Halloween

The past few years the majority of our department has dressed up with a common theme for Halloween. In 2016 we were "Pi-Rates" and 2017 we each were a digit in the Fibonacci Sequence (and ordered by height from least to greatest). We also dress up for Spirit Days and Pi-Day.

Halloween 2017

Halloween 2016

This year we started early in deciding (like mid-September) what we wanted to do for Halloween. One of the members, jokingly I think, mentioned Crayons. Well, that'll teach him because a few just took it and ran with it. Each member picked a color and made it math-y, like Radical Red, Exponential Emerald, or Octagon Orange. And one lucky member gets to be the Box.

Here is my journey: I got he cardboard from a co-worker that was perfect. I spent about 2 weeks working on my Box. I had to get the shape right; make the cuts for the head and arms; made a trip to Home Depot for finding just the right paint colors; measured out the stripes so they were as close as possible to being proportional; had a student draw out and color the crayons; sprayed, painted, and touched up until it was nearly perfect; added details until I ran out of time. Below are pictures at various points in the process.

Here is the completed front and back!! I'm thinking it looks really good. I'm also thinking I spent WAY too much time on it. When my husband mentioned a month ago to just buy one... I should have! But I also know if I had purchased one, this wouldn't be as cool and customized as it is.

Front!!

Back - look closely :-)

I plan on posting pictures of our Department after we take some tomorrow. And, if I'm lucky, I'll get some photos of my family. See, my daughter (whose 3) heard me talking about a crayon box and decided she wanted to be a Crayon too (Orange). I wasn't sure what my husband was going to do, and then a co-worker suggested a white t-shirt to color. So I'm the box, she's the crayon, and he's the paper. It's pretty good.

UPDATE:

Here is our Department.

Summer Plans

We've actually been out for almost a month now. I'm just now getting to writing after I've had time to relax and reflect. So here is a list of my plans for this summer:

1. Refine the concept mastery / standards based grading I dove into this spring in Integrated Math 2.  7/23

2. Once I've done #1, I want to look at how I can incorporate it into Financial Algebra. This may prove a little tougher since there are the procedural math skills and then the life skills they learn. But I like the idea of not counting points on the projects!

3. I'm planning to read (and finish! 🤣) Jo Bolar's Mathematical Mindsets. I've had the book for almost 2 years. So far, I'm doing pretty good- I only have 2 chapters left! 7/18

4. Getting the Level 1 and Level 2 Google for Education Certification. I started looking through and completing the Level 1 curriculum. My goal is to have Level 1 complete by mid July and level 2 by the end of August. 7/28 for Level 1.

5. I need to do A LOT of reorganizing and cleaning in my classroom. a) it just needs to be done, b) I will be sharing my classroom with another teacher and it will be there "office" so I want to create a space for whomever it'll be, and 3) inspired by Sarah Carter from Math Equals Love, I will be incorporating a puzzle table into the room. It's actually really cool because I submitted a project on Donors Choose for the table and lots of puzzles and manipulatives - it was fully funded in less than a week!! So I'm super excited to get the items and start setting it up. 

6. Non work related, I'll be enjoying (on most days, hopefully) time with my daughter. She is almost 3 and full of energy, so that will keep me very busy. I like being lazy and she needs to be out running around, so this may prove to be a tough challenge! 

7. Keeping my sanity and working on my health. I started running again back in May. Then I stepped on an uneven part of concrete, rolled my ankle, and fell, landing really hard on my knee. This happened 7 weeks ago and I'm still having some difficulty with pressure directly on my knee 😒. But I'm trying to still do some workouts, just not too much cardio. Other than that, my in-laws just moved in, so I'll be working on that adjustment.

Anyone else have a long list like me?

Numeracy vs. Literacy

Earlier this week I ran across a blog post from High Heels in High School about "When will we ever use this in real life?".  Then, I read this tweet this afternoon from Dan Meyer: 

Both really struck a chord with me. This has been my soap box this school year!

Long before this, I've been asking why it's okay for people to not be able to do math, but not okay to not be able to read? One of the points our math department presents to parents at Back-to-School Night every year, twice a year actually, is that they shouldn't say "I was never good at math" at home or to their kids.

In education, literacy and numeracy are often talked about. But numeracy always comes second, like the red-headed step-child. Yet, we expect the same results - proficiency. Data for the two is collected and compared, and math always is outperformed by ELA. The way math is treated though, this shouldn't be a surprise; us math teachers face an uphill battle. And I am sooo prepared for this battle!!

At our District, the top two goals of our Board are:

1. We want our students to demonstrate high levels of literacy in English (reading, writing, and listening & speaking).
2. We want our students to have expertise in mathematics.

Red-headed step-child!

I've heard of schools that have DEAR or SSR- so much emphasis is placed on English literacy. Reality is, students are using English every day, in each of their classes. All teachers are integrating English into their curriculum. But math is lonely - other teachers steer clear of it, even saying they don't know if or have needed it. AHHHHHH!!!  In January, I gave an Ignite Talk on this topic to math teachers in my District. Just last week, I was asking where our District's Math Center was, since we have a Literacy Center. I jokingly, well half-joking, was proposing a name change to the Math and Literacy Center. And, we also just completed our state testing. Every year, English tests the first week, math the second week. Once again, we are last. I was over testing as that second week began and it was only a schedule change that affected me. I can only imagine how the students actually testing were feeling. But it's always been this way. I don't know if math scores would be any better by going first, but it's worth a try to me! 

Alright, so I'm stepping back down off my box. Let me know if you have any solutions or suggestions!!!

Crazy Busy Week

I realize I haven't posted in a while. I had made plans to post once a week with the happenings in Financial Algebra, and that just has not happened. But I'm super excited about this week and I wanted to share!

1) Tomorrow is Pi Day!!! And who isn't excited about that? This weekend I made my T-shirt for the day. Several years back I made one that said "Be Inspired" so I needed something different. I looked up words and really liked the word "Aspire" so then I had to figure out what to do from there. My colleague helped me and we came up with "Aspire 2 be the [delta] change"!! Over the years, our students have used the motto "be the change" so this fits in perfectly. This shirt is what I made for myself and colleague. I wish I had the time to let my entire department in on the shirt and make one for them, but time isn't always on our side. Regardless, I'm excited to wear this tomorrow.

2) Along with Pi Day, my math department is hosting a luncheon for our staff. This year, each month a department is hosting a lunch for everyone. So obviously we took March so that we could do 3.14 and make it everything circular. Our Math Club made Pi Day Facts that we can display at the tables and I had my peer tutors color a few of these Pi Coloring Pages I got for free at Teachers Pay Teachers. I also made copies of this Graphic Organizer and Pi Day Sudoku Puzzle, also free from Teachers Pay Teachers, that I plan to have out on the table for staff to grab.

3)  Midterms is this week! We are 3/4 of the way complete with the school year and 1/2 through this term. It is going so quick. So Thursday and Friday will be exams. I decided this time to try our online assessment system for the Midterm. I spent last week inputting all of our questions and then this weekend added them to my exam so that I can administer it online. I'm excited and nervous about this. I think I may make a few sets of paper copies for students that may need it, but I'm looking forward to not having to make copies of the test for students. I always feel like I'm wasting so much paper! 

With midterms at the end of the week, we are providing time the remaining days for review in our Financial Algebra classes. Today they did review problems. Tomorrow we are going to have them create test questions and Wednesday I'm going to use the test questions to create a Scavenger Hunt. With our 80+ degree summer-like temperature this week, I figured this will be a great way to get the students outside to enjoy the weather while having a different way to review. Here's to crossing my fingers it all goes as planned.

4)  With St. Patrick's Day on Friday, I found on Pintrest the link to these shamrocks. So I'm making one for each member of my department. I'm hoping I'll be able to find a way to sneak it to them without them knowing it's from me, but we will see. I'm just hoping they will get a little message about how great they are!

5) Finally, we are busy practicing this week for the talent show next week. The math department is getting together and doing a dance to a mashup. We just started practicing last week and we have about half the song nailed down. We will be spending more time this week gearing up for the big performance next week!

If you haven't figured it out yet... I have an absolutely amazing department. I love working with them each and every day!!

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.

Amazing Department!

I have an AMAZING department! We added 3 teachers to our department this year, and 3.5 last year. Our growth in the number of students and section numbers has been great.

Going into my 11th year of teaching, I actually have the second most teaching experience in our department. My team is young! It's scary (because I'm not anymore) and exciting, and not common. But that youth brings so many ideas and willingness and hard workers. And I love them - they are my family!

With that background, I also remember what it was like being new to the profession/site: nervous and poor! The past two years I've given small gifts to each teacher in the department as a welcome back. It's included just a few commonly needed things - a pencil holder, pens, pencils, markers, post-its. This year, I decided to do something a little different as I know sometimes you just need a little extra to make it through the day. So I got a little bin and just filled it with various candies, and then a few pencils, sharpies, and post-it. I made a cute label to go on the top of each and then created a saying to go with each item. It's a small thing I can do to welcome them back, thank them, and wish them an awesome year! (and now that the year has started and I gave these out to my team, I can finally post this!)

Gift File

Paper-Less

I've spent the last few weeks thinking about how to be more organized.  I went to my room and started cleaning things up and rearranging so that I could accomplish that task this summer and be reading for the new school year.  As I was doing that, I've created FIVE boxes full of paper ready for recycling (I save student tests and some work as record for a year, so that was 2-3 of them).  So, I started thinking, "In our world of technology, how are we not more paperless?"

I decided to research how I could use Google Forms more efficiently for this purpose (I found "10 ways" and "80 ways" that helped give me ideas).  I already have my students do a First Assignment through forms that collects information about them and math experience.  I've used the forms in the past for End-of-Course Surveys, technology surveys, and collection of information from my department.  But, I didn't feel that was enough.

This week I created multiple forms that I felt would assist me better.  As a support provider for beginning teachers, I also though about what would also assist my new teachers and what they needed to document as part of their BTSA program.  So, I created:

• AVID Get to Know You
• Math Get to Know You (recreated)
• Communication Log (document parent communication)
• Meeting Agenda/Minutes
• Professional Development Log (based on the California Standards for the Teaching Profession)

I was SOOOO excited about what I had accomplished that day.  When my husband came home from work, I started to tell him about the meeting minutes and I was so excited.  Then he drops "but I wouldn't want it as a spreadsheet.  I'd want that information as a PDF."  I responded with "well, that's just how Google Forms does it.  It automatically records the responses in a spreadsheet...I think."  Which then led me to researching further if what he was saying would be even possible.  I'm a little OCD, so not just anything would do.  I'd have to find the way to get it just perfectly.  I already had a way envisioned in my head, so it was just seeing if that was then possible.  I ran across a site that was EXACTLY what I was looking for - Merging info from google forms to a PDF document to send via email.  TJ Houston wrote a script and had an advanced explanation of how to do this.  Since I know nothing about script, this took me a little longer to accomplish then it probably should have.  My first attempt had a small error in the script, so I had to figure that out and fix it.  Second attempt, the input values loaded into the wrong places on the PDF, so then I had to figure out if that was an error in the script or something wrong with the form (it ended up being how I created the form then the order it placed in the spreadsheet - so, I had to recreate the latter part of the form).  The third attempt was a success!!!  By that time, I was so grateful because it was 2:00am and I was exhausted.  

I met the next day with a few teachers, so I decided to test the form out again and have record of our discussion and next steps.  It was so perfect!!  I was able to automatically send myself the minutes, which I then forwarded on to the other teachers.  

I am so excited about the possibility with this option!!  I'm excited to share the possibility with the staff at my school and even the District.

Now, if only I could get my students to be this excited and passionate about accomplishing math!

Something New

So, I'm taking on a new role in teaching this upcoming school year.  Well, really it started just before this last one ended.  This past school year I was "Co-Department Chair," but I am now officially the Department Chair.  Our school has been around for 5 years now and has been growing exponentially.  I was hired there only 2 years ago.  Just before I got there they had 5 teachers in the department - next year we will have 9!  Our enrollment is going up by about 300 students.

I'm nervous about taking over the department.  I don't have as much experience as some of them, but I think I'm a leader and can really get our department on the same page and moving forward as we implement Common Core (disclaimer: we actually work really well together.  We collaborate regularly and typically are on the same page).  I think the key here is getting us organized and to be together as we implement Common Core.  Like many districts, we aren't just shifting to Common Core, we are also shifting our course sequence as we are going Integrated (that discussion will be for another time).

I've spent the past couple of weeks using the internet to see what others are doing with Integrated Math for Common Core.  I was able to find some great ideas out there for so many other things, but not as much as I was hoping for with Integrated Math.  So, I decided "why not become a resource for others?"  I have a lot of great ideas of my own to become a better and more efficient teacher in the classroom.  And, as we implement Integrated Math, maybe I'll have some ideas for other's.

Now, I'll add "Bloogger" to my something new hat!