One of my goals for the summer is to write about some of the things I have been thinking about over the last school year (or longer). Michael Pershan gave me the perfect place to start with his recent post about Building Thinking Classrooms. He expertly calls into question the lack of research-based evidence… Continue reading Take What You Need and Leave the Rest
It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with @mathequalslove’s Question Stack structure. It’s a great way for students to work independently while self-checking their answers. I created my own stacks for practice with laws of exponents, polynomials, and factoring. But, when it came time for our unit on solving equations, I was beginning… Continue reading Dominoes Practice Structure
I have a very distinct memory of my students experiencing cognitive overload last year during our unit on factoring, so I knew I needed to make some changes if things were going to be different this year. Much of the changes I have made to my approach to teaching this school year are a result… Continue reading Factoring Quadratic Expressions
I wanted to try a new warmup structure this year – calling on the likes of Lisa Bejarano and Elissa Miller. I saw the value in building my students’ problem-solving and number-sense skills, and I wanted to incorporate many of these routines in my classroom. But my first few attempts at using these warmup routines didn’t work.… Continue reading Hybrid Warmups
For the first time in my teaching career, I have 4 different classes to prepare for, although most days it feels like 5 because the needs of my ELL students are very different than my non-ELL students. For the last 2 weeks, I have felt completely overwhelmed trying to keep up with everything. Thankfully, I… Continue reading Sanity-Saving Planning Guide
Is the beginning of the school year always this exhausting? I’ve barely had time to open up Twitter, let alone write a blog post. But today was a good day. And that deserves a moment to reflect. This is my second year teaching ELL students Algebra 1. Last year I learned that I made way… Continue reading Perfect Squares and Perfect Cubes
I’ve already written about how I hope to change my grading structure this year. In addition to using highlighter error codes and a separate grade for computation, I am going to try using rubrics to grade and provide feedback on my cumulative exams (no more unit tests for me!). I hadn’t really thought about how… Continue reading Delaying the Grade + Reflection + Rubrics
Today was my last weekday without an alarm. Summer flew by, but I’m really anxious to get back in to my classroom. I spent the morning trying to focus my intentions for the school year, so I went to my framework for teaching. What is my framework for teaching? Well, after I left TMC (and… Continue reading “I’m telling you this because I care about you.”
Have you seen all the great classroom posters in the MTBoS? I mean really, have you seen them?? They’re amazing. The trouble for me is, when it comes to classroom decor, I’m a minimalist. Actually, that’s not just a classroom thing. That’s an at-home thing too. I just like to keep things simple. But then… Continue reading Custom Dividers
Am I the only one that hates grading? Not the process of grading (although that’s not my favorite either) but the role of “grader.” There’s something about being a coach and cheerleader for my students 90% of the time, but then also being the person who calculates their scores on an assessment the other 10%. … Continue reading Grading for Computation
Rise Over Run 