A Spur of the Moment Assignment...

If you read the previous post, you know it's been a rough year at times. In times like this, I seem to lose the creative spark, so I'm always grateful when it returns!

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a lady I used to teach with. "Jane" and I taught Stat together, she had taught it the previous year, so she was my mentor. "Jane" moved at the end of that year and had not taught stat for several years at her new school, until she inherited it again last year. "Jane" asked me about the video series "Against All Odds", which is available for free on the Learner.org website. AAO has a sequel series called "Decisions Through Data" and that series comes with Video Guides, etc. "Jane" wanted to know if I had used these videos and their accompanying guides. This sparked my creativity :)

At the Uni, we are about to take a test over inference, including t-tests, proportions, and chi-square tests. I decided to make the "Against All Odds" series into an assignment. Each student was to choose one of the videos that covered the material we are about to test over and create a "study-guide" that other students could use to help them study for the upcoming test. The study guides were due this weekend and I just finished uploading them all to our class website and I must say, I'm pretty impressed with the quality of their work. I am thinking this may be a great review assignment for my AP kiddos for either their final or the AP exam.

I thought I would toss this idea out there for you guys in case any of you are needing a review idea. My students seemed to enjoy it - each video is about 30 minutes in length and while they are older, they do have some great information in them. I will probably create study guides myself for each of these videos over the summer so I will have them on those days when half my class is gone (like this week! LOL) and project the videos on the Promethean board. Could also be useful for students who are absent or for remediation after a bad test/quiz...

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Ups, Downs, and Down-and-Outs...

For some reason, about this time every year, I get down and out. This year has been trying for both personal and professional reasons.

Last week, I had a melt-down... I had graded all day on Saturday and took a couple hours on Sunday to read (OMG - I took time for *myself*). Then, afterwards, I felt guilty! WTH??? I guarantee none of my students feel guilty if they don't get all of their homework done... Why should I deny myself time to rest and relax? Why should I be focused on them 100% of the time rather than my family and my sanity?

How did I solve my dilemna? Take up a new hobby of course!! LOL.. I decided life was too short - that I was personally putting all this pressure on myself and at the end of the day, all it does is add to my insanity. So I decided to take up candle-making (tart-making if you want specifics). Starting Wednesday evening, I've now made 4 batches, gave most of them away already, and have the stuff for 4 more batches in my kitchen right now. How liberating to have a hobby that is about ME rather than school! :)

Since Wednesday, I have been more able to focus on my kiddos, which makes me a better teacher. I have decided that I have been too focused on the details (like grading), and not enough on the stuff that truly matters (like quality lessons, sharing ideas with other teachers, etc). I've decided that I need to recenter myself and get back my creativity and love for the planning rather than the dread of the grading.

One of the ways I've tried to give back was through this blog, but as you notice, I've not done that much lately. I want to get back to the "check out this neat lesson" and "here's a cool link to share", etc...

I'm so grateful that there is a place to vent (somewhat anonymously), a diary of sorts that people can read and hopefully know that other people go through spouts of self-doubt. I'm grateful that this week is a time of celebration, to appreciate family, good food, and the blessings we have (and of course a few days to sleep in!).

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Polling, Margin of Error, and the Election

Most of the time, hubby and I listen to NPR while in the car. On Saturday morning, while running around town frantically because I was about to buy a new car *woot*, there was an interesting tidbit about polling and margin of error for confidence intervals. I saved it and plan to use it for my uni kiddos next week when we cover this topic. I thought some of you might find it useful as well

NPR story on Polling

I posted this same link on the AP Stat Listserv and one of the other teachers had a blog about margin of error and common errors in opinion polls - I *love* the "urn" example!!

Pat's Blog on Polling

My dad....

My dad, a wonderful man, is dying. In the spring, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, so in April, he had his bladder removed. All of the tests were perfectly clear and things went very well. Then, 2 weeks ago, on Sept 17, our world fell apart. He had been having some coughing and congestion, so they did a chest xray which showed spots on his lungs. Since then, he's had a CT scan, a PET scan, and a MRI, which all show intense involvement thoughout his entire body, including a spot on his brain. The doctors can only make him comfortable at this point, although they are doing radiation for the brain to slow that progression.

My dad is a great guy - he was a Marine and served our country in the Korean War. As a member of the "Frozen Chosin", he was lucky to make it out of there with just some shrapnel and frostbite. He received a Purple Heart for his service.

My dad married my mom when I was 4 years old and literally raised me as his own. My biological father often remarks that he could not have picked a better man to take care of us.

Some of my favorite memories...
I remember when I first met him. He was sitting on my mom's piano bench wearing a ball cap. After hiding behind my mom for a while, I went over and took off his ball cap, revealing a very bald head! I screamed and ran back to my mom :)

I remember, soon after they married, he built me a playhouse. It was dark red and the bottom level was a sandbox (not a good thing in the country btw - lots of barn cats and sandboxes dont mix!!!). The upper level had a railing all around it and a little tykes kitchen. I *loved* that playhouse!!

I remember a lot of weekend afternoons spent fishing. We would go to the hilltop store and get bait and lunchmeat for sandwiches, then spend the day going from pond to pond. Dad liked to walk around the entire pond while fishing. If he caught something, he'd stay for a while, if he got all the way back to the truck, it was time to go!

I remember one Easter Sunday when we had gone to church, dad sat with us as always. When we got home, the entire yard was decorated with eggs and toys and candy. It always amazed me how he must have gone back home, decorated, and back to church in the time it took for Sunday school.

I remember a Christmas morning when I got up and there were ashy footprints all over the living room carpet, cookie crumbs on the table and a piece of red velour hanging from the fireplace opening as if Santa had ripped his pants open..

I remember when I was in 2nd grade, one of the convenience stores in town was giving away a Cabbage Patch Kid. You could sign up everytime you bought a coffee. Dad went in *every* morning to put my name in. On the day of teh drawing, I had actually gotten sick at school, so mom came to check me out of school and take me home. She stopped at the store to get some 7-up and my name was posted as the winner of the doll. They said they had actually drawn 3 times and my name was all 3 tickets!!

While he obviously showed love, it wasn't until about 10 years ago, that he ever said "I love you". What an amazing man.... I will miss him so much :(

Frog Ponds :)

Ok, now that the rant is over, it's time to share ideas again!! Tomorrow should be a fun day - I hope!!

This summer, I found the following frog pond game at Dollar Tree, so I quickly bought 8 sets for my class. Tomorrow we will be using them to gather some data. Here's a picture of the frog pond setup:


This year, I am trying to make a real effort to "teach" using data we collect in class. Here's the datasheet for the frog pond.

In Geometry, we are playing a review game as well, so I'm hoping that tomorrow is a nice, easy day overall :)

Now to go veg and watch some TV - I'm at a stopping place early for once!!

A Mini-Rant

Do you ever feel that your best just isn't good enough? Sometimes I feel that way. I bust my ass every day, spending evenings and weekends finding creative ways to teach my students, but we rarely hear a "wow, you guys did a great job! Thanks for all of your hard work and effort".. instead we hear "Cool - let's see if you can do better"

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for continuous improvement, I do push myself to do better, I am a mostly self-motivated person... but it's still sometimes hard to constantly hear how you could have done better. Eventually you wear down and wonder "why even try?" *sigh*

This mini-rant is a product of test scores, which all districts now use to determine too much about the classroom. Rather than celebrating that 89% of our on-level Geometry kiddos passed their state-mandated Geometry exam (compared to 68% overall throughout the state), we are given a list of our "weaknesses" and asked to create a plan to do better. For me, one weakness was right triangle trig. Now considering that I covered SOHCAHTOA on Friday before the exam started on Monday, I know this was a weakness, but I was tickled pink that my students overall got ANY of those right!

I really try to be a positive person, so I apologize for this rant, but I'm tired and frustrated of demands placed on teachers without so much as a pat on the back.

A couple of updates :)

Ahhh - can I start the weekend over? I had a fairly relaxing weekend at the lake (minus a snafu with my dad), but with no time to grade, now I feel under the gun :)
However, before getting my nose to the grindstone, I wanted to give you guys an update on a few items around here...

The Professional Day....
The presentation went VERY well. I was pleased with how it turned out. Major kudos to Dan Yates, who had already typed many of the AP questions and sent them to e so that I was able to copy and paste the stem of the problem and graphics and then just add in the adapted questions for the Algebra and Pre-Calc classes. The handout ended up being 12 pages front/back and the other teachers seemed to really appreciate it. I was so nervous, but in the end, it was worth it.

The Geometry Challenge....
When I posted the pictures of my classroom, one was of a bulletin board called the Geometry Challenge. This is my Geometry extra-credit board, where kids can weekly earn extra credit for answering a problem (problems come from the NCTM calendar from the magazine Mathematics Teacher). I print the posters using a free software called PagePlus and paste the pages together. The kids seem to really enoy this weekly puzzle. Here's a pic of the board w/ the PagePlus pages:


I hope things are going well for all of you! Off to grade a mountain of papers :)