First day of school, the aftermath

Today was a great day!

The kids loved the aluminum boat activity. I'm not sure if I would ever do it in a 1st period class again (3 minute passing periods are a bit ridiculous for stuff like this) but if I had this as the last class of the day or before lunch/prep, then yes.

Doing the visual pattern with my Math 6 was also great. I had a few kids tell me that it was their favorite class of the day and that they had fun. I did have quite a few students who went against their initial judgment of what they noticed because they thought "This is math class, I can't say it looks like a castle." Yes you can! Do it. I think it looks like a castle too! Yes there's math in it but that doesn't mean you can't put down the other stuff you notice.

I realized while talking to my husband last night, my main goal for the year is to instill a love of math for my students. I really don't care about test scores too much (I mean I do, but...). If a kid leaves my classroom realizing they actually enjoy math, that's what I really care about. That's why I'm a math teacher.

Comments

PD Bonanza

Shown here: something I actually got from TPT and the pattern block blackline The past 3 weeks have been busy, busy. I had TEEM (Teaching Early Mathematics to English Learners) for 8 days. We focused on fractions, and I got some really good info about teaching fractions to my students. Pattern blocks, fraction strips, and number lines forever! I made my kids at home do some of the activities too. Then I went to the AVID Summer Institute. It was a good reminder why I need to do notes in my class, in addition to the fun, hands on stuff. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to include the summary & questions in the composition book I get for TEEM, but I've seen a few examples online I'll try to replicate & modify as needed. I've heard a lot of good quotes, but my favorite has been one I heard at AVID: "You can't do everything, so do 1 or 2 things well." It often feels like I am expected, either by others or myself,

How I Plan & Reflect

I've tried a lot of different methods for planning & reflecting on my plans over the years, and I'm still trying to figure it out. Last year I used the Happy Planner for Teachers , and I loved it because there are a lot of stickers and I could add my own pages, basically customize it however I wanted. But, it was very large and I ended up not using it a few months into the school year. So Pretty So Unused I'm still very tempted by the new packages they have for teacher planners but am holding firm in not buying it because it will cause guilt and shame when it falls out of use. I did get a Passion Planner to keep track of time sensitive things, and am going to give myself a bit more grace about not filling it out. It'll be more personal/to do listy than lesson planning. So shiny! Mostly blank the week before school starts. There's things I need to add but shh let's ignore that right now I'm ALSO going to be using Common Curricul

Planning for Back to School August 2020

Me in my laundry room/office This year has been so different from any other years. SO much uncertainty. I wanted to be super prepared so I read many, many books and articles and Twitter lists over the summer. I participated in webinars and Zoom meetings and tried to put what I found in one place but my brain doesn't really work that way, so I have some stuff in Google Keep, some stuff in Wakelet, some stuff written down. In the end I still felt unprepared for the first day of school. I have had so much anxiety in the last few days. I did set up assignments for my students before the first day of school. I used Howie Hua's Math Autobiography slides, and some of my students started working on them immediately. It's already creating amazing discussions and bonding between my students. The first day of school went well for me. I didn't plan much, I just shared a couple of slides about myself and then had my students do a community circle . It worked out well because it l

Logical Poetry

Search This Blog