Teaching Statistics
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
What I read this month - January 2023
Monday, January 2, 2023
#Made4Math - Daily Habit Tracker
Happy Monday, y'all!!
It's a new year and like many people, I'm wanting to work on better habits in 2023. I was talking to hubby last night about keeping track of habits and having a better way to monitor how I'm doing. I know there are a ton of habit tracker apps, but I wanted something simple.
Then, on my way to work this morning (yes - I had to report to work today!), I remembered that I had incorporated a Habit Tracker into my Teacher Planner several years ago, but then as the Teacher Planner evolved, the Habit Tracker went away for some reason.
Obviously, I didn't want to recreate the wheel and I certainly don't want to remake my Teacher Planner halfway through the year, so I decided on a half-sheet bookmark style habit tracker for my planner. Since my planner is always open on my desk, I could easily see the month and since I use a disc-bound planner, I could move it from week to week easily.I gave myself 10 columns for tracking habits - everything from Exercise to Blogging to updating Google Classroom.
What habits do you track? What method works best for you?
If you want a copy of the PDF - click here!
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Preparing for 2023
It's still Winter Break for another day, so even though I've completed my 12 posts, I'm still considering this a Yule Blog post!
We've made it through another year. In my head, 2020 was just a few days ago, so I don't know how we are already at the doorstep of 2023, but here we are!
I report back to school on Monday for meetings and collaboration time, then kids come on Tuesday. Like most teachers over the break, I've been thinking about what to do on the first day of the semester. I like this time as a reset and definitely plan to do some non-curricular tasks and to revisit our classroom norms.
But I also want to do something to recognize the fresh start of a new semester. The past few years, I've not done a great job of really reflecting on the old year and preparing for the new, so that's one of the things on the list for Tuesday.
In 2020, I played off the 20/20 vision and posted them on the board. In 2021, we were still very restricted in classroom movement and shared supplies, so I didn't do much other than the Word of the Year. In 2022, I had switched schools and was still trying to figure out life, so again, I let it slide.
The New Year has come around again and I really want to do something again, so I had already been thinking about what to do for 2023 and since there isn't a pun with 2023, I decided to go with more of a 3-2-1 idea.
- 2 good things that happened in 2022
- 0 - something to stop in 2023
- 2 things I look forward to in 2023
- 3 goals for 2023
Friday, December 30, 2022
#MyFavFriday - Favorites of 2022
I've made it to the last post of the #MTBoSYuleBlog Challenge! My goal was to blog 12 times over Winter Break and today is Post 12! I still have a few more posts to write and I'm hoping to get back into the habit, but today I'm bringing back another old series from 2012... #MyFavFriday!
Last week, we had a cold front sweep through and we ended up with about 1" of snow and a bitter cold wind. I kept watching outside my front door for our outdoor stray cats to make sure they were okay and I noticed this bizarre circle just off my front porch. I couldn't figure out what could have made the imprint as it looked like the bottom of a plastic pail, but there were no pails in sight! Just then, a burst of wind happened and I noticed the leaf that was stuck at the center rotating. As a Geometry teacher, I had to snap a photo to show my students about nature's compass!
Thursday, December 29, 2022
Books on my #EduRead list for 2023
I broke my streak.... shocking, I know! I looked a few days ago at previous #MTBoSYuleBlog challenges and I think I've only made my goal of 12 posts one time. This is Post 11 for this year, so I'm *almost* there (and I still have 3 more days to go until Winter Break is over!) Yesterday was just a rough day and while I wanted to blog, I was at a total standstill. After I had stared at my screen for about 5 hours, I gave up and ran some errands, then came back to settle in with my Kindle.
Then, in response to my whiny tweet about breaking my streak, my dear friend Meg responded with:
On Tuesday, we went to my Mom's for Christmas and to set up her new phone. When I got home, this book was in the mailbox as a gift from a dear friend and I'm so excited to dig in! I had heard of this book from Twitter, but other than liking the title, I really didn't know much about it. From the sample on Amazon, it's about a journey of professional development on a more personal level. I know many teachers have already had that realization that our professional growth is truly our own responsibility versus the "sit and get" PD that many schools and districts provide.
This is not all of the books I have ready to read, but it's definitely the most recent ones! :)
A few weeks ago, @pamjwilson mentioned she would like to read the Teaching Math in the Visible Learning Classroom this semester and try to implement some of the strategies, so it's at the top of my list!
The other books seen here were all books that were on sale on Kindle recently. In fact, Math Games with Bad Drawings is currently on sale for $2.99. I read his book on calculus (Change is the Only Constant) and LOVED it, so when I saw Math with Bad Drawings and Math Games with Bad Drawings on sale this fall, I snapped them up, but haven't read them yet.
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Exploring Open Middle Math
I have always loved books and loved to read. As a kid, I loved spending time in our town library and as an adult, used book stores are some of my favorite places. In my home office, I have multiple bookcases of math / math-ed books and even have a healthy dose of "to-be-read" books on my Kindle regarding math (but that's another post for another day....)
Over the summer, one of the books I picked up was Open Middle Math by Robert Kaplinsky. I was already familiar with the idea of Open Middle and had used some of the problems from the website in my classroom in the past, but I was interested in learning more about how they could be used. Here's a quote from early on in the book:To be sure, using Open Middle problems does not eliminate student misconceptions entirely. However, since using them, I now see student misconceptions more clearly and can use them as talking points to strengthen mathematical understandings during the lesson instead of simply lamenting missed opportunities afterward.
I should say that prior to reading the book, I had watched the webinar and had looked at the DOK Matrix for Open Middle Problems, so I was very familiar with the idea, but I thought of Open Middle problems more as a warmup or a formative assessment piece rather than to explore misconceptions. I was intrigued by this concept and decided I wanted to try more of these in my classroom....
Again, early in the book, Mr. Kaplinsky has this suggestion to introduce the process of Open Middle:
Okay - I can do that! I made a quick template for Sum of 1000, printed off one per table, put them into dry erase sleeves with a small envelope of numbers and set it aside to use as one of my first days of school non-curricular tasks.Using the digits 1 to 9 at most one time each, place a digit in each box to create a sum that is as close to 1,000 as possible. What’s great about this problem is that very few children or adults get it right the first time, yet very few give up either because it doesn’t feel unreasonable.
- Area of a Triangle (Coordinate Plane)
- Creating a Right Triangle (Equations)
- Creating a Right Triangle (One Coordinate Given)
- Triangle Sum Theorem
Monday, December 26, 2022
#Made4Math - Creating a Scavenger Hunt
Happy Monday!
Over 10 years ago, in June 2012, @pamjwilson and I started a blog series called #Made4Math Mondays. Since then, so many wonderful ideas have been shared from the MTBoS. I kept up with my weekly Monday posts for a long time before it ended up being just a summer thing and then trickled into a very sporadic posting. But I do miss those Mondays - it was a great way to push myself creatively and to come up with new ideas for my classroom.
This year has been a lot about creativity for me. For the past few years, students have been pretty passive participants in the classroom, either due to being online or due to COVID restrictions that kept us from doing more active learning. One of my subgoals this year was to have kids up and around the classroom at least once a week, so an Around the Room Scavenger Hunt is a go-to activity for me!
- Gets kids up and moving
- Only takes about 15-20 minutes, so it's a good post-lesson practice
- Kids are more willing to do 13 problems here than a 5-6 question worksheet - go figure!
- Low stakes - the answers are somewhere in the room!
- Kids can work with a different partner
- Promotes mathematical discussion
- I love hearing the "productive noise" that occurs during these!