Out on the Sea….

A Day in the Life:  Wednesday, October 26, 2016

It is the time of year where I feel like I am floating along in an open sea with no land behind me and no land in the horizon.  This long pull to Thanksgiving often feels to me like the longest time of the year.

6:15am:  Up earlier than usual in order to get to school for a parent meeting in the morning.

7am:

I am as ready as I am going to be, and I am staggering to pack my lunch and get out the door.  I decide to wrap up my breakfast sandwich and banana and eat it on the road.  I slam it down in stop and go traffic.

7:45am:

I arrive to school, drop my stuff off in my room and then go to my department chair’s room for the meeting.  The meeeting goes well.  Student is making progress through a tough transition to high school, which is great!   Student is in my support math enrichment course twice a week in addition to regular math class with one of my colleagues.  The two together have really helped!

8:15am: 

1^st period planning.  Time to put my classroom back together from testing rows.  The pair’s  desks work so much better for peer collaboration.  It is tough when one set of classes tests,and then the others sit in rows.  This year I have really gotten used to having students sit together, work together, and talk about math together a majority of the time.  I finish working  through the INB notes for today and then grade the test review assignments turned in from the last two days. 

9:30am: 

2^nd Period Algebra 1.  We are working through the last segment in Unit 2.  Unit 2 has included Linear equations and inequalities in all different ways in one and two variable, graphing, writing, analyzing, and now in this last portion  as systems of two equations or inequalities.  We have been in this unit for many weeks with many different assessments, but the scaffolding allows a pacing that helps students to process information more thoroughly.  I love that the end of the unit is culminating in combining all graphing and algebraic skills to study the meaning of 2 lines as a system.  The application problems are, I feel like, one of the best tie-ins to life activities around them.  We started systems today by estimating intersection points

when graphing 2 lines.

10:30am-12:35pm: 

2^nd and 3^rd period Accelerated Algebra.  We have started Unit 4 with Polynomials, which will lead to an emphasis focus on Quadratic Functions.  This is one of my favorite units in algebra  to teach!    We started with new vocab and concepts with polynomials, and then started operating on polynomials under addition and subtraction.  I cannot wait for the next couple of days with multiplication and area models.   They are a little wary of the classifying  of 1, 2, and 3 term polynomials and naming under early degrees, but they will tackle it.

12:35-1:24pm: 

Lunch and Accelerated Algebra PLC meeting.   Our department chair was the to collaborate with us on planning a pre-assessment and post-assessment for data collection for state testing.  In our course, we finish the algebra in March, and then our students study 4 units of Geometry for the remainder of the year.  This will give  us more time to prepare our students for the state exam.  We discussed and planned                          strategies for reviewing, and utilization of resources our principal has agreed to fund us with.  She has been generous in purchasing a great online system for EOC review.  We are also about to embark on teaching students factoring for the first time in their  math lives (formally at least).  We know this can be a big undertaking for Algebra 1 students even at an advanced level at the onset, so we discussed possible formative assessment strategies for them along the way to check for understanding.  Probably                          the best PLC meeting for Accel Algebra this year!

1:30 – 2:27pm: 

5^th Period Accel Algebra again with polynomials.  This time I heard a total “Oooohhhh” when I worked them into the reason a constant polynomial had degree zero.  Weaning them off of the idea that a number is not always “just a number’.  That lightbulb energized me for the rest of the work day.

2:32 – 3:30pm: 

6^th period Algebra 1.  I just acquired this class along with my 5^th period Accel Algebra as new classes within the month.  Yes, 2 new classes, 8 weeks into the school year, and hard on the kids and myself.   What I will say is that this stress was the last straw for my health and led to the decision I made to resign after 1^st semester.  Anyway, my 6^th period class was split from a class of 40 students my colleague had.                    They are a good group of kids, and they have made so many strides with their progress as a smaller group,  so it is a greatway to end each day

3:45-4pm:

One of my Accel Algebra 1 colleagues stopped ask for advice on pacing of content leading up to our quiz on Monday.   Being in a new unit in which students have not seen the content before requires more “mini-PLC” conversations, but I like it.  I had missed having  those mini-meets as my former colleagues and I talked all the time about instruction; to be fair, the layout of classrooms and teachers at my old school was more conducive for this.

4:00-4:45pm: 

Working  at school to tie-up loose ends, send needed emails, and work copy assignments for tomorrow.

4:50-5:20pm:  North Fulton traffic – 4.5 miles, 30 minute drive home; sigh.

5:30pm:  Dinner with my family – I love when the three of us get to have dinner together; it is not often!

6:00-8:00pm:

Grading tests taken by all students this week both Algebra 1 and Accel Algebra 2.  I am absolutely exhausted, and do not want that to affect the grading process, so I put them away for now.

                   

8:00-8:30pm: 

Finish writing DITL blog for today.   In re-reading this, I realize that my biggest break today was for dinner:  30 minutes with family.  I am worn out with 2 more action packed days ahead of me this week.   I realize quickly that this post will have to go out tomorrow because I need to get to bed and get some rest.  As it is, I am

sleeping copious on the weekends due to my health condition, and I am growing exhausted earlier and earlier each week.

Reflection Questions

1) Teacher make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.   When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried about?

I am proud of the fact that I stopped the work horse in myself with grading the tests when I was too exhausted to give them the concentration they need.  I did not get all tests graded by far, but some of them, and I can approach the other when I am fresh enough to do so.

I actually had no concerning decision today.  Every once in a while it is great to have a day where you feel good about the work that was done.   I am going to take it!

2)  Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us  some of what that is  like as a teacher.  What  are you looking forward to?   What has been a challenge for you lately?

My challenge lately is been keeping my stress under control as much as I can to keep my health at a place where I can finish the semester with my students.  My new school has a much bigger workload than my previous school, and it is a load that my health will not handle at this point in my life having Crohn’s disease.  What keeps me positive about my decision to go out of teaching is the opportunity to rest and get well and take time to refresh my teaching spirit.  I would like to think of this time period as a “self-induced sabbatical”.

Once I am well, and when I am well, I have plenty of technology avenues I want to explore, teaching strategies I want to research and plan for, and classrooms and teachers I would like to visit locally and nationally.  This was probably one of the hardest decisions in my teaching career, but I know it is time to take care of myself, which will have its long-term benefits; I just have to be patient with the time it takes to see the benefits.   I hope to achieve remission once again and be rested enough to teach again someday.  I know I will miss being in the classroom terribly.

3)  We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with teachers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone lately.

     I really enjoyed the mini-PLC with my Accel Algebra 1 colleague today.  I really felt like we 

     shared great ideas and worked together well to plan for the next few days leading into the next 

     quiz.  We are both work horses by nature, and our rooms are not close together, so we tend to get 

     caught up in our work a lot and not share as much as we could.  I am glad today was different – he

     is a great teacher, and even though we have a similar amount of teaching experience, I have still 

     learned so much from him this year.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and are often have specific goals for things to work on

     Throughout the year.  What have you been doing to work on your goal?  How are you doing?

     Unfortunately, because I am not well, my goals have not accelerated as much this month as last. 

     I am still planning and executing instruction and activities, but not as often as I would like. 

     To compromise, I have worked on increasing student talking and questioning more so into 

     instructional delivery, since the time to plan peer activities has given way to other tasks I must 

     prioritize with the time my health affords right now.   I am still going to push to do more in the 

     next month with groups, and I hope I can accomplish a little bit more.

5)  What else happened this month that you want to share?

   One of my former leagues and I are planning  to attend the Southern MTBOS Tweet-Up in 

   Chattanooga, TN  November 5^th.  We are both very excited to meet other math peeps from around 

   our region.  It is a day trip only, but should provide a great amount of resources to help with 

   planning activities when time is so limited now for me.  There are a few of us meeting from the 

   southeast region, and I know I will learn a lot  from them.  I am glad that there are teacher work 

   daysthe following Monday and Tuesday that will afford me the chance to still do this and not lose 

   the rest I need.

A Day in the Life:  9/26/16

6:15am:   Husband woke me out of a dead sleep – I had no idea what planet I was on.  Apparently I had slept through my alarm; great way to start Monday.

7:30am:  Arrived at school already late for morning duty.  Sent an email to my PLC that we would not be meeting at lunch today because 3 of us are going through class changes again after 7 weeks of school.  Yes, that’s right, classes not balanced yet.   We have a big test coming up this Friday, so I instructed the team to work on lesson that can really help to review and reinforce content for the students.

7:45am:  Went to morning hall duty all way across the school and roamed up and down stairs and 2 floors of the 2000 building.  I was checked up on 3 times before I was done at 8:15am.  Ship is tight here folks! 

8:20 -9:20am:    Started my planning period by running off interactive notebook pages for Accelerated Algebra 1.  Even and Odd Functions abstract proof – definitely not a favorite, but planning for visual tie-ins as much as possible.  Scrambled the rest of the hour to start putting together activities and homework for both classes as they are all testing on Friday.   Emailed for a quick meeting with my principal this week to talk to her about going out in December.   Meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 8:30am, and I can say with all honesty I am not looking forward to it at all.

9:30-10:25am:  2^nd period Algebra 1 and compound inequalities.  I started by making reference to compound sentences and coordinating conjunctions in language arts and explaining that they would now take the same idea with only 2 coordinating conjunctions to connect inequalities/math sentences.  The classwork/homework I gave on Friday had them graphing compound inequalities from interval notation and graphs, so that part was waiting for them to assign a meaning to.  The lesson went really well, and they worked in pairs with their assignment for the remainder of the period with me there for help.

10:30-11:30am:  As much as 2^nd period was a success today, 3^rd period was an epic fail, or at least in my book.  3^rd period is my “scared to wonder/explore” class, and I have not been able to crack through their shell completely.  Because of that, they retreat right back into the shell when things are tough.  Abstract proof of even and odd functions, even with a graphical lead-in, was not received well at all.  I attempted to tie the symmetry to the geometric transformations they learned last year with y-axis symmetry and 180 rotations.  They just could not make the connections today, which I am fine with, but they are a group that lets anger and discomfort impede their attempt and progress.  They might be the toughest group of accelerated students I have encountered.  I assured them that practice will help, that we will go pattern exploring tomorrow with their findings, and I now am planning on bringing DESMOS to the rescue.

11:35am-12:35pm:  4^th period – my wonderers and active questioners!   They did not love the even and odd topic, but they were willing to approach it and bring it down to their own words.  They pushed my thinking and helped me to verbalize the proof of odd functions better.  It is crazy how different one class is to the next.  I somehow have to push 3^rd period to be more comfortable with the uncomfortable.

12:40-1:24pm:  Lunch.  My Algebra 1 colleague Ben came up to my room to talk about the next quiz we are writing and to vent about the state of our 6^th period.  A little explanation:  due to over-enrollment, we have had to staff another math teacher, which took a while to find.  We found and on-boarded the math teacher, but they have yet to completely dissolve my 6^th period support class and split his class of 41 students, which was the plan.  They were supposed to do this at the latest last Friday, and we have not word of when this will happen.  Meanwhile, we are trying to prepare students for a test on Friday with as little disruption as possible and greatly concerned about it.  Hopefully the situation is resolved tomorrow, but it is frustrating to say the least; especially for him.  I am just looking forward to meeting new kiddos!

1:30-2:25pm:  5^th period Algebra 1 and the compound inequalities again.  They were equally as receptive to the lesson and applied the preparatory work from Friday to extended inequalities.  They are still a little wary about when the inequality symbol switches direction, but they kept at it at a good pace.  Some of them were not happy with the shared grade on their partner’s quizzes from last week, but they learned that partner’s quiz means helping each other rather than dividing the problems.  I told them they would have another stab at that this week.

2:30-3:30pm:  6^th period, which is currently not a 6^th period.  Some of my support students still have not been moved to their new elective courses, so the 5 that remain worked on their math homework for today, and I answered questions.  I am hoping that my new class is in place tomorrow, so we can wrap up inequalities and start preparing for Friday’s exam.

3:40pm:  I have a student in my room waiting for his mother, and we will have a parent-teacher conference.  My department chair arrives to inform me that he has no idea when the schedules for the new math classes will be changed and to try and hang in there.  It is hard for me to do this because it is affecting the students.  The overloaded class of 41 needs to be downsized to 2 of us, so they can better receive instruction in a smaller environment and subsequently more support.

4:00pm:  Parent-teacher conference for one of my Algebra 1 students struggling with the transition to high school math.  He is good about keeping up with classwork and homework, but needs to work on seeking extra help and reviewing a little each night to keep the concepts alive rather than waiting until the test.  The parent is asking for extra resources at home too, which is awesome.  The meeting was light-hearted as much as serious; when parents are open to collaborating, it is always better for all involved.

5:00pm:  Just arrived home and started the blog – hard to believe I kept track of everything.  Ate a quick dinner and chatted with my husband.  We have tutoring tonight.

6:00-8:00pm:  Tutoring appointments for AB Calculus and Geometry.   From limits and derivatives to classifying triangles, the math continues into the night!

8:15pm:  I am now finishing up this blog with a dish of smores ice cream – nice, sweet end to a long day.

9:00pm:  I am going to watch the presidential debates – just cannot bring myself to miss it no matter how tired I am.

Reflection Questions

1) Teacher make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels 

     overwhelming.   When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher movr you made that 

     you are proud of?  What is one you are worried about?

     Today I am glad that I canceled our PLC meeting for lunch to give us all a chance to breath

     and plan. As an Algebra 1 team, we have come a long way in recent weeks and are rolling along 

     nicely.  We have fallen into roles that reflect our strengths, and we get that chance to breathe, 

     we can start enriching our meetings with more sharing of teaching and strategies.

     I am concerned about the decision I need to talk with my principal with on Wednesday.  I do not

     want to elaborate today much as it was a long and tough decision.  More on this in future blogs.

2)  Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us  some of what that is  like as a 

     teacher.  What  are you looking forward to?   What has been a challenge for you lately?

     Today the highs and lows came in different periods back to back.  From the push to explore even

     and odd functions in 3^rd period to the willingness to explore and redefine in 4^th period.  Two 

     different  classes, same course, two different ball games.  People may assume the same course 

     does not change from period to period, but any teacher knows it does.  This might be a more 

     extreme case than what I am used to, but it has been my challenge lately, and I tend to make 

     challenges my mission.  I am hoping to get my 3^rd period class to a point where they will not 

     fight  back tooth and nail at being uncomfortable in the learning process.

3)  We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build 

      relationships with teachers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone 

      lately.  In the beginning of the school year, my Algebra 1 colleague and I were at odds on the 

      PLC.  Lately, we have taken a step back, started learning how to work with each other, and now

      we are able to lean on each other in the wake of all the stress with our class changes.  They say 

      that relationships that take more work tend to be the most worth it in the end, and that is turning 

      out to be true for us.  We are both experienced teachers from different schools coming in this 

      year.  We both are passionate about teaching and had to find a way to make a big enough arena

      for all of our ideas, and in this time of stress, I think we stick together to draw on our shared 

      passion of teaching and working with kids  to get us through. 

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and are often have specific goals for things to work on

     Throughout the year.  What have you been doing to work on your goal?  How are you doing?

     I pushed on both of my teams to push the next test back a day or two, so I could incorporate some

     Meaningful activities into our review.  Lately I have felt like the passenger on an non-stop over-

     Informative highway with no room to breathe on any one concept.  I know if I feel this way, the 

     kids are probably going crazy.  I am happy to say my teams agreed, and I have some fun and 

     reinforcing things planned for Wednesday and Thursday.

     Per my goal of spiral review, I have really been working that into my Accelerated Algebra 1 class 

     and will hit the mark on every assignment with it this week.  They are working with topics that are
     pretty tough for them at this level, and I know I am over-preparing them, but I want them to be 

     able to sustain for future honors math courses.  Because I have taught and tutored every level and 

     course except AP Statistics, I know the concepts they are headed for.  It will be a delayed 

     gratification for them, but I know they will be glad when they are able to use what they have 

     learned later.

    

5)  What else happened this month that you want to share?

       I got to have dinner with two of my colleagues from my former high school just last Friday night.

       They are teaching the Algebra 1 support block class that I taught last year and doing the 

       interactive notebooks   They told me that I had totally changed the support class for them by 

       teaching them to do this, and that they loved teaching the course and watching how much the

       students used the notebooks as a resource in class and were such hard and confident workers in 

       math.  They said they had never seen that before.  My heart melted.  I know how much I loved 

       doing the notebooks with that class, so I know the joy they are experiencing, and I am glad that 

       I was able to influence that.

Hanging in There by Creating Resources the Old-School Way…

For those of us that start in early August, it is a tough pull through the fall months.  A lot of us joke that if you make it to Thanksgiving, the year is over.   I am feeling the pull right now as we are ending the first 6 weeks, and progress reports with all the surprises and additional tasks that can go along with that.   Last week was parent/curriculum night, so that always makes for one long day and somehow a longer week. 

So last week was pretty blah with instruction.  Not my intention, but lost the time to do as much with activities as in previous weeks.  Still, I got a surge of need to put something in that was going to push student thinking.  We are working on functions in Accelerated Algebra 1, which is one of my favorite things to teach, and I was missing the chance to do cool activities while strapped for time going into a quiz.  About an hour before curriculum night began, a synapse fired, and an idea I wanted to embrace.  I did not want to lose it, so I opened up my graph notebook and started drawing graphs…

I wanted to do an activity solely on whether or not to connect the points on a graph that are generated by a function in a real-world situation.  In the past and still this year, I always incorporate this concept within task-orientated problems.   This is still a great portion of a task, but I really was feeling like it needed sole attention.  The title of the activity was “To Connect or Not Connect”, and I drew out 8 graphs with points and labeled the x and y axes with situations.  I then prompted the students to circle yes or no, and then in the spirit of Sara Van Der Werf, I told them to “convince me”.   I then drew two  empty graphs for problems 9 and 10 and asked the students to create one situation that would result in a connected graph and one graph that would not be connected.

I scanned the paper and loaded it into their OneNote assignments for the next day.  I had the students work in pairs during class to make the “connect or not” decisions.  There was great discussion and debate among the students – kids realizing that there could be more than one argument for many graphs, and kids realizing that sometimes more than one explanation could work if they argued their ideas on an assessment.  It was nice to hear my class come alive again in a time of the year when the lessons tend to fall flat due to lack of time and increased exhaustion.

It was a last minute thought, and I went old-school with constructing the activity because I did not want lose the idea in the wake of lack of time.  It is handwritten by yours truly who does not have great handwriting, and it looks like something that came off of a mimeograph copier, but it worked just as easily to generate great conversations and dig deeper into concept development.  The file for this beauty is attached below

To Connect or Not Connect Activity

My takeaway from this is to not let those great ideas get away from you if you don’t have the time to type, generate, format, edit, repeat.    Our hands can relay meaning in content just as well when we are in a pinch, and I almost felt freer to organize my thoughts.   This was a critical concept in this unit, and I believe this activity helped them to think about what part of the input/output scenario drives the decision to include connectivity into things like domain and range, whether both domain and range should be considered, and what are some of the things around us that do not exist in life as partial quantities.

It was a great activity, and I am glad I allowed myself to free-write a document rather than declare the “no time to electronically generate or search” and keep them from an engaging activity.

Now for this week.  My favorite activity of all times:  Transformations of Functions Discovery Activity.  I developed this 2 schools ago, and have taught it at all levels.  It is fascinating to see them search for all the patterns that come together to create different types of transformation.  More on this later with pictures and explanation.  This activity alone makes me so excited for this coming week.  For the first time, I have multiple days to use and keep the activity and discussion going over several days.

Until next week – I will look forward to sharing it.

Zen Places

As teachers, we are very busy people and our jobs can be just as stressful as they are awesome.  This past week was the end of week 4 of a very hectic school year.  I left school last Thursday tired and with many frustrations.  I was having a hard time seeing past the day, but luckily it was a long weekend with a trip planned to one of my favorite places.   I call these places my Zen places.  These are places where I can calm down, completely relax and let go, and inevitably end up in a positive place of reflection.  I have 3 of these places, and I visit them all at least once a year. 

1. St. Simon’s Island, GA

I am a lover of beaches in general, but this beach/beach town is definitely my favorite.  It is a small little town lined with Mangrove trees and such a laid back way of life.  There are lots of unique little shops and eateries with fresh seafood and local flair.  We always stay at a relaxing resort in a pool-side suite (totally spoil ourselves once a year).  The patio in the pool and lounge area overlooks the ocean and beach.  I love the incredible sunrises and sunsets there, and I ended up taking a lot of Oceanside snoozes on the veranda this year.  So peaceful, so calming, and I was totally able to re-energize.

2.  My Best Friend’s Condo in Minneapolis

I lived in Minneapolis for 16 years after high school, and I love this city!  I still go back at least once a year.  Although I was not able to be in Minneapolis in July for TMC16 because of surgery, I was able to make it up for Sara VDW’s professional development during an annual visit in June.  I am also planning a trip for November again.   Because I ended up as a suburbanite in Atlanta, I miss all the biking and cool eclectic shops, dining, lakes, and theaters that are so accessible in Minneapolis.  Every time I am there, I stay at my best friend’s condo in Uptown, which always calms me the minute I walk through the door.  She is the most artistic and creative I have ever known, and her condo is a reflection of her in every corner- from the colors on the walls, the cool pieces of furniture, to the many plants and wind chimes lining her balcony.   A picture of that balcony is shown below.  Notice the wooden bird wind chime – she bought that while she was staying with me last year in Atlanta.  We had taken a weekend trip to Helen, GA- a German-themed tourist town in the mountains of North Georgia.  I love that she has that one up there because it is perfect for a balcony in Uptown Minneapolis, and an icon of a memorable weekend!

3.  Battery Park Book Exchange:  Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville, NC is an awesome mixture of Uptown Minneapolis and Southern Culture for me.  It is like having an uptown in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.  The views are gorgeous, the streets are full of life, cool little shops, often live music, and street chess.   My favorite place here, and maybe in the whole world, is the Battery Park Book Exchange.  This place is a combination of used books for sale, coffee bar, and wine bar.  I mean, who could ask for anything else???  It is two stories with room after room and nook after nook of books and comfy couches to sit and read the books and drink coffee. The ambiance of beautiful dark woods and warm painted walls is so relaxing.   I can and do spend hours and way too much money here, but the level of happiness I reach in the 4 walls of this place is hard to beat.  Pictures below are of the inside of the Battery Park Book Exchange I pulled from the internet.

I left school 4 days ago with an electronic grade book that I am locked out of after only being cleared to put in grades during week 4 of school, a frustrating co-teaching situation, and many other loose ends untied.  I am now back from a weekend in Zen Place #1, and I am ready to go back and try new things again this week and see the kids again.  I was able to re-connect back to some of my favorite things I learned over the summer and use in my classroom that I had put into a collage to wear on the back of  a school name tag that I made for my lanyard.  Both of these I made weeks ago, but lost track of waiting for a new laminater and being swept away the first weeks of school.  Tonight I made it a point to crop, print, and laminate them so they are close by to keep me going during times of stress without a Zen place to be in.

One last reflection I made this weekend was that getting last Friday off for my Zen place was not easy to do, but I fought for it because I knew I would need it.  In reflection of this over the weekend, I remembered my former principal at my last school.  He was a leader who believed in balance for students and for teachers.  He never questioned time we requested off if we had the appropriate amount of time allotted for it.  He treated us like the hard-working professionals that we were and knew that we put the time we were asking for off and so much more back into our jobs.  I never realized just how valuable that was until this year.  I mean, I never thought he didn’t care or appreciate us, but I did not understand how much.  I wish I would have thanked him for this, but I am sure I will see him again at some point and do just that!

Teacher friends, never forget to re-visit your Zen places, particularly during the school year if you can, so you can take advantage of the energy it can give you back.  We give so much of our lives to our students and our families and stretch ourselves so thin that it is hard to remember our happiness counts to0 and must be nourished and revitalized from time to time.  Take your time off when you need it – fight for it tooth and nail if you have to –it is so worth it.  Get to your Zen place and let it revive you!!!

Step one:  Stop and identify your Zen places!!!

Step two:  Blog about them and post pictures - so fun!!!

I would love to hear other people’s favorite places to rejuvenate – what are yours?  

Finally a Week Full of Fun Activities!!!

This past week was our 3^rd week with the kiddos.  My Accelerated Algebra 1 class was taking their 2^nd quiz of the unit this week, and my Algebra 1 On-level classes were heading for their first unit test.  I was able to take advantage of a few review days this week to do some engaging activities for assessment preparation.

On Tuesday, I used an activity from the team batch for the inequalities quiz.   This activity gave compound inequality problems along with 3 different representations of the solution that had to be matched up with each problem:  interval notation, inequality w/union or intersection notation, and the visual graph.   Because I had just got my laminator delivered, I was able to laminate the game cards, so I was really excited.  On the bottom of each card was a letter, so when they put the solutions together, it spelled a word – great way to check their answers, and they did not catch on to that at all, which was something I anticipated.   The activity was really engaging and reinforced their understanding of the representing solutions rather than just finding them.  In grading their quizzes later in the week, it was clear that this activity helped!   The 2^nd activity I created and was intended to strengthen understanding of indicators of inequality symbols in word problems.  This activity gave the students 6 inequality problem sets, and for each one the students were asked to write a number sentence representing the inequality, and then create a real-world situation to represent the inequality.  Because of time constraints, I had them pick 4 out of the 6 inequalities.  There answers were really creative and fun on the real –world side of it, and they rocked the number sentence portion; also, great discussions! What they did not hesitate to say is that it was much harder to come up with the problem than solve it; mission accomplished!  I told them that meant they were learning for the long termJ   Activities in action and link for game are below.

 Inequality Matching Card Game

What Was the Situation Inequality Activity

Wednesday in Algebra 1 after wrapping up radical expressions, I gave a spiral review activity for Order of Operations.  I would not realize until later in the week while browsing Twitter and MTBoS that I had done a version of “Commit and Capture”.  I was excited to know that my thinking and lesson creating is on track with awesome teachers in the MTBoS community – it gave me a lot of energy.  Along with the commit and capture idea, I had them roll dice for numbers to insert into the blanks, and they had to make every other number negative.   The last two problems on this activity included division in the order of operations, so I asked them if their number was an integer or rational to reinforce the number types subsets.  If their number was rational because of the division, I asked them to explore the original problem and see what numbers could be changed to make the result an integer under the division involved.   That was an awesome piece – I thought I may have pushed too far for on-level this early, but that was the part they focused on the most!    I am glad “Commit and Capture” for this activity is already out there as I will continue to spiral it through.  Below is the link to the activity I made.

Order of Operations Dice Game

On Thursday in Algebra 1 we had day 2 of review activities.  I used the “I Have Who Has” Structure of Expressions activity from my team bank last year.  I also was able to laminate and cut cards this year, so the activity will keep better.  I had students deal out the cards and take turns telling their group members what expression they had, and what term, factor, coefficient, or constant they needed.  They were to take turns until everyone had found the elements they needed from their hand.  I believe there were 2-3 leftover elements that no card had, and when they found those, I knew they had the activity completed.  The awesome part of this activity was hearing all the vocabulary for expressions flying around in the room.  As evidenced from the tests I have graded so far, this activity brought the reinforcement of this concept to their understanding that had been missing when they took the quiz.  Pictures of the activity and the link for it are below.

I Have Who Has Structure of Expressions Activity

Also on Thursday was another attempt, although I now know not the last, to help students classify number types.  I developed a “Number Type Coloring Lab” for students to create subset boxes for each number and represent the type the number is a member of by certain colors.  At the end of the activity, I wanted the students to look at certain color schemes for patterns.  I asked them what patterns they noticed.  They still struggled with it originally and referred to their notebooks (which of course I want them to be able to do – that is why were keep themJ), but many are still struggling with this concept after the test.   My search for activities for this topic will continue and of course include the MTBoSJ  Pictures of the activity and link are below.

  

Number Sets Coloring Lab

The last activity I gave for Algebra 1 was a writing expressions activity.  The problems I created had the students gathering information from clippings I got off the internet and pasted.  Some of it was hard to read, so I encouraged them to use their Surface Pros to look up normal pricing for similar things involved in the problems to determine a certain price or amount.  The Jet’s pizza problem was the most challenging, and I let them know they may want to save that one for last.  Most groups required some interaction from me with further prompts, but the enthusiasm to get through that problem was definitely there, which made me happy.  Of course, Jet’s is some damn good pizza in our area, so that probably helped!  Even after the test, a lot of students still struggle with the ideas of tax as a percentage off the price, but the process is getting better.  I honestly think their age and lack of experience paying for retail things has a lot to do with it.   On parent night, it will give me something to talk about with their kids when shopping.  Link for this activity below.

 Writing Algebraic Expressions from Real-World Situations Activity

  

One last great thing from the planning side of things is that I left Friday afternoon feeling like I could actually breathe and was somewhat caught up.  I had all of my stuff crossed off the list, and things ready for Monday.  I am not someone who likes making lists because they overwhelm me at times, but my friend got me a list pad that is a super fun way to make lists and want to cross off items.  It is called a “crap pad”, and at the bottom of the pad when I am done I can check off “All crapped out”, which is so silly, but I love getting there and getting to say “yes!  I am all crapped out”.   Below is a list from this week complete with some adding at the bottom from when I was trying to determine point value totals for our Algebra 1 test this week.

All of these activities made the week so exciting from the teaching aspect.  I am at it again this week for regular instruction this time pulling ideas from the CMP curriculum for area and perimeter.  I also have a cool dimensional analysis activity my friend Deb gave me to help the Accel Algebra students get ready for their test.  This week is a short one for us as our school has a professional day Friday, and then the Labor Day weekend.  It is hard to believe that the end of this week already marks a month of school!

Day in the Life – August 26, 2016

6:15am:  Wake up and finally get out of bed – it’s Friday, so definitely an extra challenge today!  It’s August in Atlanta, which means don’t bother straightening the hair, and opt for the extra few minutes of extra sleep.

6:50am:  Pack up lunch for today and eat breakfast.  Every Sunday, I make a monstrous omelette and break it up for breakfast each day of the week.   I also pack up my lunches for the week.  This is like Meg Craig does with outfits, only this would be more of a morning struggle for me if not made ahead of time.

7:15am:  Arrive to school and realize I need to rearrange student desks because Algebra 1 has their first Unit test today.  Begin doing that and work on what I call my “file pile”, which goes into my course binders.  Organization of paper has always been a struggle for me, but my last school whipped me into shape with that.  Now I can’t go more than a couple of days without dealing with piles.  I spent too many years trying to clean up those messes at the end of a semester with an enormous trash bin.

7:45am:  Meeting with my department chair and a member of my Algebra 1 team who started to become a rogue operator.   All of us on the Algebra 1 team are coming in from different schools, so it has been hard to get into a rhythm on the team.   He and I actually talked about it at lunch yesterday, but this formality meeting was set yesterday.  Another meeting….   Out of 5 mornings before school and 5 lunches this week, 7 of those time periods have been at one meeting or another.  Thankfully, I have 1^st period planning, which helps to then get ready for the day if I still need to.  

8:40am:  Meeting lasted almost an hour; ran over because my department chair and I both have 1^st period planning.  Good conversations were had, and I feel like we are back to a starting place in our PLC, but start-overs can be a good thing if everyone is committed to a definable better.  I could have sat and talked to my department chair much longer, but I realized that I needed to go and copy my tests for today.  Because I finalized them and sent the key out to everyone, there are no edits to worry about, but they do need to be copied!

9:00am:  Begin finalizing my instruction and notes for 3^rd and 4^th period Accel Algebra for today on Dimensional Analysis.  Not a welcomed topic by students, I want to make sure it has the proper hooks and want to find spots in the problems for good conversations and “What –if “ scenarios.  Yesterday during the unit rates lesson, we ended up with an amazing discussion on the business principal of profit and not being able to keep everything you may earn.  Further, we visited the fact that there is not guarantee of profit.

9:30am:  2^nd Period Algebra 1 and time for their first Unit test of the year.  We have been doing some exciting activities in class the past couple of days to review order of operations, number types, writing algebraic expressions, and “terms, factors, coefficients, constants”, so I am looking forward to how they do.  Most finished in plenty of time and said they felt prepared, so I am hoping they knocked their first assessment out of the park!  During the test I grade their review homework and start writing lesson plans for next week as well as attend to the constant stream of email coming in.

10:30am:  3^rd  Period Accel Algebra 1 and unit conversions/dimensional analysis.   As expected, it was not a welcomed topic by students, especially when converting to cubic centimeters, but we made it through.  I definitely need to find a way to spice this topic up much more on the front end, but I am excited about an activity using it next week for test review.  4^th period with Accel Algebra went a little better on the uptake with conversions, but still – note for the future:  find a way to make conversions more engaging.  Better application problems, something.    During this period I get an email from my Accel Algebra team leader that we need to meet quick over lunch.  I am now up to 8 out of 10 hours of meetings this week. 

12:45pm   The meeting was in my room and about whether or not to replace a lowest quiz with next week’s test if they do better.  This is not a practice I use, but I agree to it to save argument and time.   As my Accel Algebra colleague is leaving, my mentor stops by and is trying to convince me to “eat lunch like a real person” in the office with others today.  I am panicking a bit now because I have no materials for math support 6^th period today.  I had planned on puzzles, but I had also planned on my entire lunch period to print and copy an assortment.  I told my mentor I would try to get in there.  Next, my Algebra 1 colleague stops by to see what to do about giving the test 6^th period because our principal is making the formal announcement of the death of one of our students this week; we both know that students may need to opt out of the test.  We come up with plan B for giving the test Monday for his class if needed.  As soon as that was done, one of my colleagues from my former school stops by to say hi and visit since he is subbing for us today.  He has gone out of the classroom to pursue a graduate degree in statistics.  He was an amazing teacher, and something tells me he will go back someday (I hope so).  I really miss working with him.

1:05pm:  I now have 15 minutes left to eat lunch and make copies.  I quickly decide to do Ken-Ken only with support today (they had their 1^st major exam today in their core class, so I wanted to do something more relaxing with numbers today).   I print the puzzles, go to the math office with my yogurt and join the others while my copies were running.  It was nice to get some laughs in before the afternoon classes.  I have to push myself to do this more often.

1:30 – 3:30pm:  5^th and 6^th period came and passed.  It was hard to get support engaged into the puzzles, especially after the announcement from the principal, but they were good sports about it considering it was a Friday, unfortunate news, and we were all exhausted.  I was relieved when the bell rang at 3:30pm and excited to start my weekend.   I stayed a bit after school to talk with my team teacher and a couple of other colleagues about overloaded classes, lack of access to our gradebooks yet, and the fact that my support class will dissipate soon (more on that with a formal blog).

4:20pm:  I hit the road to meet up with my colleagues from my former school at Taco Mac for dinner and drinks.  I left too late of course and met up with some awesome and ridiculous suburb traffic...

Not really what one wants to deal with after a long day of work - this went on for 4-5 miles.  Gotta love North Fulton County, GA.

and was late, but when I got to the restaurant, there was a nice surprise.  Two other of my close colleagues from another nearby high school that I tutor for were there too.  We all sat together and caught up on our school year so far – all the crazy glitches, the stress, the awesome kids, etc.  What I love about this scene was the fact that were had 3 different schools worth of things to share.  It has taken some time, but with the many high schools in our area, we are becoming a pretty close knit set of mathies.  We don’t get our together often, but we do all know each other and have been around long enough to form these bonds.    It is great being in the company of those who share your path – we shared a lot of laughter too.  I love being a part of this community even if we are all at different schools.

7:30pm:  I arrive home after dinner and re-cap the day with my husband who is going into teaching as a second career; I am now re-capping my day for this blog.  I was doing the blog in real time until I finished the 10:30 am segment; then the day got away from me.  We are now three weeks done in our school year already, but this 3^rd Friday feels the most exhausting, so I am glad I am at home.  My plan is to go to bed by 10pm and get a good night’s sleep.  I do not have much planned for this weekend, so hopefully I can get good and recharged for next week, which is a short one with the kiddos.  Our school has an extra professional day next Friday, but I did not know this coming into the school.  I will not share that learning day with my colleagues as we are going out of town for our annual anniversary trip and already financially committed.  I am so very much looking forward to it though, and I know it will help next week to have that pot of gold at the end of the week; then of course is the 3 day Labor Day weekend!!!

Until next timeJ

Reflection Questions

1) Teacher make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.   When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher mover you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried about?

     Today I am glad that I made the decision to give support math a break from the  math after their 

     first unit test in their core math class.  As I stated in the blog, it was hard to get them engaged, but 

     I think it was important for them to know that I do understand the need for a break from normal 

     routine after working hard towards a big assessment.

     I am concerned about the decision to not fight harder to not replace the lowest quiz in the unit 

     with the test score if it is higher, but I am going to trust my colleague on this one.  For me, I think 

     it sends the wrong message early and in the wrong way.  I am very much a proponent of finding 

     ways to reward hard work and mastery when it was not there before, but I o not like doing it on 

     the grand scale.  I like it much better by individual, and I think it allows for trust building and 

     individual  communication between students and teachers.  Still, teaching in our area is very 

     PLC-based and too  many times in a robotic sense, so I know if we are going to do this, my 

     colleague is right about the  process.

2)  Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us  some of what that is  like as a teacher.  What  are you looking forward to?   What has been a challenge for you lately?

     This year, I have been doing a lot more interactive activities with students; many of them

     open ended and task-orientated.  I have truly enjoyed this and look forward to continuing

     this process because I believe it has helped immensely with success in their first assessments.

     The most challenging thing for me this year is my support class as it is structured differently 

     than my support classes in the past.  I was used to having a support class for 2 hours in which 

     I was the students’ core content and support teacher.  Wow did we get so much done and build a 

     community!  This year, support is the last period of the day, and my students are coming from 4 

     other different content teachers.  It is so hard to build any kind of relationship with them or get 

     to any kind of consistent routine.  I find myself more and more frustrated by the day.

3)  We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with teachers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone lately.

    As mentioned in the blog, I had a member of the Algebra 1 team become a rogue operator within 

    the  last 2 weeks.   Both of us sought help from our department chair, and we planned to meet 

    today.  My colleague came to my room during lunch yesterday to talk, and we had a great 

    conversation about what had happened and what we could do to fix it moving forward.  This made 

    the meeting with our department chair much more rich this morning.  We were able to have a 

    sharing session rather than  a “fix-it”  session.  I am proud of us for committing to talk sooner that 

    required as well as the conversations we had.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and are often have specific goals for things to work on

     Throughout the year.  What have you been doing to work on your goal?  How are you doing?

     One goal for this year was to create more engaging activities for students.  So far I have been

     doing pretty good at implementing at least a couple of engaging activities per class per week. 

     I am able to keep up with this because I followed Sarah Carter’s idea of posting a tweet for 

     teach180 as often as possible.

     Another goal I wanted for this year was to spiral concepts into homework assignments to help 

     keep information alive whether a student is working on mastery or maintaining mastery.  So far 

     this has been a challenge because of time, but I have been able to do this with a few assignments.  

     My hope is that as the beginning of the year gets less crazy, time will allow for this.

5)  What else happened this month that you want to share?e

      My most exciting thing that happened this month was when I introduced MTBoS and Desmos to

      my colleagues at my former high school.  The reception I got was incredible, and I was so 

      excited to pass along these great resources that I have learned and re-energized from!!!

Getting Kicked by the 10-day Count Concept

Week 2 sure has been interesting…  They are balancing classes and continued to do so until Friday, which was the official 10 day count to determine if we are understaffed or overstaffed.  The balance act has definitely not been showing slope zero on the teeter-totter if you know what I mean.

Monday 8/15:  1^st period is underway, and we are doing pairs-work review with a learning check for the quiz on Wednesday.  1^st period started at 8:20am, and suddenly at 8:35am my colleague and Accelerated Algebra 1 team member appears in my doorway with a panicked look on his face asking to talk to me.  Out in the hall he informs me that 2 our Accel classes have been switched and that I now have 1^st period planning.  Did I want him to take the students with him today or start with them tomorrow, and he will keep his 3^rd period students the same for the day.

Ummm, WHAT???

I kept the 1^st period students.  I was heartbroken.  I spent a week getting to know them with name tents and student auto-biographies, and we were definitely in a rhythm.  Telling them at the end of the period was the hardest thing I have had to do yet this year; none of us were happy.   My colleague is an excellent teacher, and I know they will be in good hands, but they are already transitioning to high school let alone having to get used to another class/teacher.

During 3^rd planning that day, I read my emails, and I realized that the email about the switch was sent to my colleague and myself at 8:23am that morning; 3 minutes into when that class was supposed to have started.   No student had gotten a schedule change formally, they let us handle it and walk the students to their new classrooms; maybe that was a more personal way to handle it…

Tuesday 8/16:  I got my new 3^rd period class, and they are awesome too, but they were sure stunned that day when they heard the news and had to come up to my room.  It is a smaller class, so we are getting to know each other quickly, but it took a couple of days to settle in.  In the switch, the students became worried that they had missed information pertinent to the quiz on Wednesday, but they did well on their first quiz, which I was relieved to see.

All of the week, the support Algebra 1 class has been a behavioral struggle as well as an instructional challenge.  I had to drop my opening of the period with Number Talks or Would you Rather? Because we do not have the behavior enough in a rhythm to get through it.  Most of it stems from the fact that the group consists of students with different teachers for their core Algebra 1 content classes, and all teachers teaching differently and at a different pace.  As an Algebra 1 team of all new teachers to the school, we are trying to work on this, but it is proving to be a slow process given all of us going through the transition of a new school.  As lead on the team, that is my biggest goal for week 3 – to get us more coordinated in our intentions and outcomes.  

As far as the support class, this also is a new experience for me as I have always taught support classes for a 2-hour block where I was their sole teacher for the core content and the support to go along with it.    I honestly believe that is a better system for the students, and as I have talked about in earlier blogs this month, success was found by all.  Still, there must be a way, so I will be looking to the MTBoS for suggestions.

So, the resulting chaos from the events of the past week along with a medical procedure I had done this past Saturday and had to prep for on Friday have kept me from the blogging keyboard for the past week.  I wish I could have produced more for Blaugust, but at least I am still writing.

I am hoping this week will settle down a little more.  Tonight I developed a couple of activities for my Algebra 1 classes this week to strengthen their skills in Order of Operations and Expression Writing as they head into a test on Friday.   I also have a pairs activity for Accelerated Algebra that I cannot wait to hear them talk about on Tuesday as they prepare for their 2^nd quiz.   The support class I have to re-engage in somehow…

AND…  My laminater finally showed up from back order on Saturday morning, so who cannot love that!!!

Until next time.