Logical Poetry

Monday through Wednesday we worked on dividing fractions, yesterday we did distributive property, and today we had a quiz. It took many of my students the whole period to answer 6 questions, and they didn't do as well as I'd like. I know that we need to spiral and review and they'll do corrections, but it's hard not to beat myself up about it. I continued to love my warmups, and I finally got to do the clothesline! I just had them do numbers 1-10 just to discuss placement & spacing, but I think it went really well! My 4th period especially, because they worked as a whole class to get placement & spacing done without me directing them. I also really, really love my Chromebook. I've actually started to use it to lesson plan. (Sorry to my millions of planners I bought this year. Also, yes husband, you told me so) I really wish I'd had it before the school year started because I don't think I would have felt the pull of the Happy Planner qu...

This was a pretty good week! Another long, busy one though. I had back to school night, and so did all 3 of my kids. Declan, my youngest, had his the same night that I had mine! All 3 of my kids also have soccer practice, so every night this week we've been busy with something. I also did a 5k this weekend in San Diego, which was good because I got to spend the weekend with awesome coworkers, but also took away from some of my beginning of the year planning time.   I also had to be out this week for personal reasons, so it's just been a bit chaotic. I feel like I'm doing too much and not enough at the same time. I thought I'd be able to get ahead today but found myself still at work at 3:30, unable to really accomplish anything so I came home. I do feel like with doing the table folders, there's more pressure to have all of the handouts ready ahead of time, and I haven't been able to do a good job of that. I'm really hoping next week (and future weeks...

Man, what a week! I've never started school on a Monday before as a teacher. Our school district starts on a Thursday, and so I have always started on a Thursday. I always thought it was a little weird, but now I get it. I totally get it. This has been the longest week ever  and I have blisters on my poor little toes. It's been really good, though! I'm working on building connections with all of my students (just shy of 200) by using the name tents from  Sara Van Der Werf . It's going so well, students are asking me all kinds of questions and I get to know them better as well! The only problem is, it takes a long time  to write all of the responses. Like, way more time than I thought. I also wish I had used cardstock because regular paper is just a little bit  too flimsy But, I think they're going to be worth it. I also used Sara's  100 numbers  task the first day of school, which was amazin g . The top response I got on Monday was "...

The first day got pushed back due to the Holy Fire burning near a nearby community. Many staff members were under mandatory evacuation, and the air quality was so low that many of the surrounding districts were forced to close. So instead of starting today, Thursday August 9, we're starting on Monday, August 13. So, instead of talking about the first week of school, it's the week leading up to the first week of school.  Our district-wide professional development was lead by the wonderful folks at CUE , with an awesome keynote by Jon Corippo  about how there's no such thing as average. Averages tell us about the group, but never about individuals. This was definitely something I needed to hear, because my state test results were not what I was hoping for, on average, but looking at individuals was inspiring. We played a Quizizz on Nintendo, and I'm totally going to use Quizizz multiples times in a lesson. Students have always tried to "do better" by l...

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...

The week kicked off talking about misconceptions about the equal sign. I can tell you for certain, my 6th graders have answered this kind of question with d. They see that equal sign as "oh, that's where the answer goes!" and don't seem to give it a second thought. Usually when that happens I don't know how to make them see   and understand why that's not the right answer, but we watched a video where the teacher didn't correct the misconception right away, instead she wrote the incorrect answer on the board and then showed the students other equations such as 7 = 3+4, and 6 = 6+0, then 5 = 4+1, and revisited the original problem. It was very well done and made me really rethink how I handle misconceptions in the classroom. My instinct is to try to correct it, but the definite theme in TEEM this year is, it's okay to let a problem "marinate." We did work with the hundreds chart, too, which to be honest, I didn...

First day of TEEM! Off to a great start learning about how students need agency to be fully invested in mathematics, and many students lose agency when they have a negative mathematics identity. I know I see this a lot in my classes, so my goal this year is going to be to make sure that they have agency. One way we learned we can give them agency is with storytelling, thanks to teachers from the UCLA Lab School . Give the students a picture and have them discuss what they notice and what they can count in the picture. Pictures can come from anywhere, as long as they can provoke discussion and mathematics. The best part, I think, is that the students create the story, and create the math question. The math is left blank so students can choose "just right" numbers, allowing them to differentiate on their own. The presenters said if you know your students are choosing numbers that are too low for them  you can ask them if those are really their ...

This is my last summer with TEEM  so I figure it's a good time to go over what I've learned with INBs (Interactive Notebooks) in the middle school math classroom. Top thing: It's a struggle to get the feedback done. Research shows that feedback, not grades are best for student learning, but it's hard to fit feedback on notebooks in every day in the middle school. I know the elementary teachers have said it's a challenge as well. Even just stamping each notebook takes up a lot of time, sometimes I accidentally stamp when I don't mean to, etc. I do not  like to collect them. I tried collecting them this past year and felt exhausted just looking at the stack of notebooks. I also don't like taking them during quizzes/tests because the point is to give them feedback before they're tested. Basically, I still haven't found the perfect solution for giving feedback in notebooks. One thing I am going to try this year is having them complete anything we...

I've been reading a lot of good ideas on #MTBoS this summer, which I think will really help my organizational issues. It costs a bit of money, but I think if it helps it'll be worth it. First up is table folders . I always have issues remembering to pass back students work, and getting stuff back quickly. In my ideal world, I'd have enough time to pass stuff out to tables in between classes, but we only have 3 minute passing periods and I can never pass out work and get to the door in time. I went back and forth trying to decide if I should get paper (cheaper) or plastic (more durable but more expensive). I ultimately went with cheaper, because the Dollar Tree had a pack of 6 for $1, in 6 different colors. I'm going to use 1 color per period so it'll be easier to keep track of. I'm currently trying to decide how to organize the folders. Should I get a magazine file holder and leave them on the table groups, or put them elsewhere and have the resource manager o...

I went to the CSDiscoveries conference in Riverside, and I really enjoyed it. The people were all friendly and the activities were fun and informative. However, on the drive home I got to thinking about how much I really learned, and what the schedule would be for the week. The majority of it is set up for people who have never taught CSD before, and I taught it last year. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go to the PD last summer because I was told I was teaching the class after the deadline for it, and I wasn't able to get a response from code.org about applying late. I talked with my husband and decided that I would email the coordinator and ask if I can still participate in the school year PD on Saturdays even if I don't finish out the summer and he said yes! I'm very excited about that because I think I will learn a lot from talking to other teachers who have already taught the lessons and we can learn and grow together. This gives me more room to dive deep into les...

I realized I was very vague with my goal to blog before. Once or twice a week isn't specific enough, and I fell behind. Then I feel the annoyance with myself for not being perfect  and dread blogging again. It's not as though I have anyone dependent on me to blog, but I do feel like writing and reflecting is good for my own growth as a teacher and as an individual. So, starting this week, my goal is to blog every Friday as a reflection for the week. Good or bad, it's going to go on this blog.  This upcoming week I will be going to professional development for Computer Science: Discoveries , and then the two weeks following I'll be going to the TEEM Summer Institute . I'm also working on my master's degree so I'll definitely have plenty to blog about in the next month before school starts. 

Wednesday, my district opened up a personalized professional development system, and I've been working through it. Shockingly, I'm a bit competitive and have been enjoying proving what I know, and digging in to learn what I don't. It made me realize that I haven't been working to help my students learn as well as I could. I've let myself slide into old habits that haven't been as beneficial to me & my students. I struggled a lot with station rotation last year, and decided to go back to a more traditional format, at least for a bit while I've been learning how to use the curriculum from Illustrative Mathematics . But, I haven't been using best practices. I'm a bit bored and so are the kids. I've got kids who are struggling and kids who are way above grade level, and I'm struggling myself to meet them all where they are while sticking to the pacing. So, now after working through the Blended Learning Module, I've got a lot of though...