A Shift of All Sorts

 Since COVID, my blog remained silent. A lot has changed and shifted. We moved to another state. I have gone through a divorce and new marriage. My job has shifted from math to engineering and career management. We have faced a few challenges medically and with our kids that have resulted in a radio silence. 

Through all the changes…all the ups and downs, my classroom remains a great escape. My passion for my subject areas thrive and students find sanctuary.  My goal to make a classroom feel like students jumped on the bus with the Frizzle is always the end goal. Education and what we teach should inspire us to continue learning and growing. 

While my subject matter will focus on robotics and coding, it will remain through the heart of a mathematics educator. We will navigate subjects like AI and the battle with cell phone addictions. So buckle up and jump on for more magic and solutions. 

School is starting back soon!

I'm thrilled about a new year starting.  My focus this year hasn't really been on the classroom, it has been on management and lessons.  I am fortunate enough to have taught all of the courses I'm teaching in previous years!  I fell off last year (only one math class a semester doesn't give much time to focus on blogging about it).  But I'm back with a full math schedule.

Let's talk rules...

Ugh.  I hate thinking about the rules.  I know I want to keep them simple, but I always feel like I'm missing the million things I wish I could have posted, but they would become watered down.  So after a little contemplating what is important these are the rules that I came up with.

This year we have a new phone policy across the entire school for the cell phone jail.  I am stoked!!  This should cut back on referrals, but also keep me on my toes.  I should present A-game lessons.  This week I will be revealing another inspiration from this summer or a printable.  The graphic above was created using piktochart.com  It creates info-graphics that are pinterest worthy.  I want to do all my notes on their site.  I ended up getting the educator plan for $39.99/year.  Well worth it.

Elections made relevant

I'm sorry for posting this so late, but I realized that I need to teach something related to the elections taking place tomorrow or my lesson will fall flat tomorrow.  So how will I use math in the elections?  Data is live right now, so depending on when a student looks at a state will determine their outcome, especially for swing states.  We're going to use the information gathered from the exit polls .  My kids will do the math to show why each red state is red and each blue state is blue.  How?  We will multiply break down the votes by gender first.  Then, we will calculate the numbers for the two main candidates.  They will then color each state based on their findings.  We will then compare our maps to the one posted on social media.  We may even compare the maps of the different news stations and discuss the skews in data.  I will also want to prompt questions in regard to outliers and information that can skew the overall data collected (ie. voters that supported other candidates, the third party candidates, etc.)  I hope it turns out okay.  I will probably update this post with feedback in case you have school on Tuesday and would like to use this lesson. 

Beginning of the year review

We know as math teachers this is a vital time in our classroom.  To have an effective school year, we need to know the strengths and weaknesses of our students.  I always begin my school year without calculators.  I know insert the shock face here.  But I need to know how many of the basics are my students missing.  I have seniors that still don't know how to add and subtract integers.  I will be addressing how I hope to use my one-to-one classroom to help these students out in my class in a later blog.  So what do I review with my intermediate Algebra 1 students?

Identifying Real Numbers

I begin the notes with Math = Love's Real number chart.  I like it better than the circles, for some reason my kids get it better this way.  Then we move into the matching activity in class.  I use the one from the State of Virginia, but there is another on TpT in Jean Adams page.  From here we do a sorting worksheet for homework and some of the graphing from the sheet for classwork.  The next day we review and we then take a short quiz.

Adding Integers

Most students struggle with this at the high school when they come to us from the middle school.  I really make this my goal to make these rules stick.  I make plus/minus tiles as a manipulative.  The picture below shows an example of -3 + 5.  By lining up the ones that cancel out, it is easy for students to see the answers.  I also use the "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" song for integers.

Keeping a Positive Attitude

Sometimes all we can do is keep a positive outlook, especially in the teaching profession when it comes to things that are completely out of our control.  Maybe your are starting out the school year and you don't have enough desks for all of your students on your roster.  When you look at your roster, you find a student that failed your class last year and even with the 5 other teachers teaching the course, you have that child in your class.  You could be left with a cart instead of a classroom.  Or you could be overwhelmed by all of the above happening all at once (trust me, I am in a similar boat).

But here is the key...just keep positive.  I am upfront with the students that things are not all in place, but that I am here to teach them and together we will make it through the first week together.  Don't let them know about all of your problems, unless they will affect the students in your classroom as a whole.

So we will breath together.  We know that a few weeks later down the road we will feel as if we are on our a-game once again.  The best of luck and resources will be pouring out once again.