Table Motivation Labels – My Favorite Friday

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I almost didn’t make this Favorite Friday. This was the first week of school (for teachers only) AND the first week all three boys had soccer. And, two of them had an extra day – EACH. I had at least one breakdown this week. My poor husband. 🙂

BUT, I finally got my room (mostly) organized. And, I am so ready for a new year in my most amazing room. After seeing my students today, I cannot WAIT to get started. I love those kids.

All I’m doing today is showing off my AMAZING new labels. I labeled the tables and the supply caddies (all color coordinated, btw). I even labeled the cups INSIDE the caddies! Thanks so much to Julie Ruble for taking me to the dollar store. I found brightly colored Microfiber clothes that color coordinate with my table labels. It inspired me and easy excellent.  (And yes, Julie Ruble is THE super famous food blogger).  🙂

I used Shelli’s super cool sign clips that I found on Amazon.com. I found the “Smart Questions” on Pinterest then again on Lisa Henry’s blog. And, I used most of the sayings from last weeks post. The table labels are in the air thanks to sign clips. They have the table number and a motivational saying on one side, and smart questions on the other. I love them and they make me happy! I also love the adhesive number lines that I got from eNasco last year.  I just stuck them to the tables.

 

Math Blogger Initiation, Week 1

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At Twitter Math Camp (#TMC12) this summer, Sam Shah gave a fabulous presentation about encouraging other math teachers to blog and join Twitter.  During his presentation, we talked and brainstormed for over an hour.  We all were so encouraged by each other, and realized the importance of bringing more math teachers to Twitter and the Blogosphere.  When teachers share their amazing ideas and lessons with others, we all learn, and we all become better educators.  Shortly after coming home, the Mathtwitterblogosphere website was born, showing teachers how wonderful, and wonderfully easy, it was to Tweet and blog.  Then, Sam issued the Math Blogger Initiation, encouraging new bloggers to blog once a week for four weeks.  The response was overwhelming.  Sam was expecting 30 – 40 bloggers, but got almost 200 new and returning bloggers.  With such a response, Sam reached out for help in posting these amazing new blogs.  I feel honored to help with this endeavor, and cannot wait to read all 200 new blogs!

Below are my seven new (or returning) bloggers that I am featuring on my blog this week.  Many of these bloggers have never blogged before and started a new blog just to participate in this initiative.  Please read their blogs and then follow the links at the bottom to read the other great blogs!

Megan Morrison @mathwmorrison has a blog named **Math With Morrison**. The first post for the Blogging Initiation is titled **Before the Craziness Starts…“** and the author sums it up as follows: **I’m so excited for a new year to start, but I need to remember to take care of myself and ask for help when I need it! I have so many different things going on in my classroom from last year and can’t wait to find more resources to make math in my classroom fun and exciting.** A memorable quotation from the post is: **I also want to be able to get help from a huge virtual PLC when I’m struggling with management, or how to teach a concept!**

Mrs. S has a blog named **From Cubicle to Classroom**. The first post for the Blogging Initiation is titled **First week goal“** and the author sums it up as follows: **Although the first week of school was fun last year, I paid the penalty the rest of the year trying to reign in overly talkative, off task kids. My former students were blatantly honest about why they goofed off in my class–so this year, I’m going to attempt to fix it up front!** A memorable quotation from the post is: **Thus, this year my goal for the first week is simple: Be the mean teacher.**

Kyle Eck @kylejeck has a blog named **k-gram**. The first post for the Blogging Initiation is titled **What’s a k-gram?“** and the author sums it up as follows: **Why I named my blog after a shape. A little bit of math, and some of my aspirations for both teaching and blogging. ** A memorable quotation from the post is: **Have you ever had a lesson just rolling around in your head? **

Andrew Knauft @aknauft has a blog named **Limsoup**. The first post for the Blogging Initiation is titled **NBI Week 1 — Calculators“** and the author sums it up as follows: **I love calculators. But they shouldn’t be designed to a test or used for simply calculating.** A memorable quotation from the post is: **”Did you know the TI83 is not appropriate for Calculus?”**

Lee KT has a blog named **random expected value**. The first post for the Blogging Initiation is titled **Starting Out“** and the author sums it up as follows: **Reflections and a commitment to one new thing this year: getting students to help other students. And as part of that, arranging desks in a classroom so that they can easily interact, even if I am not comfortable with it (yet!).** A memorable quotation from the post is: **This year I’ve cut my dreams all back to one major concept: create a classroom conducive to kids helping kids.**

That Math Lady @thatmathlady has a blog named **That Math Lady’s Blog**. The first post for the Blogging Initiation is titled **Who is That Math Lady?“** and the author sums it up as follows: **My post explains why I decided to leave the classroom and dedicate my profession towards helping other teachers. I have spent the past 2 months drafting blogs and developing a math website that will hopefully become a reliable resource for thousands of other teachers out there!** A memorable quotation from the post is: **What would your significant other’s reaction be if you came home from work one day and said you were quitting your job to focus all of your energy on creating a math website (which, by the way, you have very little experience in doing) just to help out other teachers and students in math?**

Heather Simmons @hsimmons32 has a blog named **Mrs. Simmons Blog**. The first post for the Blogging Initiation is titled **The Fundamental Five – my take on this book“** and the author sums it up as follows: **Taking a look at the book “The Fundamental Five” and how I will use this information in my classroom this year. I am looking forward to improved student successes from this “Formula for Quality Instruction”.** A memorable quotation from the post is: **It’s a little scary, change always is, so all I can do is be intentional in my lessons every day and see what happens.**

Allison Krasnow has a blog named **Pi Crust**. The first post for the Blogging Initiation is titled **New Year, New Mindset“** and the author sums it up as follows: **Using Carol Dweck’s work on mindset coaching, I plan to explore ways to influence my students to have a more growth-oriented mindset. Once a week we’ll discuss quotes to allow students to explore if they believe their math intelligence is fixed or can be shaped by hard work.** A memorable quotation from the post is: **I’m especially interested if anyone has done mindset coaching with adults.**

Math Motivation Classroom Posters – Made 4 Math

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I love Pinterest and have been pinning great posters and quotes every since I joined.  But, there is nothing I hate more than clicking on a link that doesn’t take me to the pinned item or WORSE, takes me to the dreaded Teachers Pay Teachers site.  Ugh.

So, since I just bought my very own laminator, I decided to make my own posters and post them here AND on Pinterest, for FREE, in PDF form.  These are not fancy posters, as I do not have fun borders.  But, they are the things I want to say in my classroom.

As part of my first day (or first week) activities, I am going to have my student read all of my posters, pick their favorite one, and then write why it is their favorite poster and what they think it means.  I don’t want the kids to not notice or even think about these posters on my wall.  They are here for a reason.

Without further ado…

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A New Classroom and Great Goals for 2012-2013 – MS Sunday Funday

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#msSunFun

New Classroom:
This year I get to move into a new classroom, in an entirely different building across campus!  I am so grateful that I have a room.  But, when I first heard the news last year, I was pretty devastated.  I had been in my building for two years and believe it or not, I have acquired TONS of STUFF.  And, who likes to move?
However, from the moment that I first walked into my new room, I was in love!  My room is so quiet, has tons of cabinets, and just feels peaceful.  I’m hoping it will help me be more “zen” this year!  I don’t go back for teacher prep week until Monday, so my room is still in the planning stages.  I did get everything unpacked and fabric up on the bulletin boards.  But, there isn’t a picture or poster on the walls.  My room is far from finished, but I still wanted to post my progress here today.
Goals:
I am not much of a “goals” girl.  But, in the spirit of blogging I am going to give it a go.
Stop:
  • Being head MS cheer coach.  I love, love, love this but it was almost the end of me last year.  As sad as it makes me, I just don’t have the extra time.  I do plan on helping out as much as I can though.  I love it and cannot get it out of my system!
  • Putting things in random places.  I need to make sure that papers go in a file, and quickly.  I tend to build up piles.
  • Worrying about everything.  There are some things I cannot control.
  • FLAG (Fix Learning and Grow) – I loved the idea, but it was too hard to keep up with for students.
  • Eating random food in the school kitchen just because it is there (we have amazingly generous parents and teachers that bring food).
  • Staying up too late.  If I’m tired, I just can’t do anything as well as is possible.

Continue:

  • Tweeting and Blogging.  Every year I fall off of the Earth once school starts and them totally disappear in Feb.  This is my greatest source of professional development and recharges me like nothing else can.  I need these people in my life and need to make time for them.
  • Improving the Concept Help Pages
  • Re-organizing my files.  I changed my system last year and now I have double of everything.  I started working on this last year but then stopped.
  • Working on advisory topics.  I love this part of middle school and can’t wait to develop it more fully.
  • Coming up with new hands on activities for my classes.  There is no better way to learn than the concrete and it is amazing to pull out an activity that you can just DO.
  • EXERCISE – This is so important but I often skip it to grade papers or lesson plan when school starts.  This only takes 30-40 minutes of my time and is a great stress reliever.  I need to keep it up!

Start:

  • Working to improve technology skills with the incoming 6th grade class.
  • An after school math club.  I want to do this so badly but it’s hard to find the time to develop the activities.  I don’t want it to be boring or stupid.
  • More problem solving across the board.
  • Writing equations to all word problems from day one.  I want everything to be a word problem because in real life, IT IS.
  • Incorporate Exeter problems, somehow, someway
  • Learn to do the “three acts” problems and actually do them.
  • Incorporate activities for the GIANT whiteboards!
  • Observing the other fabulous teachers at my school more.  I am still new to middle school and I have so much to learn!

Classroom Setup and Goals – MS Sunday Funday

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#msSunFun

This week’s theme is Classroom Setup and Goals.  Next week, the theme will be everything advisory. Please share how your school runs advisory, how often you do advisory and why, and most important, advisory activities!

Also, grab the MS Sunday Funday logo at the top to link back to this page.

Monthly Meal Planning GDoc – My Favorite Friday

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Today is going to be a non-math post.  But, it is a list of things that enable me to teach math so it is indirectly related!

I am often asked, “HOW do you do it??” by two types of people.  Teachers with no children and stay at home moms.  I used to be both, so I understand.  Honestly, I don’t know how I do “do it” many days.  I teach full time and have three children who are involved in competitive soccer.  That equates to 8 practices a week at two different fields between the hours of 4:45 – 9:15, as well as games every Saturday and Sunday.  No lie, life = soccer around here.  This means I am out of the house or in transit Mon – Thurs from 4:45 – 9:15 and a large part of Saturday and Sunday.

Laundry can go unwashed for a while as long as I have purchased enough clothes (or we go rumpled).  But, we have to eat.  Three boys playing soccer eat so, much, food.  Plus, even though they pack lunches three times the size of my lunch, they are STARVING when they get home from school.  I used to let them snack when they were little.  But now that they are bigger, a snack is like 3 packets of pretzels, 2 cheese sticks, a yogurt, and they are still starving.  So, I started feeding them dinner when we got home from school.  This helps because it eliminates after school junk and fuels them up better for soccer.  The only downside is that they are hungry AGAIN after soccer, for an entire meal.  Fast food is easy to pick up on the way home, but it is just gross, and unhealthy, and they only like a couple of places.  So, I cook for them.  I love to cook, and I love to cook for my family even more.  But, I don’t get home until 4:15 at the earliest and have to leave around 4:45.  There is just enough time to change for soccer and eat dinner.  But there is no time to make dinner.  So this year, I am going to try to make crock-pot, freezer, or super easy meals from Monday through Thursday.

I feel that the hardest part of cooking is planning WHAT you are going to cook in advance and planning for it.  If you don’t have the ingredients at your house, then you can’t make the meal.  This happened to me often this summer, and was very frustrating!  Enter, my monthly meal planning Google spreadsheet.  It includes a differnet meal every day for four weeks (excluding Friday).  I do not cook, or clean, on Friday.  Each month, I make the same food.  But since we only have it once a month, no one gets tired of it.  To make it even easier, I have put all of the food that I will need into online shopping lists called “Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4”.

  • To make my life more manageable, I order groceries online from Harris Teeter.  It only costs about $16 a month and all I do is order online.  They shop for me.  I just pull up and they load my car up with groceries.  It is an amazing service.  The first time you do online shopping it takes a while to add all of your items.  But then it takes so little time – and you can shop at home (or at soccer practice)!

I have entered all of the food that I need to cook for a weeks worth of meals into my Harris Teeter Shopping lists.  So every Saturday I pick the week number, “Week 1”, select ADD ALL and then add it to my cart.  This allows me to automatically order all of the groceries that I need to cook for the entire week in two clicks.  Yes, this took me several hours of time today.  But it will save me many more hours in the future when I am crazy busy with school and soccer.  It is amazing!

Below are just some of my other random favorite things.

Keurig Coffee Pot – No fuss, no mess.  Just turn on the button and make a cup of coffee.  It allows me to have time to make coffee in the am while getting myself and three kids out the door by 7:30am.

Chobani Pineapple Yogurt w Bare Naked Granola and nuts – I eat this when I am on the run (usually breakfast and sometimes even lunch when school starts).  I put the Bare Naked in a ziplock with half a bag of pecans and a package of almonds so I can just spoon it into the yogurt easily.

Buffalo flavored whole almonds – seriously?  tasty and good for you?  These are my go to snack.

Kashi Chocolate coconut chewy granola bars – this is my easy, late morning snack that enables me to watch / talk with students while getting fueled up for more teaching.  They are so yummy and healthy.  Win-win!

G2 – Only 40 calories in a bottle and it just tastes and makes me feel so good after a run.

Many days I do think I’m crazy to do it all.  But I love it all and I can’t imagine giving any of it up!  So, I have to find a way to do it all. 

Foldable Talk Summary – Recording, Links, and Powerpoint Included

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Wow!  We had 65 people attend the second Global Math Department Foldable talk tonight.  We had some technical difficulties, mostly with audio.  I didn’t use a microphone last week when I jumped in on Megan’s talk so I didn’t think about using one this week.  But, I should have because I was hard to hear.  I hope I didn’t speak too fast (I have that tendency), which would make poor audio even worse.  If you didn’t get to go, you can view (and hopefully listen) to the entire presentation here.  So far I can only see the chat and the slides.  I am hoping that the audio is still processing.

Here are the slides from my presentation.  Pictures of some of the foldables are at the end.

To download the actual foldables, visit the Math Teacher’s Wiki.

Foldables Conference (LIVE) Aug 14 @ 9pm ET

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This Tuesday night at 9pm ET, I will be talking about Foldables on the Global Math Department!  The session is FREE and will cover:

  • Why you should incorporate foldables into your classroom
  • Different types of Foldable for different lessons
  • Planning an effective lesson using foldables
  • Foldable timesavers for teachers and students
  • Examples of actual foldables from my students
  • Question and answer time
  • Bring your foldables to share as well!

This is a live video conference where my Powerpoint slides can also be viewed as I talk and show you examples of the foldables.  There is a chat box as well for questions during the presentation.  The second half of the presentation will be show and share, where other teachers can turn their video on and share their favorite foldables!

Join me for Foldables, Tuesday night, August 14th, at 9pm Eastern Time.

The No Homework, “Responsibility Binder”

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The homework discussion came up over and over at #TMC12. No one is totally happy with their system, but here were some common themes.

We were all more concerned that students attempted the problems.  Several of us give the students the answers when assigning homework.  I’m in this category. I like them to check their answers as they work so they know when if they are doing it correctly.  It also allows me to tell them that I all already know the answer, I want to see HOW they came up with that answer.

As they already have the answers,  I do not grade homework. I just check it for completion as they are doing a “bell ringer” activity. For their grade, I start them out with 50 points at the beginning of the trimester and dock then two points everytime they miss an assignment. For most kids, this is a real grade booster as 50 points is equivalent to a test grade in my class.

Last year, I saw an amazing Student Responsibility Card on Hedge’s blog.  I totally stole it, but but made it into a half page to save paper and made it YELLOW.  Then, I had students fill out this yellow slip when they didn’t do their homework.  This was a great idea, as I never had to “record” who didn’t do their homework.  I just collected the yellow sheets and then recorded it at the end of the trimester. This took almost no time and was a record, in their own handwriting, of who had not done their work.  The biggest problem was that I just stacked these in a pile and didn’t really look at them until the end of the trimester.  So, unless a student was very obvious (no homework several times in a week), I missed accumulating homework incompletion.


My second problem was that I thought that filling out yellow sheets would thwart most of my errant homework kids, but it did not.  Seventh graders can be quite persistent, and homework incompletion was no exception.

In a discussion with Sean Sweeny at the airport (yes, we were all still talking math right up until we got on the plane), he told me that if one of his students doesn’t do their homework they have to stay after school or to do a study hall to make it up. I believe he said that this was a school wide policy. Sean said that this was pretty effective in getting the kids to do homework on the night it was assigned.  They knew they had to do it anyway, and no one wants to sit after school doing homework.  So, his students were pretty good about doing their homework.

This year I would like to do something similar, but more organized. And, I would like to make the students more accountable for completion of their homework.  My fabulous director always says that if we are assigning homework, then it should be important enough for every student to complete.

After seeing this great idea on Pinterest from Leslie at Jack of all Trades, I made a no homework binder.  I call it a “Responsibility Binder”.  I still want students to fill out a sheet when they don’t do their homework. It was so valuable to see their reason WHY they didn’t do their homework in their own words.   But instead of loose half sheets, it will be organized alphabetically in a binder.  Another improvement is going to be the addition of a “date completed” column on this sheet.  I want to give the students ownership over completing their homework.


Even if students don’t do their homework initially, they will still be required to complete it.  And this should be an easy way to have the student keep track of it. If they don’t complete two or three in a row, I’ll intervene.

There has been much discussion on Twitter about having an electronic GDoc Form that students filled out when they did not do their homework.  I really liked this but I can’t make it work because I want students to go back and fill in the date when the homework is completed.  I don’t want them to have access to the GDoc as they could change it, or get confused about which column to write it in.  I could have them fill out another GDoc when they complete their homework but I’m afraid they won’t be able to keep up with this.  I am thinking that a hard copy record in a binder is going to work best for me right now.  I am still working on this in my mind however because I do love all things electronic.
Here is my proposed sheet. I would love any suggestions!

Read other #made4math posts here!

Math Class Notebooks – MS Sunday Funday

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Welcome to a collaboration of posts by amazing middle school math teachers!

#msSunFun

This week’s theme is Math Class Notebooks.  Next week, the theme will be everything advisory. Please share how your school runs advisory, how often you do advisory and why, and most important, advisory activities!

Also, grab the MS Sunday Funday logo at the top to link back to this page.