#MyFavFriday - Week 1 is Done!

Remember me saying a couple weeks ago that I was going to blog every Friday about my favorite moments of the week?

Yeah, well, I've already failed.... twice.

But, according to the pictures I keep seeing around the MTBoS, "mistakes are proof that you are trying"

So I'm admitting it... I failed :)

Seriously though - last Friday (8/18) was our first day with students, and I had already blogged about my first day plans for the SundayFunday challenge, so no biggie, I figured I would start with this week - easy enough!

BUT...

I didn't figure in how utterly exhausted I would be after a full week of students.  I mean, this isn't my first rodeo... this is year 20... I should have known better, right?

Except...

This year, we have a new schedule.  We have always gone from 7:50 am to 2:30 pm.  This year, we have changed to 9:15 am to 3:55 pm and I totally underestimated the difference.  I'm a morning person, so I'm still getting to school at 7am, working on prepping for the day, etc.  I've been bee-bopping along all week, thinking, "Hey! This schedule might not be too bad!", until I literally hit the wall on Friday afternoon.  I tried... really, I did.  We had a staff cookout scheduled for 6pm and I thought I could make it.  However, around 5:30, I realized that if I didn't leave ASAP, I would not be safe to drive home (~25 minutes).  So I didn't make it to the cookout, but I did make it home safely! :)

Anyway... enough of my sob story... let's get back to the point, which is #MyFavFriday

So many fun things happened this week!  You can follow my #teach180 over at Instagram.

My favorite learning moment of the week happened in Geometry on Friday.

We started the day with a quick warm-up on identifying parallel lines, skew lines, and intersecting lines, which I came up with on the drive to school Friday morning.  :)  I quickly made 8 sets of cards and laminated them before kids ever arrived.  I displayed a diagram on the board, then orally asked students to look at line ___ and line ___ and determine the type.

After the warm-up, we started working on naming things.  Earlier in the week, we had discussed points, lines, planes, naming them, etc.  On Thursday, I had given a Quick Check, which is a quarter sheet, ungraded, feedback only problem and I realized they were having issues with naming things, especially planes.  This summer, several of the formative assessment books I read mentioned that if you are going to do FA, you need to be prepared to do something with the data collected.  So, on Thursday night, I changed Friday's lesson plan to be more interactive and give more practice on naming.

I used 4 diagrams, each with 5-6 questions about naming planes, collinear points, intersections, skew lines, etc.  I printed 8 copies of each paper and used 4 colors of dry erase sheets to help me keep it organized.  Problem 1 was in the Red dry erase pocket, Problem 2 in the Yellow, Problem 3 in Blue, and Problem 4 in Black.  I was ready for kids to arrive!

After our warm-up and a quick reminder on how to name things, symbols to use, etc, I instructed each group to open their table bucket, get out dry erase markers / erasers, and the Red/Yellow/Green cups.  I used the cups a bit differently this time in that Green meant they were working just fine, Yellow meant they had a question for me, and Red meant they were ready for me to check their work.  Each group received Problem 1 and we were ready to go.  I loved the discussions that were going on, I loved being able to give individualized feedback to each group, and at the end, I really felt that they had a better grasp on how to name geometric figures and shapes.

But the BEST part of the lesson?

They did math for an entire hour and not a single complaint was heard! :)

Now *that* is a win! :)