#Made4Math - Homework and Exit Tickets

Yesterday, on Twitter, several references to the #Made4Math blogging challenge came up.  Years ago, we had a summer challenge to help keep us motivated during the summer on tackling that never ending to-do list!  I am the world's worst at wasting my summer away and then regreting it when August comes, so Made4Math was a great way to try to get little things out of the way before school started again.  :)

Fast forward a few years and I still struggle with motivation, so I'm going to *try* to do some Made4Math posts this summer!

M4M #1 - Homework and Exit Tickets Form

Last summer, one of my #EduRead books was Grading Smarter, Not Harder by Dueck and I blogged about a daily homework check (see post here).

Overall, I *really* liked the idea of a daily homework check because it gave some accountability to my students and it let me keep track of how many problems they got right / wrong.

However, the format from last year was somewhat limiting, so I had to have different forms for my Geometry students (where HW is usually 10 problems or fewer) and my Stat students (where HW is usually 1 problem with multiple parts).  Also, there wasn't a place to keep track of which problems they had attempted versus those they got correct. 

I knew I needed to make a change this year because we are going back to a traditional 6 period day, 5 days a week versus the modified block schedule we've had for the past several years.  I needed to figure out a way to get 5 days onto the paper, yet still have plenty of room to write without killing tons of trees.

I ended up with a half sheet with the front being the homework check (seen above) and the back being boxes for an exit ticket.  I haven't quite decided how I want to structure the 6th box at the back, but it seemed like a more "square" rectangle gave my students more flexibility with an exit ticket than the longer rectangles seen on the front.  Click here to download document

My biggest issue now is trying to figure out how to best fit in the time to go over HW, but I do want the students to know I value it and my Stat kids this past year really liked having the space to ask questions and write themselves notes each day.

M4M #2 - AP Free Response 

There are a ton of resources out there now for AP Stat, which means it can get a bit difficult to keep track of everything!  I try to include Free Response problems whereever I can, but sometimes I forget which ones I have already used and there are some great problems that I honestly forget to use!

I decided to type up a quick reference of the released exam questions, with a super short descriptor and a space for me to jot down some notes.  There are several documents like this already out there on the AP Teacher Community that align the questions to textbook chapters, but in general, I just needed to be able to find the "Tiger Shrimp" problem or the "Blocking Trees" problem quickly, so the descriptors might not make a ton of sense to you. :)  But, here's the document in case you want it!

M4M #3 - Weekly Planning Page

No summer is complete without a revision of my binder!  Last year, I did a big revision (see post here), and while the printed version was absolutely gorgeous, I didn't use it as often as I should.  Part of the reason for not using it well was that the two page spread just took up way too much space on my desk!

So this year, I have changed it - again! :)  I'm going to try a one-page spread to see if I like it any better.  Since we don't have to turn in lesson plans, this planner is just a place for me to jot down what we did each day.  I also needed a place to keep track of my before / after school meetings and our Advisory schedule.  The section for "other" is for me to put things like Drills or when my partner teacher is absent, etc.

I also revised the top to put a weekly habit tracker instead of the habit tracker that I had traditionally put with the monthly calendars.  I am hopeful that this layout will work better for me this year.  While I don't have my entire binder ready to print, feel free to download the above page to make your own.  The font is Shadows Into Light, which you can get here.


I hope you found something useful here today and maybe I'll have more to share next week! :)