Funny Thing About Students

A few days ago,  I had new students in my classroom. I asked them to fill in a graphic organizer to tell me about themselves. Here were the highlights...

Potty Training is now a proud accomplishment for high school students... awesome.

The above question did have the most depressing responses. Accomplishment students were proud of... most said "Nothing"

Qualities of a good math teacher:  Pretty.

Going well....

The school year is in full swing now and I have been absolutely terrible at updating this blog. I continue to learn a lot each day from my students (and from the fellow teachers hooked into all the social media networks, Pintrest where would I be without you?)

My goal for the rest of the month and for the rest of the year really is to show you more pictures and post more regularly  This is more for me than for anyone out there reading. I think it's really important that I get my thoughts out so that I can remember them all for later. I miss the journaling that I had to do durring my time as a student teacher. In honor of that I will complete the post as the journal entry that would have corresponded with my day as a student teacher.

To answer the following questions:
What went well?  For whom?
What could have gone better? For whom?


Today was sort of a crazy day of emotions (okay so just a regular day). I was relaxed and the students were very excited about the fact that they hadn't had schol the previous day (SNOW DAY!). We still had work to do though. My first hour class in fact had to take a quiz today. They were not doing well on their proofs especially after the three day break. I have to do some more research into how to teach proofs effectively. My students just keep giving up on me. Not all of them. And some really come into their stride when we hit the triangle section of the book, but others just completely give. They can talk their way through it with my guiding questions but on their own they struggle.
I also had a surprise observation today. It was good fun in that I had some extra time when the principal came in today, luckily I already had a plan of what to do with the class time. I'm really getting into this whole algebra concept. I'll show you what we did today with our extra few minutes.

Double Bubble Map to Compare and Contrast Slope-Intercept Form and Point-Slope Form

My reconceptualizing of the class a few weeks ago has gone very well. Instead of being frustrated that students don't know the information already I have been trying to help them discover it. This is a challenge, but I'm trying to get them ready for a opening activity next chapter that is completely discovery based.

I love the way my  classroom structure is working for me and I'm finally getting a hang of this organization thing that is my classroom. Coming up with systems that work. Maybe that will be a post for tomorrow.  Life is good.

Student quote of the day:  "I don't think I was here when we covered most of this material on the quiz because I overslept for three days in a row."  No, no you weren't here....

What's working....

What's working:

Note taking time during my class. Students are quiet and engaged (most of the time).

Pulling popsicle sticks for answers to warm-up questions (holds all my students accountable, finally figured out the solution to this problem last week)

Walking around to check off students homework. I get more time to answer questions and I have to have at least some conversation with every one of my students each day.

Doing all homework grading at school. It's an amazing thing. I don't know why it's so wonderful but it definitely is.


What's not working:

The volume level in all of my classes during transition times. Most of this falls on me and making sure that students have worthwhile tasks to do while I switch from one activity to another. This also is an example of where my expectations were not set high enough at the beginning of the class.

Giving the most effective notes possible is not happening. Although my students are getting much better at using academic vocabulary, I need to be better at getting them notes in a more effective manner.  I want to have time for them to do examples or a meaningful activity before they get work time.

Having students write notes on summaries. I'm just not asking them to do this enough, but that will change next chapter. I just have to find a good way to grade them or motivate them to complete it. Graded notes?

What I'm not sure is working:

Guided notes. This is helpful for some students and in some of my classes, enough students are required to have them that I just make them for everyone. But they keep loosing them. I will need to come up with a better system for my notes next trimester. I'm six weeks in and about 3 weeks in to printing notes form some of my classes. I will get better at it and see how the rest of this term goes, as well as ask students their opinion about them as the term goes on.

Solving Inequalities

I'm finally getting to the point in the year where I can go home after school and not have to have to work on school work as much. I'm hoping to be able to spend more time blogging about my days. I have to vent and this seems like the perfect way to do it and to share my experiences.

I have an algebra class as well as some geometry classes.  Hopefully some topics will come up that will be helpful to people and maybe some others can help me learn too.

In my algebra class we've started working with solving inequalities.
I found this amazing lesson plan that I revamped for my class. I hope that it works for my students.

Here are some parts of the solving inequalities lesson that I just love!

http://www.nsa.gov/academia/_files/collected_learning/middle_school/pre-algebra/intro_solving_graph_inequal.pdf

Next mission: Making proofs tolerable for my geometry students
     I think that we are going to use pieces of proofs and have them put them together in the right order. I just have to figure out which format will work the best for this and some proofs that they will be able to complete.

Intro to proofs

Now as I begin to teach Geometry for the first time, it is terrifying. It has never been my favorite piece of mathematics, but then I know how the students feel that approach it apprehensively.

Today I introduced
conditionals, converses, inverses, and contraposatives.

These are very confusing words with very similar meanings so I devised this to help my students distinguish between the three.

Conditionals: original if-then statement

Converse: exchange the hypothesis and the conclusion
     "Conman"- Can't stay in one plate, they will get caught! Conmen must move places.

Inverse: Negate the hypothesis and the the conclusion
     "Infant" - Like a small child, says no to everything!

Contrapositive: Exchange and negate both the hypothesis and the conclusion
      "Conman's child" - If a conman had a child, they would have both of the above characteristics.


It's a way that helps me remember it. Hopefully it will help the kids.  I'll let you know.
-Teaching to learn and learning to teach

First days of school

I began my teaching career this week.  Overall it's been going pretty well.  First hour prep the first day was agonizing just waiting for the students to show up. I've been busy this week trying to catch up and figure out just what I need to do each day. It's been a little crazy but good.

When I went into staff trainings, it was actually a bit of a break from the regular pace of camp and since I didn't really slow down I was able to be extra productive. So far working to cure my procrastination has been paying off.

Classroom management was the part of this job that I was the most worried about but that seems to be going pretty well. The students for the most part are behaved and I even found out from one of the other teachers that I'm considered a "mean" teacher already. I hope it's not bad that I kind of like that.

The current problems I'm facing right now is trying to figure out how to approach a class that is talking a lot when they are not supposed be as well as still learning names. I wish I had popsicle sticks with names at the beginning of the week, but hopefully by next week I will be able to start using them.

So far that's the insights I have for you.

Just starting out.... learning to teach.