Skip to main content

Daily Warmups

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) will be better.

On to the fun stuff! I already put some on Twitter but I've really been enjoying my setup for warmups (so far). I made a note to myself in Google Keep so I'd remember because I always make these plans and then forget. I think I may change Reflection Friday to Notice/Wonder Friday though, because that's what I did today after being out Thursday.

 

I started Number Talks with the first set of dots, and basically got these 4 every period (I only remember to snap a picture during 5th though). I was amazed at the students who split it in half and came up with the expression using halves! I don't think I've ever had that before.

For Today's Number Tuesday, again my students amazed me with their creativity. Some of the students were shy about sharing their "simpler" expressions but I made sure to let them know all expressions are appreciated and valued. I did try to write out the multiplication with parentheses because students usually struggle with remembering that parentheses are multiplication, they tend to add. I also had a student who kept trying to use a square root, even though square roots aren't something students do until 8th grade. He didn't get it right, but we worked together to write an expression that would work. He then was on Khan Academy working on square roots and cube roots on his own, which made me unbelievably happy. 
Wednesday we did Which One Doesn't Belong, and we had some great discussions about the vocabulary with shapes. We just talked so I didn't write anything down on the board, but I made sure we talked about the reasons each ones doesn't belong because I know from past years that students tend to think there is just one right answer.

Thursday I was out, so we didn't get to do the Clothesline math, but I'm excited to try it next week. Today on Friday I didn't have them do a reflection but I had them do a Notice/Wonder on multiples since we're working on LCM.

I'm still struggling to fit reflections in at the end of the period, which is why I had wanted to do Friday Reflections, but I'm just going to work harder at fitting it in at the end of the period. Using the timers has worked out really well on time management so far, but it still feels like there's not enough time in each day.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

Math Professional Workshops

 I am very fortunate that my school district invests in training teachers. For the past two school years, we have had optional  professional workshops in the winter and summer. There are multiple days with choices available for different grade levels. Last year, they were all separated by grade band. This year, there's more overlap between the grade levels on different days. So yesterday was 3-6, today was 4-6, and tomorrow is 6-8. I didn't realize that I could have also gone yesterday, but it worked out anyway because yesterday was my own kids' first day of the second semester.  I am so glad they made the switch, because previously there was minimal involvement from people at my middle school, and we are the only middle school in the district. So today I got to work with not just teachers from my school, but from all of the elementary schools. It always helps to have additional perspectives from both sides. It also helps that everyone who was there signed up to be there. E

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