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.

Accountable Talk Cards

This year I am thinking about adding accountable talk cards to my reward system. I am giving students these cards to use at any time during the lesson.. The cards can be differentiated depending on what groups you want to use specific cards. I am going to increase their chances of receiving a gold token the more they use their cards. 

The idea is to increase engagement and have the students reach a point where they are actively using the language all the time. The two cards I will use are "I notice you..." in order to positively reinforce particular things (i.e. students using math terms/vocabulary like "numerator" or "denominator", or to point out a particular detail in the way in which they solved a problem), and "can you tell me why you think that?" in order to get them to explain. 

I have never taught with this sort of structure in place so I am excited to see how it turns out! I am sure the kids will be excited to use them as the power to learn and grow in math is now in their hands. Time to update that powerpoint.....

Summer School 2016!

Summer school 2016 is here! The students have been learning things they didn't really get throughout the school year, or brushing up on their knowledge of rates. In this video the kids are just taking turns quizzing each other using a book from Pearson on Ratios & Rates.

Summer Summer Summertime!

Wow, I haven't updated since March! The school year ended on a positive note and it seems like the entire year was a blur. My hypothesis is that the more experienced you become, the more you know what to expect, the easier things are to manage, and the faster the years go by.

This summer we've been using ratios and rates from Pearson for the first domain. I will probably pull resources from IXL or A-Net and even the 2016 released questions to count towards the student portfolios. This summer session is comprised of two groups of students. Some of whom I'm assuming did not do so well on the test, and the others whom just did not produce any work all year. Nevertheless, the days have been going fast (we're on day 3) and pretty soon it will be time for another vacation.

This summer my plan is to come up with a group-management system. I feel that when I group students, they fall into three categories:

A) Students that do all of their work all of the time and actually discuss the work and attempt to complete the problems (what I want to focus on this year and what I want my new system to address)

B) A group where one or two students produce work but they mostly work individually, and the third student does not produce anything or attempts to just copy from their group members


C) Students that do not produce any sort of answer or work, are heavily off task, and do not attempt to discuss the problem

The biggest part of the problem obviously stems from the fact that a large portion of students are far behind where they are supposed to be and simply do not understand the work or problem. And so, they shut down, tune out, or act out. However, I would be content if the kids made serious attempts to work together to try to at least discuss the problems and attempt to come up with a solution. I have been thinking about using the wheel as a template. Going to spend some time this month thinking about it. Stay tuned! P.S. - Kudos to you if you know what song the title of this post refers to!

The Pi!

So late but sooooo worth it! These apple pies came out great and I used graham cracker pie crust. Now I should get the students to use the recipe to find out how much of each ingredient we'd need to make apple pies for 2 classes....

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.

Update

Sorry it's been a little over a month! The mid winter-recess break was in mid-February and I was away in San Francisco unable to post. Shortly after, I was in a complicated situation and ended up losing someone that I loved. The kids have been questioning why I look so sad lately, but I have to be strong as their teacher, for them and for me. I apologize for the lack of posts!

We have been learning about how to solve a one-step equation. I have not done a great job breaking this down for the kids in my past years of teaching, but this time I made it easier to understand by using NLVM's virtual algebra balance scale. It can be found here: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/frames_asid_201_g_4_t_2.html?open=instructions

And it looks like the following:

Once kids understand the two goals/concepts of isolating the variable and balancing the equation, they can move onto abstractly solving one-step equations where the answer is not so obvious
(i.e. E + 350 = 592 or 5n = 625). So far they have done a good job, especially understanding key terms such as "isolate" and "inverse"

Order of Operations Footloose

The students have needed a lot of practice with the order of operations recently so I've had them move around > get an expression > evaluate an expression > return expression > repeat. Above is a video of a group evaluating an expression together.

Division of Fractions by Fractions

Howdy! The kids have been working on dividing fractions by fractions, as well as word problems! 

Before working on word problems, they created fraction kits using fractions strips for:

1 whole, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/8, 1/9, 1/10, and 1/12. 

The video above is a student attempting to model the solution to one of these problems.

Math Opinions

I decided to have a few students (like G and K from last year) share their opinion on what math is like for them this year and their attitude towards learning. A few more are coming! Stay tuned!