My school was in hybrid for about 3 weeks before we move to fully distance on Monday. By no means did I figure everything out to be an amazing hybrid teacher, but I did learn some things to make my life easier. I thought I’d share in case it helps someone else. A little about my hybrid schedule. Classes were 90 minutes every other day. Monday and Tuesday students with last names A-M were at school, and N-Z was at home. Thursday and Friday, those groups switched. Wednesday was a distance learning day for everyone. Students worked on assignments that were given Monday/Tuesday, and teachers were ..read more

I started out the school year fully in person. We made it 7 weeks before we make the switch to hybrid tomorrow. We had a teacher prep day on Friday, so my last day with students last week was Thursday. During my first class, my students were working on a puzzle, and as I was walking around the room, I realized that it was likely the last day I would be in the classroom with all of my students in a while and that it was going to be the last normal day (well, as normal as you can get this year) for a while. I’m so thankful I had that thought. It set me up to notice and be thankful for several ot ..read more

I tried a new project for the first week of school this year, and I really liked how it went. I got the idea from seeing all of the cool sidewalk art people were creating during quarantine, and I thought that I could tie in some of the math my students already know to create a first week project. I started by having students Notice and Wonder about the two images below. In hindsight, I think I would have had one of the images include shapes other than rectangles. Students noticed that the image on the right is symmetrical, minus the coloring, and that they were made up of rectangles, that ..read more

I’ve shared my students’ marbleslides the last few years (2016-2017 and 2017-2018 and 2018-2019).  Going through their creations was more fun this year than the previous years.  It made me miss being in the classroom with my students SO much!  I smiled thinking of each of my students as I looked at what they had created. If you haven’t checked out the previous years’ posts, I highly recommend it.  My students are SO creative! If you want to do this with your own students, have them go to teacher.desmos.com and walk them through the steps of how to create a custom ..read more

You can find my previous year’s favorite tweets by clicking links for the posts below. 2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019 2019-2020 (Distance Learning) 2019-2020 | Part 2   Got to combine my 2 faves this morning in Mr. @avanconas 's class with Pythagorean theorem: math and football. We started with video of Ben Watson's awesome run and used Cheez-It crackers for the lesson. @RioVistaMS https://t.co/WVt8noT8OU pic.twitter.com/vbj1iHtgmU — Fawn Nguyen (@fawnpnguyen) February 25, 2020 New game: Teams are given the stems of Qs from past ACT exams. They work to find the correct answer & ..read more

You can find my previous year’s favorite tweets by clicking links for the posts below. 2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019 2019-2020 (Distance Learning)   *There were too many Tweets to fit it all in one post.  Look for Part 3 coming soon. Nice problem #MTBoS #iTeachMath https://t.co/PJUtrfW8z5 — John Rowe (@MrJohnRowe) June 27, 2019 Yes! Stealing this! #iteachmath #MTBoS https://t.co/aNPSYFvr4c — Cathy Yenca (@mathycathy) June 29, 2019 A quick blog post describing how I teach people to play SET on the fly during a game in progress. You might find it useful. #MTBoS #mathschat ..read more

You can find my previous year’s favorite tweets by clicking links for the posts below. 2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019 2020 has been a weird year so far, and it just felt right to have a separate post for stuff related to Distance Learning. Take a moment to thank your kid’s school teacher for their hard work during this tough time. It takes a toll on them too. I attached this note to an extra box of kleenex for my kids classroom. #edchat #MTBoS #iteachmath pic.twitter.com/uHFBwjugkt — Jonathan Osters (@callmejosters) March 13, 2020 THIS is what we need more of. May we all find time to ce ..read more

I’ve done Sara Van Der Werf‘s name tents the last several years and have really enjoyed hearing from every student every day the first week.  However, after that week, I wasn’t nearly as intentional about this.  This year I started asking a non-math question at the end of every test, and I respond to every student like I did on the name tents.  I shared briefly about that in this post.  This has been one of my absolute favorite things I’ve implemented this year.  I look forward to test day because of this, and as I walk around while students are testing, I notice that when they get to the back ..read more

This past week was one of the best weeks I’ve had with my 6th graders in a long time.  Sara Van Der Werf has said during PD to take note of the good moments in your classroom, the moments when students are engaged, because we want to recreate those moments! When I think back on this past week in 6th grade, one thing stands out to me.  Movement. Nearly every day this past week, a good portion of the class my students were out of their desks practicing problems.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence. This is something I *know* I need to be doing, but I’ll be honest, I had gotten out of the habit of ..read more

I went into the school year knowing I wanted to be purposeful about making some changes in my classroom so that I didn’t go through the year on autopilot repeating everything I did last year.  However, when the year started, I didn’t have a clear idea of what those changes would be.  A few weeks into the year, I’ve found my “thing” for the year. Change 1:  Feedback on Tests While going through my master’s program, I started grading review worksheets and quizzes by highlighting students mistakes after seeing this on the Teaching Channel.  I didn’t feel ready to grade tests that way at that tim ..read more