First Day Plans - Financial Algebra

The first day of school is just over a week away! Being on a 4x4 schedule that means we have to hit the ground running - especially in the fall semester. I have just 84 school days in the fall to get through tons of information (if you are unfamiliar, think college class schedule - you finish the course in a semester then start new course the next semester). This fall I will be teaching Financial Algebra (I absolutely LOVE this course and what we have done with it), and then planning out our Integrated Math 1 and 2 course for the teams (in the spring I will be teaching Math 2).

Note: I say it often, but I really am going to try to Blog more! So, I decided to get started with the #MTBoS #SundayFunday Weekly Blogging Challenge. I feel like I have been working on butt off this summer trying to get courses organized and set for the first quarter. For the first time in like 5 years, we will be starting the year with the teachers that ended last - there is not a new math teacher in my department! As a teacher who had to move schools every year my first 7 years of teaching, I had always taken my new teachers in my department under my wings to mentor and make sure they felt comfortable and supported to do what they needed to be an awesome teacher. Obviously I will still support the teachers in my department, but I don't feel like I need to be there as much - they are amazing and they got this!! So, maybe that will free up the time I need to Blog? ... right???

The post for this week is "First Day Plans." The plan is to:

1) start by greeting students at the door. I also use this as an opportunity to help some of the "lost" students find the correct classroom. Last spring, my student teacher asked students to write about "what does it mean to be financially secure" for the warm-up, so I think I will ask the same thing. 

2) I think I may also want to have a brief discussion about what the students think this course will be about, then what would they like to learn about. This will lead into a little more about what it may actually be like. Some students really struggle with this being a Project based course, while others don't realize this course should be taken at the end of their high school math pathway - so I like to take just a few minutes to make sure I inform them about this.

3) Students are then going to grab Chromebooks and get into Classroom. We aren't 1-1, so we have 3 carts for our department. Sadly, we usually have 1 booked for most days for our Financial Alg. courses.

4) Once in, I'll make sure students know what resources will be available to them in the "About" section, then they will get started on the first 2 assignments!!

  a) the first is a Google Form that just asks for some information so that I can get to know them better. I browse through answers as they work on the second assignment so that I can make a more personal connection with them. 

  b) students work on a HyperDoc about Google Apps. Since we use Chromebooks and Google Applications OFTEN in our Financial Algebra class, it is very important for students to have a strong grasp of the apps. We also found that students didn't know some of the little things that we thought they should, so we wrapped almost everything into this document. They have this day and part of the next two day's to complete it. I like that this can challenge any student! Last Spring, we used a slightly different version and every student learned at least one thing new.

5) finally, students will be given a Twitter Student Profile sheet so I can get to know just a little more about them.

The second day, I'm hoping to introduce my Class Economy plan (I'm still working on some aspects in my head but I am sooooo excited about this and can't wait to write a post about it soon!), have students get a little introduction to Sheets, and then continue to work on the Google Apps document.

Financial Algebra Week 1 [and 2]

We are one week two weeks into Financial Algebra for this new term! Students seem to be excited about what we will be learning and have been actively working on stuff.

We decided to create a parent newsletter for each unit we are working on. We want the parents to become involved in the discussions with their kids, and this way they will have an idea of what is going on in the classroom, as well as what our next unit will be on. Here is Volume 1 of our newsletter. I'll update you on if it is successful or not at the end of the year!

The past few weeks we have been busy talking about some employment basics. We decided to focus the project on a career they were interested in. Students will be researching and writing a paper, giving a quick presentation, and calculating monthly pay net of Social Security and Medicare. They will use this career throughout the term and the salary will be used to calculate their net monthly income for their household budget for the final project. I'm hoping that the students are picking careers they are truly interested in and the research they are doing helps to affirm that choice! The project is due Monday night with presentations Tuesday and Wednesday, so I'll keep you posted in the next post how everything turned out. I've included the Project Instructions here for anyone interested in what we are doing.

Up next, we will be starting Banking Services. I didn't really like what we did in the Fall - it was the first unit we did and we were still trying to figure things out. I'll be spending the next few days trying to figure out how we can make this unit better. I had my student teacher work on some project ideas and I'm meeting Monday with the other teacher teaching the course (she's the "we" I always refer to). I know we can come up with some great stuff for this unit.

New Year

It's the first of the year! In 2 days, I will be back at work and getting ready to the new term.

I'm excited to be teaching 2 sections of Financial Algebra again - I've learned so much the first time around and already have so many thoughts and ideas on how to make it better for the second time. That being said, I'm also finding that I am already overwhelming myself with wanting to create new lessons and repackaging old lessons. The past two weeks, I've spent many hours working on a HyperDoc to familiarize students with Google Suite (suited for High School students) and repackaging a career introduction (skills, interests, and abilities assessments). I think that I have finally got them completed! I'm still working on a document to go into Sheets (since we are doing finance, we use it often and I found the first time around that students had no experience with the application). And, I need to still figure out the details of our first project - career research. We did a different project for this unit, but with the additional time we have, we thought it would be better to really have students research the career they are thinking about since we will use it throughout the year. I'm hoping that I will be able to get them finished by Tuesday, but it isn't looking promising since the other 2 took so long for me to "perfect."

More time than I anticipated has been spent working on a strategy session presentation I volunteered to give. Back in November, I attended SDCUE and a session on HyperDocs. I had heard about them, but I wanted a better understanding. I had implemented a few in my class, and really enjoy the freedom it gives both myself and the students. So, I'm presenting a session about HyperDocs to any teacher that wishes to find out more! I finished my slide deck and thought that I was ready to go. But then I finished reading The HyperDoc Handbook: Digital Lesson Design Using Google Apps by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis. I felt I could make it better. I thought, if I'm giving a presentation about HyperDocs, wouldn't it be best to example it with them? So I created a Form that could go with the session. I gave opportunities for participants to Explore, Apply, and Reflect. I ask participants to explore already made hyperdocs for their content area. Then I ask for them to include the hyperlink. I will have them apply by really thinking about a lesson they plan to do this spring that maybe they could repackage. Finally, they will reflect on the idea of HyperDocs. In having participants search and include a link to a HyperDoc, I wanted to make sure that information was available for teachers to access, so I created a new Sheet and used the ImportRange function so that only those responses from the form would be visible to anyone that has the link. It's simple, but I'm pretty impressed with myself in pushing this further. My hope is that my colleagues will push themselves so that we all can push the students to achieve more!

Now that I have procrastinated an additional half-hour on the lessons I still need to work on, my resolution for this Spring Term is to Blog at least once a week with some of the resources we are using for Financial Algebra. I think we are doing some awesome stuff, and while we haven't created everything ourselves, it would still be good for me to share what we are doing.