Each year I've tried to be a little more present online as a teacher. I'm more of a lurker than a poster and here I am, yet again, trying the #MTBoSBlaugust challenge. My goal is to blog 4 times before my school year starts on August 26th. I figured my first post would be a little self love since this has been a BIG year in my life both professionally and personally. Here's what I've accomplished since last August: 1) Took on the role of co-team leader for the 8th grade team as a 4th year teacher. 2) I got engaged in November to my loving fiance, Nick! 3) Got back into theater/drama as I produced my first show at my middle school in 6 weeks this Spring! 4) Finished my Master's degree from American College of Education in Curriculum and Design. 5) I bought a house with Nick! I close next Friday! 6) I said YES to my dress YESTERDAY! Whew! By the way.. I know Nick is the one because he let me be an absolute number nerd when picking our wedding date. And I'm sharing it because I know #MTBos will appreciate it. I'll be tying the knot on October 10, 2020. That's 10.10.2020. Now for my end of summer to do list. With closing next week, I can't even begin to think about preparing for school since there's packing to do. I love making to do lists because it helps me organize the chaos and gives me a focus. I may add more items before I cross things off but it works.
So, in no particular order, here's what I'd like to get accomplished before August 26th. 1. MOVE and clean. 2. There's one bedroom in the new house I need to paint. It's currently BRIGHT PINK. 3. Create my master Interactive Notebook for each of my preps for the year (I'll post more about that revamping soon). 4. Spend 2-3 days at school setting up my classroom and copying. I have a colleague that copied all of her INB pages for the 1st semester in the summer and #GOALS. It saved her so MUCH TIME. And I don't want to worry about copying when every other teacher in the building is copying. 5. Enjoy some more ME time, preferably at the beach.
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For this week's blog post I'm going to talk about 2 ways that I help keep students organized in the classroom when dealing with interactive notebook. I love interactive notebooks but they are definitely something that needs some managing and organization. Where are materials kept? How can students access them? What if a student is absent on the day of a new page? First I want to share a method of organizing materials that I implemented last year to great success. Students already receive numbers in my classroom for calculator use. So, in addition to using their number for a calculator, the number also corresponds to a pencil pouch on the wall. Each pencil pouch contains one of the following: scissors, glue stick, pencil, eraser, highlighter, 6-inch ruler, dry erase marker and dry eraser. Items that are easily lost (pencil, eraser, ruler) are labeled with their number. Even though the pencils were labeled with a bright pink or green duct tape flag, I still lost many. It's a never ending battle, right? Besides the loss of pencils, this system worked fabulously. I had four classes (this year, 5) so the pouch itself is shared among 4 or 5 students which makes tracking down lost materials very easy. It also helped solve the problem of my desks eating supplies. Some students even got into the habit of grabbing the pouch every day as they walked in, regardless of whether we needed them or not. The second picture shows what the wall looks like after all the pouches are removed (in use). I found out the hard way that these labels are necessary after the first use last year when 24 students were all trying to hang up their pouches on a blank wall. The numbers give each student a place and makes putting them back easy. I'm trying something new to help organize extra INB copies especially when students are absent. Last year I used these hanging folders to hold worksheets/notes pages for absent students but the problem was that the INB pages would slide down and students had no idea they were there. Take two: Sorry for the slightly blurry picture!
I'm still using the file folders but I'll be using Sarah Carter's "While you Were Out" template. These forms will be filled out by either myself or another student and stuck in the corresponding folder. Full size worksheets will also be housed in these folders. All INB pages however, will go into these binders, one for each prep. This also helps out my co-teacher and paras looking for extra copies of INB pages. I'm also going to try to keep a master copy of the table of contents for each prep to help students stay organized. Since this is something new I'm trying, I'll post an update with how it goes. The first day of school is rapidly approaching and while I'm the type of teacher that has thought about the upcoming school year all summer long, my 1st day plans are still not 100% finalized yet.
Of two things I am entirely sure I am doing: 1)Order of Operations Seat Finder I used this last year and I loved it! Students are doing math as soon as they walk in my door. I hand students a question card as they walk in the door and they need to simplify the expression and find the corresponding seat number. Some students found their seats quickly and others struggled. Students naturally helped each other out. I only had one instance where a student simplified incorrectly, but it led to some good mathematical discourse and error analysis on day 1! 2) Sara VanderWerf's Name Tents (linked here) I did not use these last year as I knew most of my students from the previous year. I'm excited to use these this year and really commit to strong relationships with all of my students from the very beginning. I like that they can get started on this as soon as they find their seat, too. Here's where I have options. I know I want to do math. I know I want to engage and encourage all students. I don't know what that looks like yet. Some ideas I've tossed around:
Which do you prefer? What other suggestions do you have? It's the start of August and that means it's time to start to really think about the upcoming school year. Currently, I'm splitting my energy between classroom decoration mode and actual teaching preparation and I thought it was as good a time as any to pick up blogging again (everything seems easy in August, right?).
Anyways, here goes, here are my goals for the 2017-2018 school year. 1. Reflect. Every day. In writing. Yeah. I know. Ambitious. I'm setting my bar low and saying that a one sentence reflection is better than no reflection. And who knows, maybe this will help with more consistent blogging? 2. Stay organized. Instead of tossing extra copies into one pile and originals in another (sometimes even the same pile) and sorting through them each vacation, I'm hoping to at least create piles for each prep (I have 2). I also want to create crates for all of the INB extras for each prep so students and paras and coteachers and myself can find them easily. Along with this, I'd like to have lesson plans and copies made for at least the entire week if not two weeks in advance. 3. Relationships. It seems obvious. I want to pay particular attention to the 20 students I'll have in homeroom every day. Those 5 minutes are hard to fill with meaningful interactions. Suggestions are appreciated! 4. Flexible thinking This seems to be the guiding focus for my SLO this year (student learning objective). Still formulating what exactly this will look like and how to write a SLO surrounding it but I'm excited to explore it with my students. Ideas include: a play/fidget table, mental math Mondays and which doesn't belong? Also open to suggestions here. Four seems like a good place to stop. I don't want to be completely overwhelmed in goals. I'm ready to #pushsend and jump back (and hopefully stay) into blogging this school year! I'm lucky enough to have a math paraprofessional push into my first period Intro to Algebra class almost every day. Seriously, she's the best. It's awesome to have another adult in the room to bounce ideas off of, model with and eventually have small groups with. On Friday she mentioned that she noticed that not only my students but students in other classes, grades and with other teachers continually struggle with the definitions of evaluate, simplify and solve. And let's be honest here, do we blame them? We're using interactive notebooks this year and we thought of putting a reference page in it. I tweeted the #MTBos and asked for help and then started scouring the internet for an INB page that would be helpful. No luck. I decided to create my own. Here's what I came up with. I don't have much experience with Publisher so I downloaded math=love's page for expression, equation and inequality (find her post about that here) and used that template. Since I want this to be a quick review, I added in the definitions and the students and I will come up with examples in class.
I'm not in love with the definition I found for simplify (the word condense is what's off for me) but I think it'll work for a quick review. The editable publisher file and non-editable PDF files are linked here. Well, I had my first PD day of this school year and my second year is off to a great but tiring start! I was so not ready for my 5:30 am wake-up call this morning! Summer construction meant no time in my classroom before today. I'll post before and after pictures of my classroom either tomorrow or the following day but I wanted to share some highlights from this first day back. I probably spent too much time on this when I could have been decorating bulletin boards but it was intensely satisfying having one project done! I have four different types of colored paper: heavy card stock, light weight card stock, copy paper and construction paper. And now they're all beautifully organized and sorted by color! This little guy was in our PD folders. My school is making a move towards standards based grading. We're not implementing it this year but we are preparing for the shift next year. It was thoughtful of our administers to include this guy-they even laminated them! But..... I might print out a bolder one on more colorful card stock (now more accessible) to hang in my classroom (mathequalslove has a great one here. We'll see how productive my day is tomorrow...
Well, I'm facing the unfortunate reality of not being able to get into my classroom before the start of school. The school is installing an HVAC system and my classroom will be ready sometime next week. However, I am going on one last vacation and coming back the day before my first staff day. I was hoping to get in before I leave on Monday but it hasn't happened. So, I find myself crafting a to do list for those two staff days when I have classroom time and for the additional time I'll spend there after my meetings.
And, here it is: 1. Print my new posters. I don't have access to a printer or laminator at home and all of my colored paper is in a box at school so this is a priority when I return. 2. Rearrange my furniture. I've spent countless hours planning on where I'm putting tables an bookshelves and filing cabinets in my not-to-scale drawings over the summer. Hoping that my visual reasoning didn't mislead me and armed with a tape measure, I'll rearrange my room to best fit the my students' and my own needs. 3. Finalize my seating chart. I have a more-than vague idea of how I want my desks grouped but won't know if it works until I can physically move them around since I wasn't operating with a scale drawing. 4. Assemble student supply pouches. This is probably going to be my biggest, most time-consuming project. I want to label each individual item that goes into the pouches so if I find one on the ground I know which pouch it belongs in. I'm debating whether to have my homeroom help me out with this on the first day.... There's probably more I'm forgetting right now, but this will keep me busy those first two days. One of the things that frustrated me the most last year was that students had no ownership over classroom supplies and therefore did not take care of them. On normal days I was efficient at policing students to put away colored pencils and glue sticks but I dreaded coming back from being out because I knew there would be supplies all over the place. And, I had to fight the never ending battle of digging into student desks where to find the missing calculators, glue sticks, rulers and scissors. (I wish I had pictures of my desks to show you, but imagine those desks from elementary school where you can store your supplies inside the desk itself.) My first year, I didn't miss a day of school until the end of January for a professional development day and didn't have a sick day until March. (Yes, you read that right!) School hasn't even started yet and I know of three days that I will be out of the classroom for professional development in the first semester alone. So, this procedure is being implemented in part to combat the mess I faced last year when returning from days out. I first read about this procedure while researching for a TEAM module last year. TEAM is the mentor program that Connecticut has implemented to help new teachers. It's mandatory for new teachers with 5 modules designed to be completed in 2 years. I first came across this idea on the blog purpleprontopups.wordpress.com via pinterest. I had faced a similar struggle of tons of class time being wasted with passing out and collecting materials in addition to the mess. I bought a set of 24 pencil pouches on amazon for $24.99 and labeled then as such. My plan is to include scissors, glue stick, pencil, eraser, highlighter, and some markers or colored pencils in each pouch also labeled with the number. Each student will be assigned a number that will be used for these pouches as well as our graphing calculators. Instead of attaching these to the desks, I plan to make a bulletin board out of it. I will teach students to grab their pouch and calculator at the start of class and that all must be returned before anyone can leave. Having it on a bulletin board makes it so I can easily see who hasn't returned their materials yet. I also like the clear fronts and the bright colors of the pouches. Unfortunately, I bought these before receiving my class rosters and found out that one of my classes has 25 students in it. :( So, #25 will have to deal with a lonely black case I have in my classroom. I foresee some problems already with this system but I am excited to see how it works in my classroom! I will post an update sometime in September when we've been using them regularly. I've been debating for most of the summer on whether or not to start a blog. I love reading blogs (Sarah Carter's mathequalslove is an inspiration!) and I love the idea of documenting successes and failures in a permanent, public way. Historically, however, I have been AWFUL at keeping journals. Obviously, I've decided to give it a try, hoping that readers will keep me accountable! haha! I've spent a lot of time reading blogs, twitter posts and generally exploring the #MTBoS community over the past couple of weeks. I'm in awe of some of the teachers' creativity and slightly jealous of teachers setting up their classrooms! My school has been hard at work ALL summer putting in an HVAC system (hallelujah!) and has therefore restricted access to the school until recently. My classroom is not ready for me yet so I'm anxiously awaiting the email telling me can finally unpack the boxes and prepare for my second year! Until then, I'm stockpiling my spoils and making sure all my procedures and plans for the first two weeks are ready to go! To finish off this first blog post, I wanted to list my goals for the year. I'll do a post later reflecting on my fantastic first year, but these are the three areas I know I want to work on this year: consistent start of class routines, intervention and extension plans and meaningful, productive group work.
Goal 1: Successfully integrate meaningful daily warm-ups and journals that will provide formative assessment for both of us. Goal 2: Use the daily intervention/extension time intentionally to both provide support for struggling students and give all students the opportunity to learn math beyond the standards. Goal 3: Teach students how to work in a group and use group work to have successful student-led lessons. |
AuthorI teach 8th grade math in Connecticut. This is my 3rd year teaching! Archives
August 2017
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