Mathsational

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...

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 ...

Oh how I wish I could be seriously planning for my first few days of classes.  I just got summoned to district jury duty.  This will be the fourth time that I have had jury duty.  Last year, I actually got called to local court twice in five months.  I was not all that worried about the second call because I know I was excused for a year.  When I called to let them know that I had just served, the lady on the phone was surprised to find that my name was in the pool three times.  I'm under the impression she fixed that, but who knows.  I wrote to the court to request a postponement until next summer.  At the very least, any time that is not during the first few days of school.  I certainly don't want to leave a substitute in charge of building a classroom culture for me during those very important first few days of class. I also have a jam packed curriculum, especially in algebra 2.  This past year, I messed up with pacing and had ...