I Read Books

I have hobbies. 

One of them is reading. I love a good book and right now I am on a reading kick. And I want to share the good books I've read.

Here are some books I've read this year that I would recommend. 

I saw the movie poster, my cousin said it was good, so I read The Martian. In 24 hours. I really liked the science and engineering in it. It was a realistic book. Then I watched the movie which I really enjoyed, but my husband did not. 

Astronaut Mark Watney becomes standard on Mars after his crew thinks he is dead. He has the science the crap out of the supplies he has in order to stay alive until he can (maybe) get rescued. I was on the edge of my seat reading this. 

I think this is THE mystery book of the year. I was number 250 on the library wait list so I was surprised when I got an email saying it was ready for pick up. I was expecting to have to wait a year to read it. 

Rachel takes the same train every day and every day she sees the same couple in their house. She has created a story around this couple; she's named them and begins to feel like she knows them. Until she sees something about them that she only could have noticed. She goes to the police and become entwined in their story. 

This is like a Beauty and the Beast retelling. The dragon comes once every 10 years to a village and takes one girl to live with him. The dragon is responsible for keeping the dangers of the Wood away for the price of one girl who will serve him for 10 years. Agnieszka fears her best friend will be chosen, but is surprised when she is chosen to leave her family, friends, and village to serve the Dragon for 10 years. 

I cannot say enough how I LOVED this book. It is very fantasy, which is not usually what I like, but this was so good. 

I love Mindy Kaling. Of the few TV shows I keep up with, The Mindy Project is one of them. I loved her first book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and I've been excited to read this book since I heard she was writing it. I think she is funny, down to earth, and honest. I love the message that she gives about being true to yourself and not taking constant reject as a finality. 

What books have you read would you recommend? I am always adding to my ever growing to-read list. 

Order of Operations

I am starting order of operations with my students tomorrow and Tuesday. I prefer not to just jump into algorithms with students without hooking them in or giving them some kind of real-world reason they are learning a new skill. 

Before teaching, my understanding of order of operations was the some people made some rules, decided that multiplication had to be done before addition and we all just blindly follow. Who "they" were was unclear to me. 

When we teach order of operations by just giving an expression and asking students to evaluate it, that is essentially what we are teaching: We are saying that these are just some rules you need to memorize. 

However, as I tell my students, in the real world there aren't signs that make you solve a math problem before you enter a room. Or you don't have to prove you can multiply before you take your driver's test. Instead, math comes up and you have to be able to take all you have learned and decide what is useful in that situation. 

So instead of telling students the order of operations, I introduce them to real life situations and ask them to write numerical expressions that tell the story with numbers. Then I ask them to evaluate those expressions using the knowledge they have of where the expression came from. My students learned order of operations last year without exponents, so they are not completely new to it.

I have created a presentation on Google Slides that will be the lesson I do with my students. 

Use it if you would like. If you would like to make changes to it, go to File and then Make a Copy for yourself to save to your Google Drive. 

Prime Factorization

The students started prime factorization this week. 

I was unfortunately sick on Wednesday and ended up missing school that day. It was the first unplanned absence I had in 5 years. It was agonizing on Tuesday night trying to predict if I would feel better the next day. There were many cons to calling in. Mostly, the students would miss a day of new instruction. I had an emergency sub basket all ready with work for them, but it was just practice. Also, I would miss our class picture. In the end, the sickness won and it is good I did stay home. I ended up losing 5 pounds in one day to being sick. I was miserable. 

So my prime factorization lesson seemed rushed as I was trying to make up for a lost day. But I tried to vary the activities the students did, and gave them time to talk about the math. 

We started the lesson with reviewing what prime and composite numbers were. We talked about definitions, debate over which numbers were prime and composite and watched this video.

In one class, we had to talk in length about the difference between a multiple and a factor. 

Then we added a page to our notebook about prime factorization that looked like this. 

The tree flips down and there is another practice factor tree underneath. The students then got a practice sheet to work on with their group which we then checked. 

Afterwards, I gave everyone a dry erase marker and they practiced making factor trees on their desks while I went around checking and asking questions. 

Some common mistakes I saw were wanting to make the prime factorization smaller. Like taking 2x3x5 and wanting to collapse it to 6x5. We would go back to the definition of prime factorization and ask ourselves if all the numbers were prime. Also, some students just did the factor tree and thought they were done. I had to remind them that the factor tree was the process, not the actual prime factorization. 

Next, I will pull students in small groups and practice so I can really who has it and who needs more help. 

One station I will have next week while I pull students in small group is this Prime Factorization Match Up with QR codes. I try to have many of the stations that my students do include instant feedback. I am actually much better at grading this year than I have been in the past, but it is still not same day grading. Students need to know if they are doing it correctly. This way, they can check right away. Plus they'll have an ipad which they still think is cool. 

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.

Red Ribbon Door

It is the end of red ribbon week. This is the door that my students decorated. I showed them some doors on Pinterest and they choose this one. 

I told them that I would not be able to do any of it, but several students rose to the challenge. They came early to get it done. 

We didn't win the competition, but I think they did great. 

100 Minutes to Teach Math!

I have three math classes and each class lasts 100 minutes. It is a ridiculously long time to teach math compared to 50 minutes, but I fill every minute of every class period. I do not know how I could fit everything into a shorter amount of time.

Not every 6th grader loves doing math for 100 minutes. I have to break up the class period with several activities to keep their interest. 

Time	Activity
15 minutes	Daily Math Review Consists of 4 computation-only problems. The students practice the same types of problem every day for 2 weeks and then they take a quiz. After students work in groups, we grade it together. This week, students are working on integer operations, exponents, and ordering rational numbers.
30 minutes	Whole Group Instruction Introduce topics, do whole group activities, add to the interactive math notebook This is not always direct instruction. Whole group instruction looks different every day. Students may learn about manipulatives (most recently Algebra Tiles). They may also work together to come up with their own rules for the math they are learning.
45 minutes	Math Stations & Small Group Instruction Students work in heterogeneous groups working on fact fluency, iLearn (a math website that all my students have an account to), and practice skills learned in previous weeks with games, task cards, stations, etc. While students work, I pull homogeneous groups to work on the new skill introduced in whole group instruction. I have 5-6 groups per class that I pull depending on the class and how much time I have to pull them all. We do 2-3 rotations in 45 minutes.
10 minutes	Exit Ticket Practice problems, writing in mathematics, Plickers questions… it varies.

This would be on a normal day. Of course everyday is not perfect. Some days there are tests, or pictures, or field trips. Someday I don't do whole group instruction at all and just do small group instruction. 

Because we spend so much time every day doing math, I don't give a whole lot of homework. Maybe one homework assignment a week, and usually not problems. I like to assign mini-project that students would actually want to do and where they can use their own creativity. 

Properties of Operations Foldable

I found this foldable on Fabulous in Fifth and used it when we did Properties of Operations.

I had the students come up with their own definition and their own examples. We did numerical and algebraic equations as examples.