesson per week or month.  The truth is.  Many of us teach 3 or 4 different classes, so to blog about 1 lesson out of 80 is not really representative of our daily work. This week, I've decided to keep a list of all the mistakes I make.  This is a great week to do it, because my mistakes should be minimized.  We are giving midterms on Monday and Tuesda...

@ExploreMTBoS is hosting a blogging challenge for the start of the new year.  It's not to late to join if you like.  Read more about it here . This weeks challenge involves reading and sharing one of our favorite #MTBoS blogs.  My favorite newish blog belongs to Katrina Newell .  She posts great resources for interactive notebooks and for google interactive activities.  I found Mrs. Newell's Math Ideas and Resources for the Secondary Math Classroom  via twitter.  My school is planning on going 1-1 next year with iPads, so I've been eyeing up Katrina's great google activities .   I'm hoping to use some of her activities as is next year as well as use others as inspiration to create some of my own.  Katrina even frequently offers several versions of the same assignment that are differentiated to the needs of various learners.  She's kinda amazing :)  My favorite google interactive is probably this one on geometry proofs in...

In reading this weeks #MTBoSBlogsplosion prompt , I realized that I do a pretty poor job of explicitly teaching soft skills.  I'm looking forward to see what everyone else posts to see what I can add to my daily routines.  My curriculum is so jam packed that I really don't have the free time to take a an entire period to teach a soft skill. The one thing that I think I do well is building the capacity of my students to work collaboratively.  This is because I use the hybrid rotational model of blended learning .   It's also largely due to the fact that I stumbled across the Kagan  geometry book a few years ago.  This book gave me activities to have students learn geometry through collaboration.  I love the focus on vocabulary and notation that are so important in geometry, but also the varied collaborative structures.  Each structure gets students actively involved in the learning process and some even incorporate movement into class. My...

For the month of January the folks at Explore MTBoS are challenging you to write one blog post per week.  This weeks challenge is to write about a favorite.  You can read more about the challenge  here . So far this year, my favorite lesson has been Julie's Candy Catapult .  Use the previous link to read about how she created and implemented the activity.  I used the activity over a period of 3 class periods at the direct station in my hybrid classroom .  This worked out to be about 60 minutes total for each student. First I allowed the students to choice their own group of 3.  I explained that we were going to use this catapult to shoot candy across the room.  Then then would do some calculations so that they could predict where the same candy would land when we shot from the top of a student desk rather than from the floor. I needed a lot of help from Julie and from the members of our physics department.  I wanted to be sure tha...

This card game that I just made-up and I call it Pass or Play.  Students will solve problems and play the corresponding cards in sequence.  I created two versions of the game so far, one on segment and angle addition postulates and one on interior and exterior angles in triangles.  I also wanted to create a version for my algebra 2 class, but I could not think of a topic where I could come up with consecutive numerical answers.  If you have ideas about other topics for which to use this activity, please share.  Since this is a brand new activity for me, I have only tried it for a few skills. Here are the rules of the game: Here is the version for segment and angle addition and here is the version for interior and exterior angle of triangles .