Mathsational

This winter break  @druinok  organized a blog challenge.  I think it was meant to be completed during winter break, but I'll likely be finishing long after that.  That said, I do love good prompts, so I'll stick with it.  You can find more info  here  if you'd like to join in the fun. So, what am I looking forward to most in 2018?  Well, I love the start of a new school year.  One of the great things about teaching is that it is filled with new beginnings.  You can try a new grading system, you can try a new warm-up routine, you can try a new tech tool.  Sure, you can do some of these things in the middle of the school year, but many of the routines are best changed at the start of a year.  This year, I'm switching schools in the middle of the year.  Sometimes when I think about it, I get super overwhelmed.  I can hardly wrap my mind around the idea that I'll be teaching a lesson at my current school ...

The #SundayFunday challenge has become more of a monthly prompt than a weekly one recently.  Which is ok with me because I was having trouble keeping up :)  This post is actually a week early!!   Here  is more info if you'd like to join in the fun. This month's prompt it to write about our New Year's resolutions.  I rarely make resolutions.  I don't need to really because I make goals for myself all the time.  Before I share my new goals, I should mention that I have recently accepted a new job.  My current employer will likely be holding me for close to 60 days (a state requirement so that classroom are not left empty).  This means I'll probably be starting my new position in early February. First, I want to be clear that I've had a good run with my current employer.  I have received many opportunities and I have grown tremendously during my 12.5+ year tenure.  I met many people and was given the opportunity to speak ...

This winter break  @druinok  is organizing a blog challenge.  I'll likely be finishing long after break, but I do love good prompts, so I'll stick with it.  You can find more info  here  if you'd like to join in the fun. The next prompt that seemed like a good fit for me was: What worked (and what didn't) in 2017? I'm fortunate to be starting a new job in the next few weeks.  I have the opportunity to start fresh with my goals for the year and I intend to take advantage of that unusual benefit.  Some of my goals going into this year was to improve the process of going over homework, to increase active student participation, in encourage a sense of community between students, and to improve my work-life balance. I was able to improve the process of going over homework .   I'll need to modify this as my new school is 1-1, but not with iPads.  I'm not sure if the student laptops have cameras, but I'm considering having ...

Another late #SundayFunday post, but at least I'm closing in on posting one one time :) This one is only 4 weeks late and I'm making up ground!  Here  is more info if you'd like to join in the fun. I feel like a real hypocrite even considering the idea of giving advice about work-life balance.  I have almost no life in my work-life balance.  In general I work from 6am-4pm every weekday and often a few extra hours in the evening.  I also usually work 5 or so hours over the weekend.  During the summer I work nearly as much except I'm usually better at taking the weekends off. Therefore, this post will be more about my goals for giving myself some more life in my work-life balance! 1)  I'd like to make more time for my hobbies.  These include camping, hiking and spending time with family, friends, and my dogs.  My husband and I try to camp at least once a month from May to October and I make it a point to walk the doggos daily.  ...

Goals, I have too many right now.  This Sunday Funday prompt comes at the perfect time for me to solidify them and hone in on just a few so that I can reach those goals. My big aspirations for the year include tweaking my past standard based grading policies and well as blended/hybrid learning structure. I also want to begin to incorporate HyperDocs, visual random grouping, vertical non-permanent surfaces.  Finally, I'd like to include more projects and technology in my classroom.  And this is the narrowed down list! First, I'll start with HyperDocs.  I came across this book  The HyperDoc Handbook: Digital Lesson Design Using Google Apps  in my efforts to reorganize my blended/hybrid format and to include more meaningful technology.  The idea of HyperDoc is to create an interactive student-paced lesson.  One of the issues I've had in the past few years has been getting my students to engage at the independent station with fidelity.  ...

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...

My main goal for this year is to get 100% buy in from students.  I realize that 100% is unlikely, but I'm already pretty darned close.  I'd say about 5% of my kids LOVE my class and about 5% HATE it and go so far as to completely disengage.  The other 90% have variable levels of engagement ranging from compliance to true internal motivation.  I'm most worried about the 5% that are disengaged as well as a kiddos who are just going through the motions to avoid a negative consequence. One of my plans to reach this goal is to incorporate more student reflection.  I want the students to reflect after each station in my hybrid classroom.  I want them to think about the effort that they put into the assignment, their perceived success on the assignment and their actions when they were stuck.  I think this may help some kids who simply do not realize what to do when they are stuck and those that feel like 25%-75% effort is enough. The other thing that...