2015-2016 Goals

• Day one ideas - I want to be very purposeful for day 1.  I DO NOT want to go over rules or read my syllabus.  I want students to do meaningful math and work cooperatively.  So here's what I came up with...
• Bellringer sheet - students will pick up a bellringer sheet when they walk in the door and work on their first Monday bellringer.  This will teach them where to find the bellringer sheets and what they can expect every day in my room.  My music timer will be playing and they will get a taste of the routine of my classroom without me really saying a word.
• Algebra 1 - four fours activity a la @nhighstein to review order of operations without "reviewing" order of operations.  I will have them work in partners or groups.  What will be great about this activity is that my co-teacher and I will have the opportunity to walk around the room and get an idea of how the students work together, who is struggling, etc. on DAY 1!!!  
• Calculus - A Taste of Calculus activity followed by a student questionnaire (here is the teacher reference for the questionnaire) for homework.  I don't remember where I got these, but I definitely didn't make them myself.  If I can figure out where I found them, I'll come back and give credit where credit is due.
• Probability and Statistics - I haven't figured this one out yet, but my husband is teaching this course as well (we both teach math in the same school....two doors away from each other) so I'm hoping we can brainstorm something amazing in the next two weeks.
• Honors Geometry - Partner or Group (haven't decided) Geometry vocabulary activity.  You can read about it here.  Students take turns describing a diagram and the partners try to draw it only using the description.  The skeleton sheet is here.  I have to add points and labels.  
• Updated weekly Bellringer sheets.  I've used weekly bellringer sheets for as long as I'm teaching.  At the beginning, they would just be composed of problems that were warm-ups for the daily lesson.  Usually those "Check Skills" at the beginning of each section or the spiral review problems at the end of each problem set in my textbook.  A few years ago, I decided to rethink my bellringers.  I LOVED what @algebrainiac1 was doing with her weekly bellringer sheets and modeled mine after hers.  You can read about what I did here (in my first ever blog post....5 posts ago).  Then I read about how she was going to change hers to a two-week rotation and thought it would be a great idea to do that for my Algebra 1 class that I is a two-period block class for the first half of the year.  I'm not sure if I'm going to do it as a two-week rotation or have them do the week 1 bellringer for 1st period and the week 2 for 2nd period.  Here's my finished product.
• High Fives every day - What a GREAT idea!!!  I start school in two weeks and I am beyond excited to start this simple way to make students feel welcome in my classroom.  You can read about it here.
• New lesson plan format - I totally stole this idea from @algebrainiac1.  You can read her post about it here.  Totally LOVE the Table of Contents add-on for Google Docs.  I've used a Google Spreadsheet for my lesson plans for the past few years and I loved that I could embed it on my Homework Helpline for my students so that posting homework daily isn't something I can ever forget about.  I have my lesson plans all set up for the year, so it is a go, but I'm not sure I am going to love it as much as my spreadsheet.  We'll see. 
• Music cues and music timer chrome extension - LOVE this from @chrisrime (http://t.co/Vk0Mh3tNR4).  He created a Musical Timer Chrome Extension that I'm going to use to automatically play music every day except Wednesdays.  We have a different schedule on Wednesdays, so I need to figure out a plan B.
• #teach180 - because I have always wanted to join #180blog and blog every day, but I'm just don't think it will work, but taking a picture a day is definitely doable.
• BLOG!!!!  I really want to....  I took tons of pictures in my classroom over the last few years with every intention of blogging about what I was doing, but somehow they never made it here (obviously since this is only post 2 after a two year break!).  I need to think of blogging as my own personal reflection tool.  I can't help feeling somehow inadequate in the blogging department because I don't feel like I have a whole lot of original ideas to share, just reflections of ideas that I stole from somewhere else (actually, MOST of them come from the other amazing math teachers I follow in the #MTBoS).  

Trying my hand at blogging...again.

With 2 of 3 completely inspiring and motivating (seriously) In-service days under my belt, I've decided it's time to get into this blogging thing for real.....


Ok, so that is the blog post I started LAST YEAR!!!  I never finished it.  So, I guess it's always a good thing to try and try again, right?

The start of the school year for me is about two weeks away with student day one in three.  I have so many ideas swimming around in my head that I thought blogging about at least one of them might get me on the right track.  So, here goes.

I've been teaching Honors Geometry for quite a few years and have been thinking about how to go about the vocabulary I teach during the first week of school.  I've tried several ways to go about it, but I really hate that it becomes a lot of teacher-led lecture at the beginning of a year that I really want to be focused on collaboration and student-centered instruction.  So, I had an idea.  I have a list of terms from the first chapter that I think are important for students to know, especially the notation.  I created this form for student notes.  I want the students to focus on coming up with an understandable definition and the notation for each term.  After doing the first one or two with them to show them what I have in mind, I had the idea to divide the terms up and assign each group of students a few of them.  Then, using their book, the internet, etc, each group will come up with a way to fill in the information in the chart for each term.  They will put their ideas on post-it chart paper (LOVE this stuff!).  Then, I want to have a gallery walk where each group will have an opportunity to see what has been done for each term.  They will have an opportunity to add or comment on each term via post-it.  After all is said and done, the students will have an opportunity to fill in each of their charts with the information.

I don't know how it will go, but I think that giving the students this voice and ownership at the beginning of the course will set the tone that I'm looking for for the rest of the year.  Does anyone out there have any other creative ideas for vocabulary terms?  I'd love to hear from you!