Reflection for 1st 9 weeks of Spring Semester 2017

Let me just say... Is it summer yet??? I don't know about yall but I'm exhausted. I need like a weeks worth of nothing but sleeping in and taking long naps during the afternoon to get maybe just a lit bit of the energy I have lost from all the effort I have put in this semester. Spring Break is in one week thank goodness but being a single mom to a three year old I don't see those much needed naps in my future so I guess I'll just keep drinking my coffee.

So here is a recap of everything you have missed because blogging is unfortantely at the very bottom of my to-do list.

1) I have made TONS of card sorts and I can't wait to share them!! They are like my new favorite thing along with the laminator I bought at the beginning of the school year which is totally worth every penny.

2) I have spent so much time this semester doing more hands on practice and I really miss using my Desmos Activities. So this is a reminder to book the mobile carts and get those students thinking a little deeper. Today I was checking out some of the latest activities designed by the staff at Desmos and I came across a trig graphs activity to teach amplitude and it made me think of how cool it would be to make an activity for shading the domain and range of a function. Super excited to share that activity its pretty awesome even if you use as just a teaching tool for direct instruction.

3) Overall my students are amazing this semester. It's so awesome when you get a group of students who really seem to want to learn and try really hard. I feel like I am really growing in the classroom management area too.

4) This is my second semester doing standards based grading and I love it!! It's so great to be able to look at my master list and know exactly where I need to focus my instruction with each individual student. I have changed a little bit in how they are graded just because I wanted to give them the oppurtunity to continue with any standard even if we were in a new 9 weeks. I'll try to make this a post in the future.

5) I am continuing to build to my supply of classroom instructional posters which has truly made the learning more visual for some of my students. I get so excited when I see my students using the number lines or the perfect squares & cubes posters. I just created a graphing with a calculator and the slope intercept form poster.

6) Started using only schoolnet tests this semester as my assessments and it is amazing. Yes my students tend to bomb the test in the beginning and some standards are much harder than others but I know they are getting more practice in preparing them for the EOC or NC Final exams.

Sorry if this post was on the boring side but I want to keep track of how things are going in my classroom year to year and it has been forever since I blogged so this is more of a brain dump than anything else.

Reflections (Part 2 - Semester Two of School Year 2015-2016)

This semester was a huge step in the right direction for me as a teacher. I really went out of my comfort zone with some new apps and programs to motivate students and increase mathematical thinking. My favorite math app/program is definitely Desmos. I heard about the graphing calculator program a few years ago but just didn’t have the resources in the classroom to push using this program especially when at the time it basically did what our TI-83 calculators were capable of computing. However, later this year when I saw all kinds of great posts on Twitter from the #MTBoS group I knew I had to check it out. After doing a little research and thinking about when I could use this in my classroom I decided to start with my quadratics section in my Math 2 Honors class. My first activity builder was for the topic changing forms of quadratic functions. The awesome thing about Desmos Activity Builder is you can make a copy of someone else’s activity and edit it to fit the needs of your classroom. After testing out our first activity I realized this program is definitely going in my bag of tricks for the years to come. I can’t wait to see all the new features Desmos will come out with in the future.

Another resource I tried one time but will 100% use again is NearPod. This program is amazing!! It can be time consuming if you are a perfectionist like I can be at times. The NearPod that I created was pretty cool I’d have to say because it was a lesson on quadratics involving a game of Angry Birds, a video on YouTube, and a graphing activity through Desmos. I pretty much used every trick I had to see just how far that would take me with my students and I succeeded. My students loved every minute of the lesson and were engaged from beginning to end. This coming year I plan to create more NearPod lessons I'm just not sure if I want to use them as a recap for each unit or individual lessons.

My greatest accomplishment this past semester was trying standards based grading. I always thought this was such a hard way of grading but found it pretty simple and very informative. I was able to see exactly where each student was falling short and knew the areas in which I could help them grow. I love the idea now I just need to figure out the best way to carry it out.

A few other things I did this past semester that were a success:

• Guided notes completely filled in except for examples (students only have to highlight important info)
• Explain Everything (allowed my to annotate over top of my guided notes & save as pdf files)
• Google doc (contains links to all course materials - notes, practice, quiz, test)
• Organized notebook with tabs & guided notes

• Card sorts (quadratics & exponential/logarithmic sections)
• Use whiteboard & dry erase markers
• Square roots with the number line (clothesline) activity
• Human box-whisker plot
• Whiteboard templates (quadratic formula/completing the square/factoring trinomials)
• Jinga Review

Things I learned from semester two:

• I still need work on differentiation in my classroom
• Desmos is a great mathematical tool (must use frequently)
• NearPod is a great app to keep students on track with where you are in the lesson & formative assessment
• ThatQuiz is amazing for students to get immediate feedback on practice
• Need to fix standard based grading (grade percentage & retake process)
• Guided notes completely filled out really saves time (must change all notes this way)
• Need to be consistent with classroom management
• When students know they can’t be denied bathroom privileges they take advantage of you (figure out a method to help this situation or just give up & don’t care anymore - I stress out about this because I get so annoyed when I’m interrupted in the middle of the lesson)
• Log sheet to keep up with where students go when they ask to leave room is a must keep (make them fill it out because you will not do it if you are busy or in middle of teaching)
• Tardy forms are a must keep (need to make it a habit of getting them out of the box daily & record who was tardy for each class)
• Do not let students be disrespectful; cut it off immediately do not second guess yourself
• Find teachers who want to share in your journey no matter where they teach or where they live (everyone needs motivation and accountability)

Reflections (Part 1 - Semester One of School Year 2015-2016)

Well my plan was to reflect on my teaching all year long but changing my teaching style in the middle of the year caused me to put the blogging on hold. This year was so stressful at times; it was all I could do to keep my head above the water. Although, in the end it was all worth it being able to see all the amazing things I accomplished this year in the classroom. This is the first in a series of reflections for the year. I may not remember every little detail from this school year but I want documentation for the highlights that I do remember so in the years to come I can see the progress I’ve had over the years.

When last school year ended I was searching for more; wanting to finding something that would help my students learning and increase their grades. That year I had several informal meetings with my assistant principal about my progress in the classroom and a lot of our meetings ended in the conclusion that I needed to work on differentiation among my students. With that in mind I spent my summer working on transitioning my quizzes and tests into a differentiated style so that no students would be left behind. The quiz was designed so that if you chose option 1 (EOC Word Problems) you received a 100, option 2 (Content Calculations) you received an 85, and option 3 (Content Notes or Rules) you received a 70.

I thought this process was awesome at the time but when I brought it into the class I think it confused students way more than anything else. I think we may have continued this process for the first three quizzes. Luckily I came across a website called ThatQuiz that allowed me to create my own online assessments and the website graded the assignment.

I’m so blessed that I found this resource because I could focus my efforts in other more important areas since I gained all the time back that I would have been grading assessments for the year. This program offers multiple choice, matching, and slides. Check back soon for more detailed information on the website ThatQuiz.

For the remaining portion of semester one technology became my focus. I started thinking in the direction of a flipped classroom and tried this process for a few months. I was using educreations to create video lessons for each standard and using ThatQuiz for formative (practice - non graded) and summative (quiz/test - graded) assessments. The positives that I found in a flipped classroom were that each student had the opportunity to experience learning in an individualized manner and students could learn at their own pace. The negative I found was the learning process overall for the class was so chaotic. I found myself struggling to help every student because they were all at different places in the curriculum and always had different questions. While other teachers may find this is not an issue I could not handle this process emotionally due to all the stress; so towards the end of semester one I tried hard to bring back all my students in a group style instruction. I still continued to allow students to push forward into the new content if they were ready but we did large group instruction at the start of each new topic to keep students focused and more homogeneous. The semester ended ok in my opinion but I still had a lot to tweak in order to make this technology process work for all.

Things I learned from semester one:

• I still need work on differentiation in my classroom
• Technology is my friend
• I’m not ready for a completely flipped classroom
• Most students enjoy technology
• Some students are nervous/unsure of technology and still need regular resources
• Students rushed through some assignments that were on the computer and refused to work out problems like I wanted; need to fix issue
• Do not use only technology to interest students... some like hands on activities, direct instruction, guided practice, etc.; keep it well rounded
• Need to work on classroom management
• Do not let students be disrespectful; cut it off immediately do not second guess yourself
• MTBoS rocks keep connected and growing in this profession; you need it to survive