Math is funny

I'm so excited I found this and I'm teaching about the normal distribution in the first unit.  I do love math humor.

I however, do not enjoy moving.  The movers are coming on Monday.  I'm so tired of packing.  I also have a lot of school stuff left in the house, which I was going to put into my car to bring to school on Monday (I work 45 minutes from home, so it's not a quick gaunt).  But my car is pretty full already.  And the bookshelf in my classroom is full of books from the previous teacher from classes I'm not teaching.  Hopefully someone will take them!

At my interview, I asked if they had document cameras.  They said that only the English dept had them, because they asked for them.  I hope it's okay for me to ask for it, even though I'm just starting.  I keep wracking my brain of a good way to do INB and foldables with my students without one, and it seems like a hassle.  I was thinking I could take a picture of it blank closed, and then open, and I could just write on it on the smartboard.  But I was told the smartboards are so old that they don't really work anymore.  I think a $70 fix is easier than a $2000 fix.

Statistics

The first unit in Advanced Algebra is a statistics unit. It's the first year of implementation at our school, so I don't want to get too far into it before speaking with the other teachers. We have 10 hours of planning together next week, and I'm looking forward to meeting everyone.

 I have been looking for tasks to use in all my classes. I'm just not that impressed with the books. I want to use a few tasks that Georgia has given. I definitely want to do the Color of Skittles task.  It's amazing what kids will do for candy.  I also want to use a lot of things from Illustrative Mathematics and Math Shell.  I feel like IM uses too much paper when I print it out with their pdfs.  I am so used to only getting a box of paper for a semester, that I try to be very stingy.

I also did the first two foldables.  I just finished creating them in Word.  But I don't have a working printer, so hope they look good once I print.  I made one with the steps for finding standard deviation.  Problems a little much, but when I get in the mood, I just keep going.  I then did one for the normal distribution.  I tried finding one online I could use, and I could only find one, but there didn't seem to be an easily accessible template, so I started from scratch.  I'm not going to really start putting together an INB for this class until next week.

Handmade...hope the electronic one looks better!

I finished my foldables (and most of the INB) for unit 1 in Coordinate Algebra.  Most of that was stolen from other awesome people who post their stuff online.  Can I say how much I don't like TpT?  I don't know...maybe someone one day will convince me it's awesome, but I feel like I'm on the same team as everyone else, and I want to share for free and I'd hope other people would want to too.

About the only thing I got done when I went into school one day last week.

I have no idea if I did these right, so I might be embarrassed if I shared incorrectly.  

 

Reflecting

I have to laugh when I think about starting a blog.  Long, long ago I had a livejournal.  I used to look at it every once in a while, just to get a good laugh.  But there was no point to it.  Other than to talk about what I did, while in high school and college and a little bit after I graduated.  However, I'd like to start a blog with a point.

When I have a student retake a test because they failed it, I have them reflect on why they did not pass.  I know that I am horrible with reflecting, or even remembering year to year if something worked or did not work.  I want to use this to post ideas, and then reflect later.  Or just get to the posting about how well it worked or if it bombed.  I know I won't get better unless I learn from my successes or failures.

I am starting at a new school, so I thought this would be a good time.  I was at a charter school for the past two years where the students just sat at computers in a room with me and 2-3 other teachers.  I'm glad that chapter is over, and I get to start this new one.

I really think I want to try an interactive notebook and implement edmodo.  I've actually had a hard time sleeping just running through how I want things to run.  I like using collaborative learning and groups, but I know I need work on that.  I was dreaming last night about roles each student in the group would have.  Not like recorder and time keeper, but more like jobs.  Someone who gets paper from me or when we come in, someone who makes sure the area is clean before we go.   Thankfully, I still have time to figure this all out.  Well, until August 8th at least.

Tomorrow I get my fingerprinting and I get to find out what I'm actually teaching.