Category Archives: Middle School

First Day Wiki Quest – MS Sunday Funday

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I’m going to blog about my first day last year, although I’m not sure that this is what I’m going to do for my first day this year.  The kids loved it, but I love changing things up each year.  So, I look forward to reading all of these great posts to see what you all are doing!

As I am sure that most of you would agree, I hate going over the rules and procedures in class, but I really want my kids (and parents) to know them.  There are only 32 students in each grade and we do most of our, “Hi, My name is…” in advisory the first day, so I really don’t need to play get to know each other (or me) games.

Last year our school went one to one for the first time with middle school.  For most students, this is the first time they have ever had their own computer, and they are very eager to use it.  I use a wiki daily in all of my classes.  The students need to access it every day so it is important that they can find it as well as find their way around it.  So, I decided to have them complete a Wiki Quest in order to familiarize them with my wiki, gather information about them, and get them to read my polices and procedures.

The Wiki Quest has them:

  • Bookmark our class webpage for daily reference
  • Send me an email so they can add me to their contacts
  • Fill out a GDoc Survey
  • Check out my LiveBinder and email the link to their parents.
  • Read my polices and procedures (and copy down important info like what they need to bring to class each day and when I assign homework).

All students finished within the class period last year.  Those who finished early got to start on their first homework assignment.  The first assignment is a short cumulative review and instructions to ask their parents to read my LiveBinder.

MS Math Teachers – Let’s Start Sharing #msSunFun

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Get ready for MS Sunday Fundays!  #msSunFun

I’m calling on all middle school math teachers to blog about a certain topic.  (The list of topics will be published here in advance.)  Then, I will publish the compilation of all blog posts for us to read every Sunday!  The first topic will be 1st Day / 1st Week Activities and I will post them THIS Sunday, August 5th.  Exciting!  Fill out the survey here to let me know of topics you would be interested in blogging about (or seeing).

We have no “logo” as of yet.  If you are a logo person, feel free to create something and email it to me.

If you think MS Sunday Funday is too long or the hashtag isn’t great, then I’m open to suggestions.  These are ideas that we developed together on Twitter, but I’m always open to new and better ideas, especially if they are easier to remember or more catchy!

It’s ON so BRING IT!    🙂

MS Math Teachers Survey Results = Wow!

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After only 3 days, the MS Math Teachers survey collected 81 responses!  I am truly awed by this.  I’m excited to find so many middle school math teachers who are so eager to connect and help one another on our amazing journey this year!  If you haven’t responded yet it isn’t too late!  Just click here to fill out the Middle School Math Teacher’s Survey.

By far my favorite response was to the question, “What would you like to get out of Twitter / blogging / network”.  Here is what you all said.

You are all interested in learning, sharing, implementing, and getting NEW ideas.  I am inspired by your desire to always be learning.  I am currently working on compiling all of the survey information.  The first thing I plan to do is to put the list of MS bloggers on the Middle School Math Blogs page (found above).  Please feel free to add this to your blog as well if you would like.

For now, here is a snapshot of who we are and what we can do!  A GIANT category in the  “special interests / area of expertise” was “Others”.  After investigating, I found that the “other” was most often foldables.  I cannot believe that I did not include that as an category in this question, especially after I did a session on Foldables at #TMC12.  It seems like they are more currently popular in middle school.  I seriously love you teachers!!  🙂

Calling All Middle School Math Teachers! Please Fill Out My Survey to Connect!

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Middle school is an amazing place!  And those of us teaching middle schoolers truly love it!  They are fun, energetic, exciting, and most of all, new to higher math.  A few months ago I discovered many amazing middle school math blogs.  In the past few weeks, I have found even more middle school math teachers on Twitter. I am so excited to learn from all of these teachers.

To make this possible, I would love for middle school math teachers to fill out this survey (you will be taken to the Math Wiki to fill it out).  Once you are finished you will be able to see the results immediately.  

I plan on compiling a list (and will make a Twitter list as well).  I have a few other ideas floating around in my head that will enable us to share resources and help each other out during the school year.  Also, use and follow the hashtag #msmath when talking about middle school math.

If you have any ideas, please add them to the comments below!  What do you need to make yourself an even more amazing teacher?

Math For Math Mondays – Adhesive Tape Measures

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As a middle school math teacher, I have been having the students take their body measurements for the past two years.  They usually stand up against a post, use a whiteboard and sidewalk chalk to mark their height, and then measure themselves.  Every month when they measure each other, I have a LEAST one student who exclaims with much dismay, “Oh my GOSH!  I SHRUNK – BY TWO INCHES!!”  Of course they didn’t shrink, but trying to convince an “eager to grow” middle school student of this fact, especially after they were SO proud the month before of how much they had grown, is almost impossible.  And of course, they had charted their imaginary grown spurt the month before – in PEN no less.

There are several errors they make when measuring their height.  One, they don’t hold the whiteboard straight, ever.  Two, my tape measures are only 60″ long, so they have to hold their finger at 60″, measure the remaining distance, and add the two measures together.  Also, their accuracy will depend on whether or not they are standing up against a flat surface.  Many times students stand against the whiteboard and measure themselves, then let the tape measure loop around the eraser tray but don’t take off that extra couple of inches gained.

Luckily, I found these very cool Komelon flat shell measuring tapes with adhesive backs at Amazon.com.  There are a couple of different brands out there, but these had the best reviews.  THEY ARE FABULOUS.  They are STEEL, so they can withstand middle school students and will resist pencil markings.  They were CRAZY sticky, so they will NOT come off.  They were 12 feet high so they went up my entire 8 foot wall!  And, they were only about $4 each.  I ordered five of them, and hung them on the walls today.  I cut off the first 4″ so that I could install them over the baseboards for greater accuracy.

Hopefully, I won’t have any (or at least not MANY) distressed, shrinking middle school students this year!  🙂

 

On a side note, I woke up to another amazing measurement solution on Pam’s Blog.  I had never thought of buying the vinyl ones and hanging them.  She is much craftier than I.  I love that we both picked the same week to blog about the same thing.  I’ll say it again, Twitter blogging math teachers are AMAZING!

Square Roots with Cheez-Its and a Graphic Organizer

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I saw a cute picture on Pinterest using Cheez-It’s to practice area and perimeter.  My first thought was, “Pefect Squares!” and could not wait to develop a Square Roots Cheez-It lesson.

I made a graphic organizer to go into their Geometry Booklets so that they could more effectively take notes.  It is half-sheet sized so it will also fit into composition books.

Square Roots Graphic Organizer

I used one box of Cheez-It’s per class.  What I loved the most about this activity was that it was very visual for my students (and they remembered it well because of the food addition).  Each time we did a square root, I would ask them, “Do 6 cheez-it’s make a square?”  And they remember it is a rectangle.

The kids loved making perfect squares with their Cheez-It’s and I even had a few groups combine their Cheez-It’s at the end to see who could make the largest perfect square!

The Numberline:
The number line is one of the most important aspects of this lesson.  I have them label it (see pictures) so that they can quickly estimate what a square root SHOULD be before they blindly punch it into their calculators.  This also helps when simplifying square roots using the radical sign instead of decimals.  I challenge them to see how close they come when estimating square roots with decimals.  They estimate, and then check it with their calculators.  The next day I played “Around the World” with perfects squares and estimating square roots in their heads.  Here is the Around the World PPT.  Square Roots – Around the World

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My Students were Published in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School!

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We are so excited!  My students’ answers to a “Solve It!” were published in the November edition of Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School.  This is a national publication produced by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.  The students collected data about the number of jeans owned by every student in their class.  Working in groups of three or four, they used Google Spreadsheets to compare their class average to the national average and to do further analysis of the data.  They created graphs to visually present their findings.  They also worked collaboratively on a Google word document to write their analysis of the data.  After they came up with conclusions, they created wiki pages to present their findings.  Their wiki pages were creative and beautifully formatted.  They contained uploaded graphs of their data, detailed analyses, and even some pictures they took with their cameras or computers.

We had already covered the unit on averages when the “Solve It!” question came about.  Therefore, I gave few instructions to the students for this project.  I showed them the question in the article and let them work independently in their groups.  I encouraged them to be creative.  They loved this project and they reported that much of their enthusiasm was due to the freedom they were given.

Check out the wiki pages they created  and read the Solve It! Article.

Jeans Solve It Published

Glorious Summer

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Summer is here, and it is amazing.  For the first time in my entire teaching career, I am not completely burned out at the end of the year.  As expected, I am exhausted, but still enthused.  In fact, I am excited to do the many educational related things I had labeled #summerlist on Twitter.  I finally have the time to blog about all of the activities that I had taken pictures of all year.  I’m anxious to restructure my lessons.  I’m actually dreading “refiling the pile” of papers and lessons that I just couldn’t stay ahead of the last few months.  But, I am looking forward to have a clean desk and a fresh start!

What’s the problem then?  Summer!  I am home with my children.  I am their full-time activities director.  We sleep in, play all day, they go to bed “late” and then I go to bed “early”.  I actually have time to enjoy cooking.  We do not have sports practice every night of the week so we can even sit down and eat dinner as a family.  I get to spend time with the few friends that I was able to stay in touch with this year.  Life is so good!

Each night during the school year I would work after I put my children to bed.  Now, I’m hardly working!  I’m trying to read my educational book studies, blog, organize “the pile”, and start unit organization for the fall.  Instead, I usually end up going to bed blissfully early.  I’ve realized that I may never catch up on book study.  I have missed my family so much this year.  I realize that I have missed all of the other things that I love doing.  I have missed free time.  I am excited to get started again for the fall.  But summer has fogged up my focus.  I just don’t have the time yet.

Resource Sites I Love

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I’m new to both subjects that I teach this year so it’s “new lesson time” every night at my house – times two.  I love searching the internet for interesting activities so that the lessons will be fun to teach (oh, and interesting for the kids too).  I rely heavily on my Diigo and the Math Teacher Wiki, but tonight, @fouss and @druinok reminded me of a great resource site that I keep forgetting about!  I Love Math.org

I Love Math

I Love Math is a great site because teachers can upload their own files and links to share.  These are usually Word, Excel, or Powerpoint documents.  Anyone can join, and it is free to upload and download files.  There are only 25 middle school documents on there, but there are 144 documents for Algebra!

I haven’t made an official file cabinet yet like so many other great bloggers out there.  But, even though I have bookmarked the I Love Math site three separate times in Diigo, I keep forgetting about it.  I wanted to blog about this site so my overworked, overtaxed brain will remember to come back to it again!
If you have any wonderful resource sites that you love, please share the link in the comments.

Wonderful World of Wiki Pages

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I created a math class wiki for my classes.  The students have been accessing this wiki since the beginning of the year for assignments, project instructions, resources for extra help and other random math links.  Last month, I let each student create their own math page on my MathReuls wiki.  They not only did a fabulous job with this – they loved doing it!  Now, as we do projects, I have them upload their work to their own wiki page.  This sounds simple, but it is actually a multi-step process and has been a lot for 6th and 7th graders to learn, especially my ones who are not as technologically proficient.  After entering all of the data for whatever project we are working on, they then have to “do the math” to analyze it.  This creates their work which they have to save, upload to the wiki, and finally add to their page.  I am so proud of them because they have done a fabulous job!

 

Student Wiki Page

Student Wiki Page

When you are a member of a wiki, you get emails to notify you of any changes that are made on the wiki.  You can choose how often you want to get these notifications.  Since I like to monitor how often (and what) my students are writing, I get notifications twice daily.  These notifications tell me who is editing their page or commenting, what page they are commenting on, what the comment or changes to their page they have made, and when these changes were made.  This all comes to me in one consolidated email that looks like this.

Wiki Notification Email

Wiki Notification Email

Their favorite things to do?  Formatting and commenting, of course!  They are especially creative with their titles, making their fonts various styles and colors and using hi-lights for the letters.  The love to comment also.  Some of my pages have over 100 comments!  No, they are not all math related.  In fact, most of the comments are not math related at all.  They are usually the students saying hi to one another on their page, or better yet, complimenting another student on their page.  I require that all of the content on their math page be math-related only, however, I do not mind that the comments are not math related.

**  The most fabulous thing about students having wiki pages is that they look at them (and even work on them) all of the time! **

This means that even if they are not “working” on math in the evenings, on the weekends, or over Thanksgiving break, they are looking at math via their wiki pages almost DAILY.  And I do mean daily.  I would never assign homework to middle school students over a holiday.  However, my students edited their own pages and commented on each others pages all throughout Thanksgiving break.  Many of the comments were complimenting another students page, which meant they were at least looking at and reading math when I didn’t even ask them to.

As a teacher, I consider that success!

Their wiki pages.

6th Grade

7th Projects