Farewell~

December 23rd was my last day of teaching 6th grade math! I have resigned from the DOE as of last month. I love all of my students and wish each and every last one of them the best in their educational careers, and with whomever their next math teacher will be. As I mentioned last post, and also evidenced by the insane amount of students who bum-rushed me (this includes 7th graders) on the last day, I've made a humongous impact on their learning as well as their lives. When the bell rang, over 30+ students came out of nowhere and were in my room yelling and shouting, each for a hug. I gave every last one of them a hug.

When I saw students literally cry and hug me, it made me realize just how much of an important part I was in their daily life. An entire year can pass, and they will never forget the experiences they shared with you! As a teacher, you realize that some students do not have any element of consistency in their life other than you. Just one moment with them can change their entire future, and it's almost like students need someone they can believe in. Perhaps they are level 1's, or level 2's, or 3's or 4's. But, a love for respecting oneself and each other, an inspiration to succeed in school, and a newfound love and appreciation for math...What number does that equate to? How can you quantify that? And I love each and every one of them.

I will continue to update this blog with math topics and any other videos/explanations that we covered in class before the year. Below are some of the well-wishes and farewells my students gave me along with some hilarious videos of my students trolling me!

The Impact of a Teacher

Readers! I can't get rid of them! And that's fine. Clearly they don't plan on getting rid of me anytime soon and it looks like we've found a place in each other's hearts. That lasts forever. It's amazing to see the impact I made on this cohort whom never stop short of entering my room (it's like a party!) to chat and kick it!

GCF Word Problems

It has been such a while since I've made a post! My nephews were victims of a major car accident days ago and are currently recovering.  I am also sick with the flu and wasn't able to teach yesterday.

We've been going over GCF word problems in class! Today I had students look at the following task from Illustrative Mathematics: Bake Sale Task


The idea is for students to gain the understanding that the cookies can be arranged into different numbers of bags based on the factors of the total number of cookies. Example:

48 Chocolate Chip Cookies can be arranged in the following ways:

 

Later students develop an understanding that if they are to arrange the vanilla wafers and the chocolate chip cookies into bags with the same amount of cookies in each bag and none left over, that the only way to do so would be by using common factors of 48 and 64.

This Year's Classroom

 

I found many mathematically-themed quotes online and I found the "How to learn math" poster from pinterest and used colored cardstock to create my own on the bulletin in the back of my classroom. Plenty of cool ideas. Bought a laminator and 3mil pouch paper and used recollections colored 65lb cardstock to decorate. The borders were from dkclassroom outlet and the background of each bulletin is fabric. I got the large letter blocks from Michaels and used magnetic tape to place them onto my whiteboard. I use a bath and body works fragrance plugin/throw to give the room a fresh scent.

Happy Pi Day!

How could I not make a post for National Pi Day!? Today is 3/14/16!

Channeling my inner nerd, Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter (which tends to be a little over 3 times as much or 3.14  to be exact).

All of the math experts have even come out of the woodworks to win free pizza from pizza hut for 3.14 years! http://blog.pizzahut.com/flavor-news/national-pi-day-math-contest-problems-are-here-2/

What am I doing? I promised the kids that I would make a pie and bring it in on Friday (I know, I'm going to be so late), but I suppose it's the thought that counts. The pie in question......Apple? Peanut butter? Strawberry? I am terrible at baking but I'll be sure to post a picture of it.

Scavenger Hunt Part II

Now that we've been working on ratios and unit rates for a few weeks I decided to have the students participate in another scavenger hunt activity with variety of rate/unit rate problems. I have been extremely busy and have not had the time to post as frequently as I would like to. Teaching (student learning) seems to be a much bigger challenge this year than last for me. Trying to do my best.

Preparing for the New Year

While Summer '15 was certainly filled with laughter and joy, this is the final week. This is a short clip of what we did in week 2 (the Smartboard is now working and in daily use...).

Lately I've been preparing my mind, clearing my thoughts and thinking of things that worked and didn't work this year, and how I'll change them. This time, I want to create a classroom culture where more emphasis is placed on listening to whoever is talking, and somehow incorporate that into tokens. I also want to take Concept Constructions up a notch and incorporate it into tokens as well.

Because the tokens were so strong last year, I need to find ways that I can improve the system and make it more fun for the kids. This includes switching prizes from time to time, and added reinforcement to other positive behaviors that we need more of to run a successful math classroom.

VSC Math Token

I wasted no time to get these done at staples. They cost about 40 dollars for 20 of each. While they may not look as perfect as the original image does, they do look great and they're quite durable. I introduced the system to the students on Thursday and we began on Friday.

Our Classroom Sign!

BIG thanks to our new art teacher Ms. S, for helping us with our new sign that now hangs high in our classroom. It is the first step to filling up some of the empty space in the class. The others will showcase student work, which is the best decoration one could ask for.

I have some other things of the kids that I would like to post but it is 1AM. I put in so much effort. I really hope this will be a successful year.

The First Day of School

Last year, I was at a big disadvantage by coming in during the middle of the year as a blank slate with no time to set rules and expectations. Half of August has been dedicated to helpful and necessary PD's that I participated in for the first time along with our new staff. We have also done an immense amount of planning. There is simply no substitute for the large amount of planning that we have all been doing. After August, it was clear to me that given the circumstances, I did the best I could.


September 4, 2014 will be my own first "first day" of school as a teacher! I have never gotten a chance to start the year fresh with students until now. Trying to build a community (or do anything rather) from the ground up is extremely difficult work. I have shifted some of my focus to getting the new students on board with VSC values. I have also aligned the procedures of my classroom along with the VSC values. This is a fancy way of saying I want to get the students to recognize the specific ways VSC values apply to my class. If they can understand why responsibility, effort and collaboration are important to achieve our goals and build a positive classroom culture/community, then we have taken an important step in building a productive work environment.

Welcome to 6th Grade Math! by MR.E

I want to act out plenty of scenarios along with the students so we can see why certain behaviors do not help us achieve our goals or build our community. We will go over the questions on  Building Our Community after acting out some scenarios that correspond to each question. Students can share what they will be doing to help build our lovely environment. Day one homework consists of a student survey with questions that I will use to create groups. Day 2 is a review of day 1, getting to know all about the students and having them learn about each other, plus laptop procedures. Hoping that this will suffice.

A Mathematician's Wish

Perhaps the biggest thing I wish I could do right now is create small posters for each of the MP standards and hang them around my room. What I want to do is break each one down into kid-friendly language so students can actually understand what they mean. This way, the students and I can refer to them before, during, or after each lesson and recap which, when, and how they were used.

Problem: I am completely clueless when it comes to things like this and I haven't the first clue of how or where to get something like this done. I am terrible at decorating or making things look nice (unless it's on a computer). When I actually do have materials, I try way too hard and end up epically failing anyway. I almost ruined my room with acrylic paint last week.

Lost cause? I have some small poster paper in my room that I'll try to use tomorrow and see what happens.