#MTBoSSundayFunday - Photo of the Week

Just a reminder that the #MTBoS Sunday Funday challenge is back!  This is a weekly blogging prompt that is hosted over at Julie's blog and this week's theme is "Photo of the Week"

Every week, Julie will push out a new topic, you blog about it and submit your blog post using this Google Form.  On Sunday, there will be a huge list of awesome blogs to go read! :) YAY!

As always, this is a no pressure blogging challenge, so if you don't feel like blogging, that's okay!  I've had many weeks already where I've failed at blogging, so I'm right there with you!  However, this week is one I just couldn't pass up :)

This week's theme is is "Photo of the Week", but this was a tough one for me.  I couldn't narrow it down to just one, so instead, I took a screenshot of this week's Instagram #teach180 posts! :)  (Can I just say that I LOVE using Instagram for my #teach180 posts... it's super simple to use and it's been a great tool for me to easily look back at my progress over the year!  Plus I shared it with my students, their parents, and my admin so they could follow us virtually!)

This week was great!  Last week was our Fall Break, so coming back on Monday was bit rough, but as you can see in the photos above, there were so many good moments this week!

To go chronologically, we'll start from the bottom right :)

Bottom right:  This was Monday in AP Stat.  After a break, we needed to do some mixed review over the chapter topics.  There were 3 problems, each one in a dry erase sleeve.  Students were up on the whiteboards working through the problems... so many good discussions!

Bottom center:  Tuesday in Geometry... You'll notice the little white box in the corner - we had a really active day!  This was a block day and we had color coded notes, some dry erase sleeve practice, and then a "Question Stack" set of cards on angle relationships.  So much awesomeness!

Bottom left:  Tuesday in Forensic Science... We had just finished a lab on the Bertillion Measurement System and read a great (yet lengthy) article on Bertillion, so we followed up with some summarization strategies.  This photo shows "Give One Get One", which is one of my favorite strategies!

Top right:  Wednesday in AP Stat... We had just finished z-scores and normality and were preparing for a quiz.  However, practice problems often get dull in worksheet format, so instead we did the same problems in card format.  Groups could choose to work on the vertical whiteboards or get one of the portable boards for their table.  So many good discussions and many of them scored perfect scores on the quiz!  yay!

** There isn't a photo for Thursday because my sophomores were taking the Pre-ACT and my Stat kids took their quiz... not a photo worthy day!

Top center:  Friday in Geometry... Thanks to the MTBoS, Friday's lesson plan was super simple... Katrina Newell (@MrsNewellsMath) had already blogged an Angle Addition / Angle Bisector foldable that all I had to do was print and use!  (Thanks Katrina!).  I do love foldables and add it to some color coded notes and you have a happy teacher on your hands!

Top left:  Friday in AP Stat... We've finished our unit in Stat, so next week we will be taking Test #2.  There were 10 stations posted around the room with 2 MC questions per station.  The students went from station to station working problems, checking with me, and going to the next station.  The hour flew by and on their exit ticket, several students even asked if we could do it again. :)

I know I didn't do quite what the prompt asked me to do, but it was such a good teaching week that I wanted to share! :)  Now to work on next week's lessons... hopefully it will be just as awesome as this past week! :)

#Made4Math - Conditional Statements

I know... it's not Monday... :)

This year is kicking me in the tush, BUT, I'm having a *blast* teaching Geometry.  I have some really awesome kids and I love the hands-on aspect of Geometry.  Last time I taught Geometry was about 10 years ago, which was well before I found the MTBoS and started using Interactive Notebooks :)

Anyway, on Sunday, I spent 5 hours on lesson plans for Monday only.... oh my goodness! :)  I tweeted out a comment that I could get a LOT more done if I didn't care how things looked or if I was willing to have a boring lesson. :)  Of course, having a new prep means lots of new foldables and creations and they have to look just right with a fun font! :)

Each Monday, my Geometry kids have a Mental Math Monday where I project a game card from the game 24 and instead of just coming up an expression to equal 24, they try to come up with all of the values from 1 to 24.  I decided to have them start doing it on their whiteboard sleeves and one group even made all of the values within the warm-up time (~5-7 minutes)

If you would like the Mental Math Monday file for your dry erase sleeves, click HERE

After we were done with our warmup time, it was on to conditional statements in Geometry!  I had scoured pinterest and the MTBoS Search Engine looking for some fun stuff to help my kids practice, but nothing was really catching my eye for their notes.  I ended up making a super simple foldable in a Word table that created a "flashcard" like foldable that was blank inside to allow us to take notes and write down the definitions.

If you would like the Word Document, click HERE

To follow it up, we practiced with the statement sort that I found on MissCalcul8's blog - See her post HERE

Then, we practiced some more using a free speed dating file from TPT, but I did it more as a Quiz Quiz Trade activity - See the activity HERE

And finally wrapped it up with a Kahoot!

All it all, it was a good day :)

Made4Math - Geometry Fun!!

It's been a while since I've written a Made4Math post, but I have a feeling this year will be a year FULL of new files and fun stuff :)

I am having a BLAST teaching Geometry this year.  The last time I taught it was about 10 years ago - before the #MTBoS entered my life and before I knew Interactive Notebooks even existed!!

This weekend has been kind of crazy.  I left school on Friday thinking I would get *so much* accomplished... HA! :)  By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, I thought I might get an hour of work in while waiting on my mom to come down to go shopping.... I tinkered with it before she came down, then again after she left.  Before I knew it, I had spent close to 3 hours making a single flipping foldable!!! :)

Of course, I had to tweet it out last night... I am pretty darn proud of this thing! :)

I swear I printed it about 20 times before I got it to line up correctly and figure out how to "flip" it correctly on my printer!  Here's what the actual file looks like:

Download the file - PDF version

Once I had it figured out, I had to make a blank template for next time.  Here it is in Word format. :)

Today, I got on another kick of creativity and started working on this week's lesson plans.  We have a modified block schedule that has a traditional 6 period day on Monday, Thursday, and Friday and a block schedule that meets on Tuesday and Wednesday.  That means that tomorrow we head back to a block day with 100 minute periods.  

On block days, I try to do a lot of activities and I like to have the kids up and out of their seats at least once during the period to restart their brains.

For Geometry, one of the activities we will be doing tomorrow is a "Find Someone Who".  This is an activity that is often used as an ice-breaker, but I like to throw in a concept-twist.  The idea is to help my students remember all of the symbols and vocabulary we've worked on for the past week :)

Here is the PDF file if you want it! :)

Hope you've all had a wonderful and productive weekend!  

Made 4 Math - A tribute and some lessons

Welcome to this week's #Made4Math! My laminator and I had a lot of fun this week, that I'm hoping to pass on to you :)

But first, something personal. I don't usually post a lot of personal information here, but it's been a sad weekend at my house. Last week, my husband's grandfather passed away. He was 94 years old, a WWII veteran, and a great guy. As I was preparing my sub plans on Saturday evening and about to go downstairs to bed, my husband calls up that something is wrong with one of the ferrets. One of our boys, Bandit, was having a seizure. We called our vet, who sent us to the emergency hospital. The doctors tried everything they could to stabilize him, but on Sunday morning about 11am, we had to let him go. He was 6.5 years old and a very loved member of our family. If you aren't an animal person, you may not understand why I'm sitting here in tears typing this, but our animals are our children and we love them dearly. Rest in peace, my little man.

Thank you for letting me share my sorrow with you.

Project #1 - Foldable
While the weekend was pretty crummy, I did have some productive moments this week! First up is the very first foldable I've ever made for AP Stat:

The font on the front is "Puffy Dreamland" - isn't it cute! :) Get this file HERE.

The kids really liked the foldable and on the inside we took notes and drew the corresponding diagrams for each type. Then they glued their foldable into their notebooks. This project leads us to....

Project #2 - Card Sort
Let me start off by saying that Card Sorts are one of my most favorite formative assessment techniques! The basic idea of a Card Sort is to give each group a set of cards and they sort them into similar characteristics. This Card Sort works hand in hand with the previous foldable:

After finishing up the foldable, I wanted students to practice on identifying the types of experimental design. I browsed through various textbooks until I found 4 Completely Randomized experiments, 4 Randomized Block experiments, and 4 Matched Pairs experiments, printed them onto colored paper, laminated them and cut them out. Then I gave each group a set of cards and told them to sort them by Experimental design. The conversations were awesome to overhear! After the group sorted their cards correctly, they had to verbalize to me what the unifying theme of each design was, then pick one card of each type to draw the flowchart of the experiment. This really helped to solidify each type of design. You can get the file HERE.

Project #3 - Multiple Representations
A few years ago, I stumbled upon this website for Pre-AP resources. One of the activities there was a multiple representations matching activity for Piecewise Functions:

The idea is for students to match the graph to the scenerio to the table to the equation. Since piecewise functions are on my lesson plans for the upcoming week, I thought this would be a fun activity for the kids to try. I'll try to take some pictures of this activity in progress :)

Don't forget to check out all of the other #Made4Math projects!

A "Duh" Moment

I don't know about you, but every so often, I have a thought (well, technically I have thoughts more often than that...) that just hits me upside the head with its simplicity. This is one of those times...

Back in June, I posted about using Interactive Notebooks in my classes this year. Well, June (and July) came and went and I really didn't do anything more about it. I attend @mgolding's wonderful INB talk at Twitter Math Camp and then again last week at the Global Math Department meeting, but I've not really sat down and put pencil to paper and how I planned to use these things.

In Algebra 2 at my school, we don't start with review material. We start with Parent Functions, transformations of parent functions, and review linear equations as it comes up. In fact, you may recall this picture from my June INB blog post:

At last Tuesday's Global Math Department Meeting, @mgolding announces that this week's meeting will be about foldables and @jreulbach will be giving an encore performance of her Twitter Math Camp presentation this coming Tuesday. (YAY!)

So all of these thoughts are swirling around in my head and during Wednesday afternoon's naptime, I have the thought... HEY! That table can be a foldable!!

I took the table AS-IS, cut around it, folded it in half, cut the flaps, and labeled it. Now kids can "quiz" themselves one function at a time..

Seriously - it was that easy! Makes me wonder what else I've used that had easy foldable potential that I've ignored!

UGH! *Smack!*

So Simple, yet I'd never thought of it before... *sigh*