Blog Posts I Love--Part 6

Doing these blog posts help me remember the great ideas that I have read and helps me plan for how I will use them in my classroom.

1. I have wanted to set up a large number line in my classroom for a while and this blog post gave me the push. Mr Elementary Math posted about a number line that is geared towards younger elementary. To make it appropriate for my 6th graders, I will mix fractions, decimals, percents for students to place on the number line. I want to have this as a station that students can rotate into.

2. Another post from Elementary Math Coach--Math Pictionary. This is the second time I have posted about this and I am actually going to make something for a math station. Students will get an integer operation problem and will draw the algebra tiles that model that problem which their team mates will have to name.

3. The growth mindset is something I am going to talk to my students about the day we get back from winter break. This is one blog posts at Edudemic on the importance of having a growth mindset. I have a bulletin board that focuses on growing in math and I want to make sure I am talking to my students about it.

4. When my students take tests, I do not let them turn it in early. I give them a time and tell them they need to be working on the test until then. My students don't try to turn in the test early, but they will close their test and just sit there until it is time. I ask them to go back and check their work and some students will say "I already did" and others will go through and check that they did all the problems.

I experimented with one class one day and briefly looked through their tests when they said they were done and said "It's not a 100." All of the students went through and some found at least one mistake and changed their answer.

At Who's Who and Who's New,  this post explains the levels of checking your work. Something I want to share with my students. There are three levels from make sure you check that you have an answer, checking that your answer is reasonable, and solving the problem again.

Blog Posts I Love--Part 5

Another post of blog posts I love. I found some great ideas this week and want to share them with you. 

1. From Embrace the Drawing Board--The game integer-nary. It is like pictionary, but with integer equations. For example, a student might draw the equation -3+7=-4. Then on a white board, they model it and then their team has to guess what equation it is. I am doing this in my math centers as soon as we get back from Thanksgiving. The students can also move to modeling expressions like 4x+5 and algebraic equations like x+3=10. 

2. The week before Thanksgiving the students had a science benchmark. Our schedule was different for the day and I wanted to have an interesting activity for my homeroom to do afterwards. 

Enter--Hexaflexagons. At Math=Love she shares how she introduces the whole lesson. My students LOVED making these. I had instruction, but lost the copies. But most of the students were able to figure it out on their own by watching the videos linked in the blog post. I did have the template for them to cut out. 

This is one of my student's hexaflexagon. 

 

3. Counting Circles from Who is a Math Nerd?

This is a whole group activity that has students count by a certain number. Say you start counting by 10s but you start at 63. Or you count by 1 1/4, but you start at 1 1/2. It is a mental math routine and I can already imagine it being helpful to my students. We have transition time and sometimes we wait for other classes to be ready to switch. This could be a helpful activity during that time. But I would also like to make time for it in class because I would like to give the students time to have a discussion about their counting.

4. Smart Classroom Management

I just found this blog and I love it. It is a classroom management blog--which is one thing I am always trying to be better at. Good learning cannot happen if there isn't good classroom management. I feel like most good classroom management is just common sense and begins by treating students as people with needs and wants. This post is about letting students get out of their seats and establishing routines. I plan to go through this blog thoroughly.

Blog Posts I Love-Part 4

We are getting closer to solving inequalities when we get back from Thanksgiving break. My students still confuse the > and < signs, and then we add the "or equal to" and they get even more confused! Dana Boucher from Math Coach's Corner write about these signs and then relates them to a number line.

I feel like my students are a little more snappy with each other. We are all ready for Thanksgiving break but I want them to be comfortable working with each other. This Edutopia post talks about creating a classroom culture with laughter. I would like to try a few of the activities once a week.

From Math Coach's Corner again--Using Data to Plan Remediation. My data drives my instruction, especially my small groups. This post was a good reminder of what data should be helping you with. It reminds me of standards based grading, instead of traditional grading.

I need more comfortable shoes for work. I look forward to Thursday and Friday--not just for jeans but for tennis shoes. So here are 30 brands of shoes that are teacher friendly.

Blog Posts I Love-Part 3

Part Three of Blog Posts I Love that I ran into this week.

This lesson uses Green Eggs and Ham as an introduction to variables and solving equations.

I made a promise to myself a while ago to not read posts about people complaining about being a teacher. Recently, there have been several blog posts in my twitter/facebook feeds about teachers who resigned because they were unhappy with the direction education is heading. Over at Venspired, Krissy Venosdale writes about how she will never resign.

There are a lot of things in education that I want to change. But there are also a lot of good things that happen every day. Also, if we want things to change, it starts in the classroom. I will do my best to make the changes in my classroom and be an influence to teachers and students around me.

I want to remember to show my students this way to subtract by thinking as subtraction as the distance between two numbers. It would eliminate a lot of problems/mistakes that come with regrouping. It wouldn't always be the most efficient way to subtract. From Math Fireworks

Over at Show Your Thinking, she uses a color coding system to grade. Instead of putting number grades on a paper, students use the colors to see what they did and didn't understand.

Blog Posts I Love--Part Two

I need a better name for this. But this week I went searching for specific posts on Order of Operations. This is what I found in the process. Not every post is on Order of Operations.

Embrace the Drawing Board presents an interesting way to have a debate over the order of operations.

At Leaf and STEM Learning, who happens to be my math coach on my campus, she uses GEMA to remember Order of Operations. I used that in summer school and I did not have one student make any mistake in remembering the order of the operations they were to perform.

Insert Clever Math Pun Here talks about the trend to save the animals by not making mistakes in math. I am going to incorporate it in a math lesson coming up. There are some mistakes that make my heart twist. Like when a student says 3/4 is the same as .34. I want to throw my hands up in despair. Maybe the dramatic will help my students remember.

I really like this Order of Operations Puzzle at 180 Days of Math at Mesa. I can use it for a small group activity this week.

Finally, I like this Order of Operations Activity from Writing to Learn to Teach which gives students starting numbers and they are given signs and exponents to make expressions.

Blog Posts I Love

I spent time this weekend to find more math blogs to read. In the process, I have run across some great ideas that I want to use in the classroom and I would like to share them. Some of them are older, but still awesome. This is why I love blogs! I love reading about great ideas from other teachers.

I found these through the MTBoS Directory.  I only discovered this network of math teachers a few months ago and I am still trying to figure it all out, but I love it so far.

This post by Everybody is a Genius is exactly what I want to do when I get to solving equations. I started last year's lesson with balanced and unbalanced scales, but I like what thinking this makes students do.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone over tests with students just to hear them say "I didn't see the NOT" or "I wasn't paying attention to the picture" or something silly that would be easy to fix. This post by Reflections in the Plane helps students focus on those little hints in a problem that would help them solve the problem. We have a common assessment this week and I will be using this.

Here is another post from Reflections in the Plane about solving and balancing equations. Similar to the Everybody is a Genius post, it makes the students think about what balanced sides look like.

In Tales from Outside the Classroom, she used arrays to introduce the distributive property. I did use this in my classroom and the students understood a little bit more of what the distributive property was.

Finally from i is a number, she gives instructions for using card sort activities. I used card sorts all the time when I taught science and I love the idea of using one in math. In fact, I am going to plan one for tomorrow.

Again, I love math bloggers. Anyone who you think I should follow?