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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Day 10 - When the Activity Works

So my classes did a cart sort activity today on piecewise functions. One of my goals this year is to improve my questioning techniques, especially during group tasks. I was very impressed with the way my students handled the activity and the way I was questioning the groups.  I'm not going to go into detail about the activity in this post ... i will save it for another time.  I mean it's 8:00 and I'm so ready for bed.  But I just wanted to throw it out there ... I HAD A GOOD MONDAY! They really do exist.

Hope you all had one too!

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Day 9 - Finally Friday

Whew! I really don't understand why the short weeks are always the longest! It makes no sense what-so-ever ... but I am tired. I have to work the football game tonight, so I'm just hanging out at school trying to get some random stuff organized. But what I really want is a nap!  :-)

Two weeks in and I'm a bit nervous. I think I have really great students, my formative assessments are going well, the students have very little questions, and for the most part are getting stuff done. This is very uncharacteristic of classes I have had in the past. I'm scared that I'm not seeing something and that my first test scores are going to be baaaad. Would it be too much to think this early in the semester that I might actually be doing something right?  LOL!

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was on tv last night.  It's one of those movies (or any movie in the series) that I just can't pass up when I'm flipping channels ... no matter how many times I've seen it.

Have a good weekend all!

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Day 8 - Domain and Range

Before I give my Math 3 students their first test, I have a few more review topics to go over. Today was Domain and Range. I combined ideas from a bunch of talented bloggers, and a worksheet of graphs, and made a card stack activity. (I'm not sure where the graphs came from. When I figure it out I will up-date the post.)

    

I made 14 cards: one side has graphs and the other side has domain and range. I used interval notation for the domain and range because most of my Math 3 students haven't been exposed to it yet. Students spread out the cards on their desk with the domain/range side up, and then they had to flip over one card to look at the graph.

Then they had to find the domain and range of that graph from the 13 cards left.

Once that card was found, they flipped it over on top of the first graph to reveal a new graph. With the new graph they repeat the process: find the domain and range, take the card, flip it over.

The last graph should match the domain and range on the bottom of the stack.

I tried giving my 2nd and 3rd blocks the instructions on the card sort all at once. After I handed out the cards, many still didn't know what to do so I ended up repeating myself. For my 4th block, I handed out the cards first and walked through the set up with them. That seemed to work better.

If you want these cards click here. It is a Word document ... feel free to edit as needed for your classroom.

Almost Friday!

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Day 6 - Bored Already?

How do you make a lesson on solving absolute value equations and inequalities not boring? It's only the 6th day of class and my students are falling asleep. I LOVE my interactive notebooks and doing math puzzles/games with my students to get them to practice ... but I need some variety. I do card sorts, card stacks, dominoes, galleries, and even a version of concentration (memory). Is there something I'm missing that would be a good fit for absolute equations and inequalities?

Oh, and by the way ... I really do know how to count. I missed day 5 due to our school losing internet, an impending storm, any my ability to forget school things when I get home.  I swear there is this memory draining force field surrounding my house because it happens all the time!  Anyway, when I made the goal to blog every school day, I really knew I would miss some ... reality check!

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Day 3 - Really Long ... Day 4 - Much Worse

I was so proud of myself for posting two days in a row. I figured my streak would last a bit longer though. Oh well!

Yesterday I had to work the JV football game and was at the field until 8:30. I hate days like that ... you know, the ones that feel like they will never end! And then today, I don't know why, felt so much longer even though I was home by 5:30. The first week of school should NEVER be a full week.  I'm exhausted and it's only day four!!

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Day 2 - The Stress of 34's

On the first day of class, I typically go over some of the class policies and/or procedures and then do a little "get-ta-know-ya" sort of activity. On the second day of class this year I decided to do a couple of group activities in order to highlight some group norms displayed in my classroom (thanks again to Sarah at mathequalslove). Like Sarah, in previous years I had norms like this  posted and pretty much assumed (wrongly assumed) that the students would read and follow them. Yea ... not so much. So I am following her lead and trying to show the students what some of these things should look like in a group setting. While in reality this did work great, and I'm happy with the way my students handled the activities, the stress of trusting that many students work on something on their own had my body rebelling. See, I have 3 classes of 34 students, in a room comfortably built for maybe 25. I know there are teachers with way more students, but this is the most I have ever had in my classes. I'm definitely not used to it ... my self-diagnosed OCD, mixed with years of built up control issues were seriously tested today!

I think I passed though!  :-)

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Day 1 - A Fresh Start

I'm back! Well, I was never really here to begin with, I guess. But one of my goals this year is to blog on a regular basis, and I'm serious this time!! I'm thinking, maybe if I make my goal stricter ... like "Blog Every School Day" instead of "Blog Twice a Week" ... then maybe I will be more motivated. Can't be any worse!

First ... I LOVE my WELCOME sign (thanks to Sarah at mathequalslove).  I got many complements on it at Open House and walking down the hall you definitely know what room is mine!

I gave myself a pep-talk this morning ...
   "This year is going to be so much better than last year."
   "Don't worry about things you cannot change."
   "Have fun!"
   "You can dooooo it!!!"
I think it worked. Aside from the fact that I have the biggest classes ever in my 15-year teaching career, I have very good feelings about them.  Fingers crossed anyway!

I hope everyone who started school today had a good day!  One down ... 89 to go!

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