Aim to Be Awesome, Not Perfect

My youngest daughter is addicted to YouTube videos.  Usually she watches Minecraft videos or silly cat videos.  But last night she wanted to show me something she found. We sat down and she told me to search "ted ed riddles". I know about Ted Talks,  but this was something new to me.  She shared three of them with me. These are awesome! We paused them so I could attempt to solve them before we watched the solution.   I can see using them as warm-ups in my math classes or as an activity in my intervention class.  There are even more videos by Ted-Ed  that you can create lessons with.  This just shows you can learn something from somewhere you least expect it! 

Today my instructional coach came in and commented positively on my anchor charts. Doing/having them are a goal of mine this year and so it was nice to hear. I have been referencing them and creating them with the students, and I think that students are utilizing them.  I am trying to keep them from having too much information or being too busy. Here are some of them:

At the beginning of the year, we all have grand ideas about all the new, amazing, awesome things we are going to implement in our classroom.  Or is that just me? I saw something cool on RockStar Math Teacher's blog - seriously, you should check her out.  She posted at the beginning of August about some great things she implements and I really love the team talk idea.  So I borrowed her team stars for my room, and what I am doing with them is really working. I took the team stars and attached them to the lids of the bins I got for my tables.  The bins hold all kinds of stuff - rulers, scissors, glue, colored pencils, etc - anything they might need for class.  I like this system because I am not having to stop class when a lot of students need one resource (and I forget to pull it out of my cabinets).  The lids cut down on the playing with the supplies and trash dumping in the bins. ( I do go and close all the bins between classes).   I...

It's the second day of school and I am exhausted, but it is a good exhausted.  I feel like I know most of the kids' names by now and we have played a bunch of games getting to know each other.  Tomorrow we start learning what's in the curriculum. Here are a few photos of my mostly finished classroom: The Agenda Board My MYP/IB Board and bins for notebooks Stuck? Some strategies above my front boards (which I will share photos of soon) My Anchor Chart Board and my Thinking Cards  Up close of my Thinking Cards board.   Front Student Supply Station I thought I took more pictures than that... but I guess not.  I will try and take more soon! 

Wow. I can't believe summer is almost over.  Towards the end of July, I took a couple of PD classes and my brain started to shift to school mode.  But then my family went on an amazing vacation for 6 days and I went back into vacation mode.  Big time. But back to life, back to reality (singing the 90s tune in my head), I started thinking about my classroom.  I have been doing a lot of reading of blogs and trying to get ideas (or something to borrow). I ended up ordering a few things from Vistaprint. First up, I got some great ideas from Rockstar Math Teacher .  She is AMAZING! I really like the posters about GRIT and Learning/Doing Mathematics.   I have had this picture in my Google Drive for a while, and I want it for my upcoming year.  I don't remember where I got it, so unfortunately, I can't give credit where it is due.   And lastly, I made one poster.  I found this blog post that inspired the style of my poster, but...

So I have been thinking about the first week of school.  Here is my plan (unless my administration has different ideas). Day 1 - I want my students to get to know me and I get to know them.  They are going to get a lot of info on the first day, so I figured we would wait until day 2 for more of my info. We are going to make posters like these . Middle School Math Rules is an amazing blog and I love reading her ideas!  Each class will have a different color of post-it and I am going to have these 4 prompts.  Our classroom should be ___________ everday. Math is important because _______. Mrs. Wassmuth can be most helpful by ________.  This will be my best year of math because _________. Their 'warm-up' will be filling out their post-it notes. Day 2 - I want my students to get to know my expectations. I talk a lot of respect (and it is expected) in my classroom, but there really isn't anything in my guidelines or on my walls to remind student...

For me (and for most teachers), summer break is a double-edged sword.  On one side, I need time to organize my house, catch up on my fun reading list, and watch too much HGTV.  On the other side, this is the time for professional development, reading educational material, and gathering ideas to make next year amazing.  Since my last two blog posts have been about the educational side, I thought I should share some of my summer fun. Summer started fast! We spent our first weekend of summer camping with our friends. Soon after we returned home from our fun weekend with our friends, Jason and I headed to New York City for our 15th wedding anniversary.  We walked A LOT.  We got to see a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder" and "Act of God" with Jim Parsons.    We didn't make it to the Empire State Building, but we found a great place called the Press Lounge that had amazing skyline and river...

I can across this pin - And I think this covers what I want on my walls.  I found this version of it as well, but I don't think I have enough wall space. Sarah Hagan at Math = Love has great ideas.  I love the idea of a fixed/growth quiz at the beginning of the school year - I found the idea here.   I think that is what I am going to do the first or second day of school.  I also like her A/B/not yet grading scale - but I don't know if that will fly in my school and our grading policy. Maybe this is something I can do with our formative assessments...

In my previous post ,  I listed my goals for this summer. One of them is to plan for how I am going to help students with a growth mindset.  One of my Twitter friends, Justin , sums it up my issue nicely! I struggle with the line between supporting and enabling #msitcbc — Justin (@JustinAion) June 17, 2015 So how do I help them without just enabling them? How do I give them strategies, rather than them just giving up and waiting for me to help them? I came up with an idea - Thinking Cards . The cards will be color-coded, and in folders attached to a wall. Students will be able to grab one whenever they need it. Card #1 will be red - it is for when students have no idea where to start. Card #2 will be yellow - it is for when students have gotten started, but get stuck somewhere in the problem solving process. Card #3 will be green - it is for the student thinks they could be done, but aren't sure if they are.  An added bonus to these cards - hopefull...

What a break! I knew it had been a while.... but I thought I had a least written one blog post in 2015. Apparently not.  These last 5 months have been a total blur. Towards the end of the year, I was asked to be part of a secondary math cadre whose goal is to create resources and review common assessments.  The first session was started with this -  Lollipop Moments . That video, this article , our following conversation, has really inspired me.  I have always believed in the growth mindset, but haven't really known or understood how to share that with my students.  So my summer goal for myself to is read, research, and plan - so that when the new school year starts, I will be able to enable my students to have a growth mindset. So what's my plan? 1 - Read Mindsets in the Classroom . The MS Math Chat is having a Twitter book discussion on Tuesdays at 7.  Use the hashtag  # msitcbc .  I missed the last one, but I am planning on making the ...