It seems Khan Academy (henceforth referenced as KA) has a pretty bad rap in some math teacher circles.  I understand that the videos are somewhat lacking in the engagement factor, and motivating students with points and badges can seem somewhat elementary.  I also see that KA tends to focus more on a procedure/pattern than actual problem solving.  All that said, I will be using KA this year in my resource classroom.  I have a group of students that are in my class for numeracy skill building/strategies instruction.  I'm supposed to be teaching them 25 mins/day and all ..read more

For those of you that don't know, I'm about to start teaching at a new school in a new state.  I will be still be teaching high school math to students with special needs, but those special needs are not necessarily deafness or blindness.  I am very excited to work with a math department as opposed to one other colleague (even though she was fabulous).  All in all, though, it's a lot of transition. Here are some things I have learned in the process: - I'm not as good at transitioning as I like to think I am - I have a difficult time making any kinds of decisions when there are ..read more

Here's the deal:  I'm working on curriculum for my school and Algebra 2 is making my eyes cross.  I think the major problem is the state of Virginia is in a transition year between "old" Standards of Learning (SOLs), and "new" ones.  This year is supposed to be the year that we're still teaching and assessing the old SOLs, but we're supposed to teach the new ones, too.  Those of you that teach Algebra 2 already know that there's an enormous amount of information to cover in a short period of time.  To give you context, our school teaches it as a semester-long block cou ..read more

Sam recently blogged looking for feedback on an Algebra 2 assessment he gave, but mainly to start a conversation about assessment creation, etc.  My classroom assessments have changed drastically in my short 2 years of experience. Here's a chronology of my growth: 1st year teaching (Algebra 1 - full year course) Classroom instruction followed the sequence (and pacing to some extent) of the textbook we were using (McDougall Littel Algebra 1). Assessments were largely based on Chapter Tests from the end of whatever chapter we were in, re-typed/formatted but using the same probl ..read more

My last semester in college, while I was student teaching, I had a class that emphasized different key topics in the field of Deaf Education.  One such topic was vocabulary development.  We all already knew that students who are deaf/hard of hearing have a lower vocabulary than their same-age hearing peers for a variety of reasons not least of which being their limited access to "incidental learning" that comes from listening to other people's conversations/tv/radio, etc.  In our class, we talked about ways to introduce new vocabulary in order to give students a more connected u ..read more

Inspired by @krisreid72 sharing this document with @Fouss, combined with the fact that I was looking for something that my trig students (who just finished a unit on solving triangles using Law of Sines/Law of Cosines) could wrestle with while I am out of the classroom Monday and Tuesday, I came up with an idea. The Amazing Race! random caveat: Season 14 had a deaf participant! I will give students 2 options - Option 1: No real trig involved, but still challenging thought processes and more stops to make Find the shortest "round-the-world" trip visiting many of the tallest buildings in the ..read more

I am still alive...I am still teaching...I am still moving, mostly forward. I've really been struggling to keep up with things, mainly extra-curriculars (as a sponsor, or my own hobbies!) while at the same time being wholly present in my classroom as we're reviewing for end of course tests. I have a list of blog post ideas that haven't materialized...maybe some day soon. Just wanted to say that I'm still here ..read more

Highlight of the Day: Context: AP Calc class, talking through some multiple choice (no calculator) problems from a practice test. Problem: what is  ; Me (typical first question): So....what should we do? Student: Substitute the 2 in for t to find the answer Me: Why would we want to do that? Student: Well, f(x) is the integral there, which means it's really the anti-derivative of the function. We want the derivative of that anti-derivative, which basically means we want the stuff inside the integral. So if you just substitute 2 in, you'll get the answer. Me: You basically just explaine ..read more

Hello friends. This is what I've been doing this afternoon. It's a Geometer's Sketchpad file that I hope to use with my calc class when we talk about volumes of revolution. I tried to upload it using Javasketch for those of you that don't have GSP, but found out that JavaSketch doesn't support function plots, or pretty much anything I used to create the sketch. Typical. Anyway, I'm looking for feedback. Play with the sketch, press the buttons, see what you think. Ideally, I'd like this to be along the lines of a Dan Meyer "What Can You Do With This" type activity, but I don't think I'm there ..read more

Thursday we had a staff meeting led by our school Superintendent and the Human Resources director. The topic? Next year's budget cuts. As of the last governor's proposed budget, our school was scheduled to have $1.5 million cut from our budget for next year. The new governor has not approved a budget yet, so we're not sure if that number will remain, or increase. Currently we have about 50 students in the deaf department high school. Twelve or thirteen will be graduating. Currently we have five 8th grade students. Our numbers in the high school are going to be dropping. Our numbers in general ..read more