NCCTM 2018

I feel very privileged to have been able to attend the NCCTM conference again, but this year I went as a presenter.  This is/was a huge deal for me.  I always thought presenters were people who were "pros" at what they were presenting on, but after attending just one conference before I realized that was just not true.  Very knowledgeable teachers were just sharing with others something they are passionate about ... something they found that may or may not be helpful to everyone but somebody is going to love it.  I realized I can do this too!

I was really nervous.  I gave presentations before, but nothing at this level.  I was worried no one would show up ... I was worried there would be a hundred people there ... I was worried I would talk too fast and run out of material, or talk to slow and not have enough.  As it was, I had an excellent group and my timing couldn't have been more perfect!  I heard some positive feedback and I hope attendees got something out of what I had to say.

My presentation was on Interactive Notebooks in HS Math.  I got some requests for my Math 3 notebook materials, which I will gladly give out, but all the way home I was mulling over the best way to get these items shared.  I have said before how much I truly want to blog more, that I love writing them, but time usually gets away from me and before I know it a whole year has past. Now I have a really good reason to start again.  I've decided to post my Math 3 Interactive Notebook pages here ... starting tomorrow!

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My First NCCTM Conference

Last week I had the opportunity to attend my first NCCTM conference.  Although I was the only one from my county (that I knew of), I felt like I was attending a family reunion thanks to all the wonderful people from other counties that I have met through PD groups over the last 3 years.  The sessions I went to were informative and I came home with the wheels spinning.

One thing I that has been totally occupying my mind lately is Twitter.  I have been a lurker for many years, following many #MTBoS members, reading about their amazing ideas, and "lovingly borrowing" ideas that blew my mind.

But I have never tweeted.

I never felt like I had anything to contribute of my own.  I had thought about it a couple times, but what to tweet?  Nothing really moved me.

Then NCCTM happened ... and the Twitter Room!  This sound totally silly as I am sitting here typing, but I was inspired to give the idea of posting a tweet a little more thought.  Now this morning, on a rare day off, as I sit at my computer to catch up on my reading list of blogs, I see a blog post from Lauren Baucom (@LBmathemagician; @NCCTM1) about her experience setting up the Twitter Room for NCCTM17!  Lauren is awesome ... I have know her for a couple years being a part of the Sandhills Math Leaders group ... and she is totally inspiring.

So my first tweet may be way closer than I think!  :)

It has been 1 year, one month, and 19 days since I blogged last.  But I think about it every day!  Sad, I know, but as much as I love the idea of my blog I just don't ever feel like I have the time.  Maybe that will change soon too!

Happy Veteran's Day!

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Day 17 - My Life

Today, I had two meetings during my planning period, school pictures, a committee meeting after school, and then an online "chat" after that. I also have two meetings (right around the same time) after school tomorrow. Oh yea ... don't forget that progress reports were due to go out Monday, emergency sub plans are due tomorrow, my PDP and self-assessment needed to be done yesterday, and I'm giving a test tomorrow that I haven't created yet.

And I'm trying to blog everyday, and keep up my student website ... AND I have to teach!

This is my life!

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Day 15 - We Must Adapt

I taught a lesson on Transformations of Functions today. I had a dream over the weekend of having the kids do an exploratory lesson using Desmos ... and the students learned, and I was the best math teacher ever. But alas, I woke up and realized I still don't have enough Chromebooks for everyone. <SIGH!!>

Instead I walked my students through exploring transformations using the TI-84s ... which is still knowledge needed, but it was so painful! Students were bored. Some tried sleeping through class, some still didn't know where the "x"-button is, some had to be told to open and turn on the calculator.

"This would go much smoother if you turned the calculator on."

For next semester I am definitely coming up with an independent activity for this lesson. It really is the perfect topic ... and I did entirely too much work today.

Hope you all had a good Monday!
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Day 14 - Use Your Math Words

One of my many goals this school year is to incorporate more "activate prior knowledge" strategies to my lessons. Yesterday, to introduce my lesson on Key Features of Graphs, I started the class with a set of graphs from WODB.

I had my students look at all four graphs and silently come up with one graph that doesn't belong with the other three, and WHY they feel that way. When they had their graph, they were supposed to give me a thumbs-up. Then I asked for students to volunteer their choice and explanation.

Quadratics is a review from Math 2 so I picked a group of graphs that were all parabolas. I really hoped some of my students would recognize the key features that they studied last year.

In each of my classes, all four choices were picked by someone, and really good "Math Words" were used in the explanations! I heard x- and y- intercepts, vertex, axis of symmetry, quadrants, and one student remembered that an upside-down parabola meant that the function had a negative x^2 term.  YAY!!

The only bad thing ... the fourth graph doesn't have arrows on the ends of the parabola, and my students focused more on that then on something else. I let that explanation go, but also asked for another reason from the rest of the class. Note to self: look for little things like that in the next one!

After the wonderful discussion to start off the class, relative minimum/maximum and increasing/decreasing intervals went a bit smoother, and the kiddos didn't freak out too bad when I had them find key features of some craaaazzzy graphs.

On a different note, I missed another day of blogging! I still figure I'm doing pretty well with 4 days a week.

Have a good weekend all!

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Day 12 - First Test of the Semester

I love test days! One whole day that I don't have to plan a lesson, organize an activity, make a powerpoint ... it's so heavenly.  But now I have to grade 100 tests.  YIKES!!

Our school just got 1-1 Chromebooks for the classroom. My plan is to set up a Google Classroom and give tests online (among other things). I'm in the learning phase when it comes to Google Classroom. I tend to go all "gung-ho" when I get introduced to something new, so I'm trying really hard NOT to do that. I don't want to overwhelm myself but I'm so excited to get it going. The hold-up is that my class sizes are 33, 33, and 34, and I have 30 Chromebooks. So until I get more, which I'm told should be soon, I'm still stuck doing everything paper/pencil. 

So I have packed up my tests and answer keys, and I'm heading home early to get some food and get comfy on the sofa. I hope the tests are as good as I think they will be. 

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Day 11 - Take Two

I began writing this post, had a couple of paragraphs, and then re-read it. I was sounding awful snarky. So much so that I just couldn't publish what I wrote. I had a day where what I thought was going to be an easy review lesson turned out to be torturous. Even in Math 3, those Juniors and Seniors do not remember middle school level math that has been drilled into their head every year. Stuff that I think students should be pros at by now. And I do this to myself every year.

I am in my 15th year of teaching high school math. I hope I will eventually learn that topics I think are going to be easy probably will not be.  Things I think students should know, they probably don't. If I just teach the lesson like it is the first time, maybe I will be super surprised when they get it quick, and then I can have a happy day.

Tomorrow is Test Day! Fingers crossed!

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