My Favorite People of the Week

It's Friday again!! Wowzers, where does time go? :)

This week, I have two favorites to share with you :)

Favorite Person #1
On my #Made4Math post this week, I gave a shout out to Amy Gruen. If you've never read her blog, then go there - seriously, go now!!! Amy is one of those math teachers that I have a total blog crush on. I mean, I can't think of a single time that I have read her blog and not gotten a great idea for my classroom!

Anyway, recently she posted about factoring and as I posted on #Made4Math, I was stealing her idea to use in my class. :) Yesterday was our monthly "late start" day, where the students come 2 hours late so that the teachers can work together. On those days, one class doesn't meet and yesterday that class was one of my Algebra 2 classes. Since we would be learning factoring today, it fit in perfectly to do Amy's activity during the late start day in my other Algebra classes.

So yesterday, each group got a work mat and a stack of binomials. They had to find the two binomials that multiplied together to equal the trinomial. It was great practice to remind them how to "FOIL" (Yeah, it's an annoying acronym, but don't flame me... it's one of the few things that the kids remember from Algebra 1)

Thank you Amy for being awesome and sharing your creation with us!!! You are definitely a #MyFavorite :)

Favorite Person #2
My next favorite person is one of my parents this year. These parents are amazing and I would totally volunteer to teach their kiddo for the next 2 years. On the first day of school, this mom comes up to me and gives me a goodie bag and says "Welcome Back to School!". I had no idea who she was, but I said thank you and she walked off. Later, I found the gift tag and the last name was the same as one of my students.

This comes last week. I'm in my classroom after school and in walks Mom with a gift bag. I go out in the hall to visit with her and she tells me to open my gift. It was a tshirt that said "This is my math teacher costume" - OH.MY.GOSH - How cool!!! I wore it on Halloween and got so many comments from the students! LOL

So after school on Halloween, I run next door to ask another teacher a question and when I come back, this was on my desk:

There wasn't a name on it, but when I looked out the window, I could see the Dad climbing into his car, so I ran outside to thank him. The box was filled to the brim with homemade Halloween cookies... and some really creepy looking finger cookies. LOL

This week was a crazy week, but thanks to Amy and these parents, the week was SO much more bearable than it could have been! Thank you, Favorite People of the Week! :)

#Made4Math Mon... errr, Tuesday :) Quadratic Functions

I'm a day late... again... Sorry about that! :) This week is the equivalent of hell week for me for some reason - lots of meetings, lots of late nights, and WAY too many things on my "to-be-done" list! But that's okay... I'll keep plugging away at it and hopefully someday I'll be caught up! :)

This week's Made4Math focuses on my Algebra 2 class, so hopefully there is something here you can use!

Project #1 - Partner Problems WS
Remember me saying how swamped I am? (If not, may I direct you to paragraph one...) This year is going well, but with new responsibilites plus a prep I haven't had in 2 years plus a record number of students on my roster and I'm just plumb tuckered out! So yesterday in Algebra 2, we were supposed to start Quadratic Functions (the infamous Chapter 5 in every Alg2 text). However, I just wasn't feeling it, so I gave my kids a "sub day". That means that I got up at the beginning of the hour and said...

"Good morning kiddos! I'm Mrs. __'s Sub. Mrs. __ isn't here today because she just had a ton to do. But, Mrs. __ left a lovely note saying how awesome her classes were, so I know you guys are going to do just great today! Mrs. __ did leave some review work for you, but I hate to tell you that I, Mrs __'s Sub, don't know ANY math, so you'll really have to rely on your table partners and your notebook to help you out. Mrs. __ said in her note that you are used to using your notebook as a resource, so I know this is going to be just an awesome day!"

The kids cracked up. All hour, they would refer to me as "Mrs. __'s Sub" and today they even asked if the Sub had left a good note about them! :)

Anyway, here's a snippet of the worksheet they had to do:

Project #2 - Vertex and Standard Form
Today, we started Quadratic Functions and how to graph them. Tomorrow we are going to talk about Vertex Form of a quadratic and how to switch back and forth from Vertex to Standard Form. In their groups, the students will be asked to match the following:

More Projects underway...
I did create a foldable for Quadratic Functions, but I forgot to take a picture! DOH!
I'll share it soon :)

Also on tonight's plan is to create these awesome factoring mats from Amy's blog.

Happy Halloween!!! :)

#Made4Math Monday #18

Don't forget to submit YOUR #Made4Math post HERE

Here are today's submissions:

Beth - Slope Stations

@misscalcul8 - Slope-Intercept Form Card Sort

@druinok - Quadratic Functions Fun

My Favorite Kitchen Extra

Welcome to another Friday :) Honestly, this week I forgot it was Friday until it was actually here! There's so much on my to-do list this week and most of it involved grading - UGH!

One of the things that really helps me when I grade is COFFEE! :)

Problem is... I don't like "real" coffee - I like the flavored stuff...

So enter in My Favorite...

Please ignore our McDonald's Monopoly game pieces - LOL :)

Seriously, our Christmas gift to each other last year was a Keurig and I can honestly say it's been one of the best purchases. Yes, it's a bit expensive to buy K Cups, but it's so worth it to me. Hubs likes his coffee strong and jet powered, while I like the flavors, so this has been awesome because we can each have "our" coffee without a lot of waste. I'm also a hot cocoa fan, and the Keurig is so much easier to use with my hot cocoa packets than warming water in the microwave.

My current favorite K-cup is the Folger's Vanilla Biscotti... :) I'm also a fan of the Chai Latte.

I think I'm going to go make a cup of coffee...

My Favorite Friday #14

Don't forget to submit your post HERE

TravelingMathTeacher - Math Graffiti Posters

@4mulafun Jennifer Smith-Sloane - Favorite Activities (Video Style)

@druinok - My Favorite Kitchen Extra

Math In The Middle - My Favorite iPad Apps

@misscalcul8 - Student Teacher

@tbanks06 - Best Group Work Activity :)

@sqrt_1 - Sound Buttons

Made4Math Monday #17

Don't forget to submit YOUR #Made4Math post HERE

Here are today's submissions:

@4mulafun Jennifer Smith-Sloane - Flippable Templates

@csteketee21 - Scratch Off Unit Rates

@misscalcul8 - Relations and Functions Foldables

@druinok - Around the World

@fourkatie - GEMS (Order of Operations)

@4mulafun Jennifer Smith-Sloane - Interactive Notebook Video Update

Kristin - Combining Like Terms Art

@crstn85 - Geometry Proofs: A New Approach

@_CindyWallace_ - Getting Our Groove on w/ Dance to Advance

#Made4Math - Around the World

This past week was Fall Break and let me tell you - I needed it! Just a few days of sleeping in, taking naps, etc really helped me to rest and relax. In fact, yesterday, as I was thinking about this week's lesson plans, I even had the energy to be creative again! :)

On a typical Sunday, I can spend many, many hours tossing and turning ideas over in my mind until I finally settle on what I want to do. But not this week! Within about 3 hours, I had all of my lessons ready to go for this week - yay!

So here's what I'm doing this week on our block schedule day...

This activity has many names, but I call it "Around the World". In this activity, I have 18 problems and answers that I will post around my room. Each pair of students will pick a problem, go to that location, work the problem, then find the answer on another card and work that one. It continues until they have worked all of the problems and they are back to their original starting place. This one is specifically to help review normal distribution problems for my AP Stat class.

I hope all of you have a wonderful week!