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...