First Post of the New School Year!

So here we are, about to finish our first full week of school.  Tomorrow is the first day of fall and we are officially in the swing of things.  This year I am teaching two 6th grade classes, two 7th grade classes, and one 8th grade Algebra 1 class.  That's five different groups of students every day.  The best analogy I can think of is juggling five balls in the air at once.  But I am doing OK.  I moved up with the current 7th & 8th graders, so only my 6th grade students are new.  My 6th grade classes are full at just about 30 each, 20 in each 7th grade class, and 25 in the 8th grade. Overall, the beginning of the year has gone pretty smoothly and I am excited for things to come.  

The First Two Days of School aka Week 1

I did my usual Hundred Chart Hunts with my 6th graders and tried out two new new first week of school math activities with my 7th & 8th graders: Broken Squares and Exploring Magic Squares.  I also included the Horse Algebra puzzle that was making it's way around the internet recently, and some Math Jokes for Mathy Folks (again with my 7th & 8th graders only since I already know them).   I also had all my 6th graders make Figure Me Out Posters, which I was able to put up for Back-to-School Night last week.  Magic Squares wasn't originally on my first week of school plan, but I'm glad I made the change, because my 7th & 8th graders loved it.

Curriculum & Weeks 2 & 3

As for the past two weeks, like I said, I am slowly getting my ducks in a row.  I am working through Prime Time with my 6th graders, Accentuate the Negative with my 7th graders, and Thinking with Mathematical Models with my 8th graders, all from CMP3.  I have been actively working on not using the textbooks during the launch (and keeping it less than five minutes), being selective with how I want my students interacting during the explore (writing out work or just discussing), and including writing during the summarize.  Like last year, this can be a challenge when periods are only 40 minutes long.  My summarize still needs work, but I am seeing glimmers of success with the launch and explore.  If I stay on pace, we'll be done with Prime Time next week, and Accentuate and Thinking early next month, which I am proud of.  

Even though I am teaching five classes, there is one 6th grade class that I am not teaching, because literally, it is not possible in my schedule.  So the science teacher is teaching them, and I am so grateful to have someone else teaching my content to collaborate with.  I am so lucky to get to talk to her about math, because she has some really great ideas.  For example, we had our classes make their own Product Game this week, and tomorrow my classes are exploring abundant, deficient, and perfect numbers, after her suggestion.

8th grade Algebra 1 has been going well too, and I have already decided that my 7th graders will do Thinking with Mathematical Models sometime this year too.  I wore this shirt when teaching my 8th graders today...

So, yeah, things have been busy, but good so far, and I think this year will be fun.  Oh, and we have thirty kids in Math Club this semester, including 6th, 7th, and 8th graders!  Looking forward to seeing what else this year brings...

      

CMP3 Summer Institute, My Goals, and the Planning for the First Day of School

Two weeks from now, I will have my 10th first day of school as a teacher.  It's kinda crazy when I think about it.  It's a mixture of excitement from getting a fresh start, to nerves about about what they year will bring, to pure exhaustion from setting up your classroom and setting the stage for the year ahead.

Last week I finished my G & T classes at Hunter, which, for the most part, I found helpful.  My next step is to take the certification test, which I plan on doing in the next few weeks.  My main takeaway from my classes was that if we are to be truly equitable, my G & T students deserve as much of my time as my IEP and general ed students, which was a challenge for me last year.  As a teacher, I know which of my students are gonna struggle the most and our natural instinct is to go and support them because we believe G & T students will "get there on their own" and that is just not equitable.  Speaking of Hunter, I literally have like eight Post-its of things I want to blog about on here - so any things would come up in our classes that I'd make a note to reflect on it when I had more time.  There'd be no way I could meaningfully write about all of it at once, but I hope to cover a lot of it as the school year goes on.

This week I have been attending the same CMP3 Summer Institute that I attended last year, only this time level two for 8th grade.  Next year I will be teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, and even though I am excited about it, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't stressed out about the amount of work that comes from teaching three different grades.  Overall, the PD has been OK.  I am definitely looking forward to teaching new content like irrational numbers, laws of exponents, exponential growth/decay, transformations, and quadratic functions.  I haven't taught 8th grade in a few years, and am looking forward to the new content. Here are my personal notes/takeaways/things to remember from the last three days:

• It's OK if not every student has gotten through every part of the problem every single day, but I must make sure that I am giving them enough time to "muck around" with it.
  
• The problems in Investigation 1 of each unit are all about setting the stage for the rest of the unit and I shouldn't let the misconceptions in Investigation 1 derail my plans.  In other words, I don't need to fix every misconception that shows up in the first few days of a new unit, but rather take note of those misconceptions and make sure that they are addressed as we move through the unit.  This made me think a lot about the practice that I used to have where we would always spend the last 5 minutes of class "taking notes" generated by the students.   For some reason (maybe the shorter class periods last year) I stopped doing this, and it is something I would like to bring back this year.  This also includes introducing new vocabulary during the summarize, after the students have, again, had a chance to "muck around" with the math.
  
• I need to change up the way I do my written reflections in order to keep my students engaged.  Typically, I post the reflection questions after most Investigations on Google Classroom and my students choose one and post a response to it, but that can get boring after a while, so I would like to find other ways to incorporate those written reflections so that they are more engaging.
  
• In the Teacher's Guide in each unit, there is a section on the mathematical (content) background and I need to start reading these.  I usually skip these pages because I feel pretty confident in my content knowledge, but there might be something in there that I hadn't thought of or perhaps didn't even know.  I think reading these will also be a way to support my own growth as a mathematician, which is another personal goal of mine this year.  Speaking of professional growth, the CMP3 website has videos of lessons, which I should probably look into, again in order to perhaps get new ideas to bring into my classroom.
  
• I need to stop having my students read directly from the textbook during the launch part of the lesson.  It can be boring and I am sure that I lose some kids when I do it.  My main reason for doing it so often is that I am afraid that I will miss something key in the launch, but facilitators this week warn against it, so it is something I will work on.  My goal is 5 minute launches so that within 10 minutes of class starting, students are exploring... yes, I will make this happen!
  
• We had a guest speaker yesterday talking about ELLs and my big take away from him is the idea that in order for something to be a "quantity" it must have three things: a sign, a number, and units.  I love this because it emphasizes two big mathematical ideas that students tend to forget - sign and units, so from day one I will be drilling this into my kiddies, because it is an important part of thinking like a mathematician.
  
• The CMP3 facilitators also suggest not cutting out any whole Investigations, which is something I struggle with, mostly due to timing - we physically don't have enough days before the state test to do it all (especially since I will probably only being seeing my classes four days a week for 40 minute periods).  I need to come back to this as I plan out my units this year.

Some other ideas that have crossed my mind over the past few days:

• Get rid of unit tests or rather, give out unit tests for homework as a test grade.  To give a formal unit test at the end of every unit can waste precious time that again, we don't have.  I would still keep my interim assessment (IA) (made from old state test/Regents questions) every marking period, but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of no unit tests.  I think this would also help with the standards-based grading because my IAs are already aligned to standards.  Again, I did something similar a few years ago, and think I want to bring this practice back.  Although I would be curious what students would say if I asked them if they wanted more or less formal tests - I don't think the answer is as obvious as we would think.
  
• I must incorporate more problem-based learning (PBL) and social justice issues into my classes.  Some of my favorite resources I want to include more of are: BIE, Radical Math, 2030 Schools,  Three Act Tasks, NRich, and Rethinking Mathematics.  

And lastly, I've been thinking a lot about the first day of school, and though I like how I've structured it in the past, with reviewing the 5 Ps & SLANT, and a Getting to Know You survey (followed by the syllabus and a Get it Together puzzle on day 2 and baseline on day 3), this year I think I might try Broken Squares (variation 1, variation 2) on day 1 (which would also tie into our school's core value of inquiry) and then maybe some kind of station work on day 2 to cover the syllabus/survey.  I want to be able to get right into work at least with my 7th & 8th graders since I had them last year.

So here's what's on my back-to-school to-do list:

• Print out student photos from some of the activities from last year - to make my classroom more personalized this year.
• Create the 8th grade/Algebra 1 baseline assessment and update 6th & 7th grade baselines
• Outline curriculum maps with PBLs & social justice issues to incorporate
• Plan out which standards I am going to track as I try to incorporate standards-based grading.  I've decided that I am only going to track a few big ones from each grade because it would be impossible for me to track all standards for all grades right away - this way I am starting off small.
• PTA Family Welcome Picnic this Sunday, followed by two optional days to come in offered by the principal next week

MfA

I did not want to write this post...

I have been waiting for this day for the last several months.  Today would be the day that I found out whether or not I got into Math for America.  

I didn't... and that sucks.  But I'll be OK.

I found out yesterday.  It caught me off guard and I wasn't expecting it.  After last week's interview, I felt good.  After all, I had made it that far.  Mentally, I saw myself getting in.  I knew how I would feel, I knew how I would celebrate.  Man, I really wanted it.

So now what?  First, I gave myself permission to feel bad (at least for a little bit).  Yeah, this sucks.  I wanted to get in.  I worked for it.  I would be a better teacher because of it.  So yeah, I'm sad and a little angry.  I would also be lying if I said that a part of myself didn't feel personally hurt because the subject that I have struggled with many times as a student, once again got the best of me - maybe I'm just not good at math.

But then I realized that that just wasn't true.  I have worked my butt off to get where I am today.  I have failed in math before, and come have back from it.  I am just not in Math for America, yet.

I tell my students that everyone is a mathematician.  Everyone can think mathematically.  There is literally no end to where you can go in math.  So what kind of teacher would I be, if I took this failure, and just gave up?  I would be a hypocrite.  And middle schoolers pick that up fast.  So that is just not OK.  If I want my students to be mathematicians, I need to be be a mathematician right there with them.  

So, what does this mean?  I need to dig deeper into my own mathematical practice.  I already do do this to some degree, but it's time to step up my game, and I think this blog can a good vehicle for that.  Originally I started this blog to focus on my teaching (which I will still most definitely do) but I also want to use it to reflect on math that I am learning.  I think I'll start exploring with Khan Academy and Desmos and make sure I connect with other math teachers looking to do math on the MTBoS.  Plus I'll be teaching Algebra 1 next year, so that alone will open me up to new things.  After all, I plan on interviewing for Math for America again next year, and I want what I share in my interview to be good ;)

Not getting into MfA this year simply means that I have more math to learn.  And the more I think about it, this could be really cool for my classroom this year because I'll be getting messy with mathematics, just like I want my students to.  We can explore our ideas, and apply new concepts, and invent hypothesis and argue with each other and question why and prove our reasoning... we will be doing math together.  And it will be great.

I will be a better math teacher because of this.