Mathsational

Our parents' night is always a marathon.  Our contract runs from 7am until 3pm.  Historically, I have kids stay after school most days until 4pm.  Parent's night ran from 6:30-9pm in the past.  Then we have a regular 7-3 school day the following day.  This year, I'm under the impression that it will run from 6:30-8pm.  This means we will go from having 15 minute 'classes' with the parents to having 10 minute classes. Some teachers who live close to the school go home between the school day and parent's night.  This is most likely if they have young children.  Depending on whether or not my husband is traveling for business, I might need to go home and let our 3 adopted dogs out.  I prefer not to go home because it's a 30 minute drive each way.  If I can, I just pack lunch and dinner that day and spend the 2.5 hours of free time having dinner and working on the lesson plans or grading that I would have done at home that night anywa...

My biggest pet-peeve is students coming to class without a pencil, or calculator, or notebook (where they keep classroom documents like in progress assignments or usernames and passwords to computer programs).  I am still looking for ways to make this a better situation, but here is what I have tried with moderate success so far. Pencils and Calculators:  I have tried marking my pencils with colorful duct tape and keeping them in a basket along with some cheapy calculators.  Oddly enough, if I put 12 pencils in the bin, they will be gone by the end of the day.  I could refill daily and lose all of them daily.  I don't do this, I just refill maybe once or twice per marking period and when they are gone, kids need to ask each other for pencils.  The cheap calculators however, never get stolen.  I have had the same 6 four function calculators for years.  I've basically given up on the pencil battle. I tried collecting student ids when they b...

I try to stay away from any blog prompt that could lead me to start thinking negatively, but this prompt was on the Blaugust list and it is important.  My biggest concern is with the public opinion of teachers.  Whenever I read an article online about education, I can pretty much guarantee that I'd spend a few depressed hours reading through the public comment section.  Even if the article was a positive one, eventually people start to comment how this one good teacher/school is the exception rather than the rule.  Teachers get 10 weeks paid vacation, teachers have great health benefits, teachers get too much of a retirement benefit, teachers get paid too much, teachers have the easier job ever, teachers are just generally greedy people with their shiny apples and Toyotas. I know that it is pointless, you can't argue with people who already have their minds made up, but here are a few of my responses. 1)  Teachers do NOT get 10 weeks of paid vacation. ...

With #MTBoSBlaugust happening right now, it was very easy to find some new blogs to read.   Here  is a list of the participating blogs if you are looking for new sources of inspiration too.  When I started looking, I was searching for great ideas that I could use in my classroom.  Here is what I found. 1)   Socrative 101 - Making "Digital Task Cards" :  I recently wrote about how I'd like to use technology at the direct station for formative assessment more often.  One thing that has been holding me back is the difficulty that exists in writing mathematical symbols on these sites.  Rock Star Math Teacher posted directions on how to use powerpoint to make this process easier.    Here  are some of the of the socrative quizzes that she has already made.  Powerpoint has an easy to use equation editor and then you just save each slide as an image.  I'm excited to try this to digitize some of my current whiteboard p...

Since I joined the #MTBoS about three years ago, I have grown more in my teaching than I had in the previous ten years.  Some of that growth came from attendance at conferences but most of the growth was the result of interacting with teachers from around the world on twitter and on blogs.  Here are three blog posts that have had a great impact. Gems 54 - Algebra by Example Jo Morgan posts regularly about great resources she find via twitter and elsewhere online.  I love error analysis and this particular posts introduced me to Algebra by Example .  Sometimes I use these problems as a warm-up, other times I use them at my collaborative station in my hybrid classroom.   I especially like the additional questions about the mistakes.  Sometimes kids need a place to get started and the questions do just that.  I hope that one day this resource will be expanded to include algebra 2 and geometry topics. Graphing Stories Dan Meyer wrote ...

I feel a bit weird about organization, because my system is far from perfect and I still need to work on this myself.  My main issue, now that I'm entering my 13th year in the classroom, is that I have way too much stuff.  Luckily, I've switched classrooms at least once every three years.  This has at least forced me to purge once every few years.  So that is tip number 1. 1)  Purge often.  Don't wait until you need to move all of your stuff for a new building or a new job or for retirement.  Go through all of your stuff every spring and/or fall and get rid of as much stuff as possible. 2)  Digital Folders.  I have a flash drive with literally thousands of files.  I need more folders to organize.  I have folders for each course, unit, and year that I have taught.  I've got folders for projects, warm-ups, and anything else you can imagine Prior to mass storage like this, I used a 1 inch binder for every unit in e...

I'll be the first to admit the my formative assessment strategies are typically very low tech.  I'd like to incorporate more high tech options into my class, especially at the direct station.  My class is not one-to-one, but I do have a class set of laptops and many (but not all) of my students have their own smartphone or tablet.  This should make more tech integration at the direct station very doable.  However, I need to give students time to log off and put the classroom laptops away, so I'll be sticking to low tech exit tickets. Here is what I have done in the past at each of the stations for formative assessment and what I'd like to do this year. Warm-ups:  About half of the time, I like to do a fun warm-up such as Estimation 180 , Visual Patterns , Graphing Stories , Which One Doesn't Belong, or  Would you Rather .  The rest of the time, I like to use the warm-up for lagging or spiraled practice in conjunction with the exit ticket. ...

I just had to rewrite this blog post because I was not meeting my goal/mantra.  My goal is to focus on the good because the majority of the people that I work with (parents, students, teachers) are good, but I tend to let one bad experience weigh heavily on me.  In trying to give an example of this, I found myself ultra focused on a bad situation.   So obviously, it is going to be a challenge for me to meet my goal of enjoying the good things in my career. My main issue last year was two parents/students that did not agree with a) hybrid learning or b) responsibilities like coming to class on time and participating in class.  I let these two situations overshadow hundreds of positive ones.  I'd go home feeling defeated.  I had 118 other sets of parents who were very supportive.  I allowed these two parents to ruin the positive feedback that I got from everyone else.  So this is my goal for the new year.  Focus more on the good than the...

Some of these are from posters or signs that I hang in my room and some of these are things that I say to students.  I'm not sure of all  of the original resources, but I've shared where I first heard them. Posters: -Jillian Michaels - Meg Graig - Vince Vaughn Things I say to students: "So what your saying is..."   - I've been using this one for so long that I can't recall where I first heard it.  I have found that this is a good way to make students feel like they have been heard.  This is what I say when a student is angry and shouting and needs help deescalating.  I finish the statement with rephrasing what they just said.  For example, "So what your saying is that you are really angry with your friend because she was supposed to spend the day with you on Saturday, but she decided to hang out with her boyfriend instead."  I have also found that it works well with adults who are passionately arguing their opinion...

Our 'mascot' is the Blue Streaks, as in a streak of lightning.  They don't make costumes of lighting bolts, so we have a lion at our football and basketball games.  Honestly, I can not tell you why.  Here are some qualities that I hope my students learn before they graduate. Brave enough to do the right thing, even when it is hard Loyal to friends and family Unbiased in judging the character of others Eager to accept a challenge Satisfied with their efforts to do good Tactful in handling difficult situations Rational in their thinking process Efficient in their work Adventurous in spirit Kinder than necessary in their interactions with others Selfless in their endeavors to help others

I followed TMC15 virtually and read about Glenn Waddell's session on giving his students high fives every day for a year.  So I decided to take on the challenge this past school year.  I am proud to say that I was successful.  I didn't miss a single day.  This was a big change for me.  I never made it into the hallway as often as I would have liked before.  Most of the time, I was doing a quick clean-up of my room between classes.  This included putting away supplies from one class and taking out the supplies needed for the next class.  This was actually the biggest hurdle that I had to overcome to be able to complete the challenge successfully. I came up with a system where I used masking tape to split up a table by class and set out all the supplies for the day.  I trained my students to pick up and put back their own supplies from this table at the start and end of class each day.  The only other minor thing that I had to give ...

Since I switched to a hybrid classroom, I rarely if ever find a need for brain breaks because students switch stations every 20 minutes.  However, when I do find that I need a full class period of teacher centered instruction, I will pull of one of these. Here are my favorites. Hidden Object Puzzle Ear Nose Switch Thumb and Pinkie Infinity Sign Lateral Thinking Find the Fault in the Picture Rebus Puzzles Crab  Spot the Differences Gotcha IQ Test Questions Riddles Blink   Trivia Quizzes Waiter Printable Puzzles  Guns and Roses   Word Puzzles Finger Tips   Math Puzzles Illusions Pretzel Stretch Palm Tapping Gotcha Puzzles Paradox Puzzles Brain Bats Arm Wraps Math Puzzles Inch Worm Twisted Five T-Stretch Arm Stretch Figure 8 Different Arm Directions Different Direction Circles Criptopix What was There? Guess The Colors Crime Scene I hope you find something that works for you. ...

I saw a pin about using dice to practice operations between two mathematical items.  I immediately bought 3 sets of these dice from amazon.  I use two die and one counter chip  per group.  Each face of the dice has an expression of some sort written on it while one side of the chip would mean one of two operations. My students always enjoy using the die and it makes a fun alternative to a worksheet.  I used these to practice adding and subtracting polynomials, multiplying and dividing complex numbers, composing functions, operations on matrices, and probably a few other topics that I can't recall at the moment. These dice in particular are ok, but you may want to look for something better.  Dry erase and  wet erase markers do not work because students smudge the writing.  You need to use a sharpie.  Then to get the writing off, I use a combination of a magic eraser and nail polish remover.  It works considering I already invested ...

My favorite lesson as a student was a calculus lesson.  We had just learned about how to minimize the surface area of a cylinder given a constant volume.  Our teacher asked each us to choose any product, packaged in a cylindrical container that was not in the optimized shape.  We wrote a letter to the company (complete with calculus equations and sketches) explaining our concern and telling them about how they could save lots of money with a new package in the optimal shape.  We had to show the letters to our teacher before sending them out.  We were offered bonus points if we got a response from the company, so we were encouraged to write an influential  letter. Our teacher kept a record of each company that had been written to in the past so that the same companies would not be reused.  The most fun part was when we received responses and shared the letters with the class. My letter was to a lip gloss company and I encouraged them to switch ...

One of my favorite things that I used to do with my Integrated Math 3 classes was to take them to Hershey Park, an amusement park near our school.  Our Physics department takes hundreds of students to physics day at the park each year.  Students ride the rides and collect data during the ride to answer physics questions.  However, algebra 2 is a prerequisite for physics, so only the best math students enroll in physics.  This eliminates all of our other math students for having the chance for a fun day of applied math. The integrated strand was for our lowest achieving students.  There was a higher than usual failure rate, so although there were only three classes in the sequence, most of the students were seniors.  I chose to take these students to the amusement park for math day because I wanted them to have a fun experience related to math. The park worked with several local education institutions to come up with this document .   There a...

I love this time of year.  Planning for the new school year is in full swing and you get a fresh start.  No matter what has happened in the past, you get a brand new group of students and you can do anything, change anything, keep anything.  You can build a better classroom every year. This year, that main thing that I am going to start is student reflection after each station (twice per day) in my hybrid classroom.  The reason that I'd like to do this is to prevent kids from just going through the motions.  Often I feel like my students don't metacognate about their learning.  I want to them to really think about what they have learned and what they have done and accomplished.  I may do this less often as the year progresses, maybe once per day or once per rotation after I know that students have started to become more reflective. The thing that I am going to stop doing is more like something that I am going to modify.  I love sta...

Classroom culture seems pretty hit or miss for me.  My kids are typically respectful of me, but some years I have kids that are wonderful to each other and other years they are a bit mean to each other.  One of my goals this year will be to try to get my students to be kind. I have really liked Love and Logic for this.  I have never gone through the official training for this, but would like to.  As with anything, I really like some of the ideas and sort of hate others, so I only use the pieces that I love. Here is a pdf on " How to Create a Love and Logic Classroom ."  I love their classroom rules of  "Feel free to do anything that does not cause a problem for anyone."   and  "If you find yourself with a problem, you may solve it by any means which does not cause a problem for anyone else in the world." This would include the student, the teacher, and any other people in the room.  I think these could easily be your...

I spent most of my summer taking two grade classes to earn a PDE endorsement in Online Learning.  However, during the time that I had free, I found time to work on my courses for this coming school year. First, to help with student self reflection, I created this document .  The document will be used at the end of each station in my hybrid classroom .  Students will also reflect on the work that they do outside of class.  I want students to track the resources they used when stuck as well as reflect on how well they understood the assignment.  I will be using this tool as a replacement for grading classwork and homework for completion.  I will spot check student work occasionally, but for the most part it will be largely self reported.  This assignment will be worth 5% of students' overall grade. I also reevaluated how I would weight grades for  my class.  85% of the grade will be standards based .  These grades will come ...

This summer I saw this video on twitter.   It got me thinking about how I might be able to use small, durable, classroom robots in my high school math classroom.  I could easily do something like this to make the geometry lessons where you find missing angles and sides of polygons more interesting. Luckily, while I was searching, I came across a content to win one robot.  I was chosen and should be receiving the bot shortly.  That will give me first hand experience with at least one of the choices. My plan is to finish up some research and choose a robot.  Then I'll be applying for a grant to get a class set of these cuties. Here are the robots that I've researched so far.  If you have used any of them and have feedback, please let me know. Dash and Dot These bots get great reviews online.  They look sturdy and there is a good k-5 curriculum ($60/year).  There is no high school curriculum, but I could make it work.  They...

I recently posted my algebra 2 scope and sequence.  I am also teaching geometry this year, so I figure I might as well post that too.  I am using standards based grading.  I number my objects as #.#  The first number is the unit number and the second number is the objective number within that unit.  The first year I did this, I just numbered from about 1 to 120.  It made making changes to the list more difficult.  Now when I need to add or subtract a topic, I don't need to renumber all of the objectives, just the ones in the same unit. I would love feedback on this list.  Our students take geometry after algebra 1 and 2.  The course seems very easy and I feel like I need more rigour in the class.  Please share your list on your blog and leave a comment here so I can check it out. Geometry Part 1 Chapter 1: Tools of Geometry 1.1 Use basic geometry terms and notation including points, lines and planes 1.2 Use basic postulat...