More Good Stuff

It’s really hard to believe, but this has been a really great year so far. Perhaps it’s the smaller class size, the camaraderie in the department, my general glass half full type of optimism. Whatever it is. I’m grateful.

I should blog about things I need help with. And believe me, I intend to. But sometimes I just want to share how awesome my job is.

There are exceptions of course, but so far they’re few. Students have been more engaged, especially in the lower-level algebra 2 class. It’s like a dream come true.

We have been working/reviewing how to solve linear equations in one variable. Started with a little Connect 4 – Algebra Style with a battle of the sexes theme.

This week we did Desmos’ Central Park. It was a struggle for some kids, but they were engaged, and I was as well.

Then we did some puzzling problems, credit due to Park Math Curriculum. “Did we seriously just do one problem for 30 minutes?” “Yes – is there anything wrong with that?” “Nope!” ❤

We ended the week with an equation solving maze. (Found on pinterest, thanks to Mrs. E Teaches Math.) It was amazing. We weren’t sure about how the kids would do wandering around the hallways, but I have proof they were awesome. Some of them even said it was “fun.” Victory.

Happy Teacher:

Collaboration Struggles

I really really really want my students to collaborate this trimester. Nearly every year, I start with my students in pods of four. And at the end of nearly every year, my desks are separated from these pods. In recent years, the desks have ended up in pairs – so that’s OK I guess… Regardless, improved student (and teacher) collaboration is one of my goals this year.

Seventy-ish percent (just a guess) of my students enjoy working and collaborating together and actually get something out of it. When this happens, and I get to watch it, it’s AMAZEBALLS. I love it. It makes me happy.

However, 70-ish percent is just not good enough for me. I’ve already had complaints of “my group never talks.” And I’ve seen it. I need to take more stock into actually  getting students to collaborate positively with each other. Especially in my Algebra 2 Concepts class – I think that will be my challenge this trimester. I want them to be POSITIVE collaborators.

So I’m trying to do the whole assign roles for each person in the group. And actually hold them accountable – I just don’t really know how this is going to happen. The plan is to introduce and assign these roles tomorrow. I was also inspired by @JustinAion to get kids to say positive things about each other’s work – I need to give this a “go.”

Any advice?

Week three begins tomorrow 🙂

Best Week EVER!

Literally. Best. Week. Ever.

Last Tuesday was the first day of my thirteenth year of teaching. I know what you’re thinking – I look so young. But seriously, thirteen years. This has been the best first week of school I’ve experienced so far. I took so many pictures to illustrate the wonderment of this week. But of course, they’re on the iPad in my desk drawer. So, I’ll have to save those for a later post. The one picture that I do have is perhaps the most important one…

 

Every first day of school since I started teaching, she’s sent me flowers. I love her so much!

First Day Activity

Along with others in my department, we tried the blanket challenge with our classes. It was great to see students working together on the first day, without instruction. Just seeing them work out their ideas. Most worked really well. There were one or two that got frustrated by their lack of teamwork skills. Definietly going to focus on teamwork within my classes this year.

After the blanket challenge, it was the Mrs. Hazelton show. I put together a slideshow on things that make me happy. Then each student decorated a notecard with one thing that makes them happy. Each of these notecards got posted on my new HAPPY WALL. (Pictures to come.)

Ok moving on.

I teach Algebra 2 Concepts & Skills and Honors Probability & Statistics. I’ve taught Algebra 2 Concepts & Skills for the past 6 years. It’s a class I have dreaded in the past. This year though, I feel very optimistic. The class size going from 35 to 24-ish probably has something to do with this 🙂 I know that the motivation may still be an issue, but I know I can get to know these kids SO MUCH BETTER now. I will DEFINITELY have more to post about this bunch!

My Honors Probability & Statistics classes are off to a great start! I started with an informal survey project to see how they would collect and present data. We were on the verge of Sampling Methods. Nothing formal was introduced at all last week. We JellyBlubbered one day and did a card sort the next day. Such great discussion within these groups. In the Jelly Blubber Activity, the student groups (ALL of them) decided to select their samples based on size – choosing 1-2 to represent each size group. I thought that was really interesting! The card sort was amazing. The students sorted the cards by the sampling method. Tomorrow we will introduce the formal vocabulary and see what we can do with these activities.

I love my job. I hope I can keep up this energy and enthusiasm all year. Wish me luck 🙂

 

Unit Circle Awesomesauce

In my college trig class I’ve been hinting at the unit circle for a while. Earlier this week, students learned the angles of the unit circle. Today, the coordinates were introduced. I used an idea from an article given to me by the one and only @veganmathbeagle. The article is from the February 2014 article of the Mathematics Teacher, My Favorite Lesson: the Human Unit Circle submitted by Maureen MacInnis.

So, I wanted to do this outside in the fresh air with some sidewalk chalk, but this winter (#worstwinterever) would not allow that. (The parking lot was an ice skating rink this morning.) Thankfully, we have a large locker commons area.

I wrote up 32 cards, one for each x- and y-coordinate on the unit circle (x’s pink and y’s blue.) Students picked up 1-2 cards on the way to the commons and were instructed to “find their match” and “plot the ordered pair” on the coordinate grid taped to the floor. After some struggling (and remembering the special right triangles we solved for warm up), they successfully re-created the unit circle. Success.

Then we made like Autobots and rolled out… the x- and y-coordinates to show the cosine and sine curves.

Pure Awesomesauce.

Sweet Graph!

Making frequency bar graphs using our stride length data. Susie did this on her own… Made me so proud.

Graphtastic

My 9th grade algebra 1 students are still struggling with graphing. Winged it today with some masking tape and paper cups!

Worked really well in one class, could’ve been a little better with the squirrelly class.

Let’s be honest here

I love math and I love kids yes that part is true. But after teaching for eleven years… I thought it would get easier. Let me assure you it is not. This girl works hard for her money!

The paradigm shifts so frequently in education, especially math. I feel like I’m constantly learning something new and constantly tweaking what I’m teaching. Now this is not a bad thing. Just seriously not what 10 years ago me expected. I started teaching in a school that was using the Core Plus curriculum (albeit not always in the appropriate manner). Then taught 5-12 math with a very different curriculum (Saxon). And now in my current position we’re kind of in limbo pushing for problem solving and STEM.

Anyhow, the point of this post is that I thought it would get easier. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with my job. But the 10 years ago me needs to know that a teacher’s workload will never decrease, whereas time put in seems to ALWAYS increase. I feel like I’m always trying to make things better. No matter how many years I’ve taught the same class, I never teach it the same way.

But let’s be honest here, I seriously thought I would be able to simply put in 40 hours each week with my summers off. Somebody needs to tell the 10 years ago me how naive she is.

#MTBoS – Mission #3 Keeping the Positive

So far this school year, I’ve been feeling really out of my element. I haven’t wanted to be here. I’m struggling with my lower level classes more than usual. I’m just not all here. I find the kids to be rude, disrespectful and lacking manners. I know they don’t want to be in my class. I just know it. And I let them direct my mood – good and bad. 

Anyhow, after being out of town for a few days, I was expecting the worst (of course). I had pretty detailed sub plans and I hand-picked my sub… but still. With these kids who knows right?? 

I got a great report from my sub for a certain class 🙂 

And today, they were ALL ABOUT solving systems by substitution! They worked so hard.

I really need to take this idea of ONE GOOD THING and run with it. Sometimes it’s hard to remember why I love my job. But this helps out a lot! Thanks for the positive blog 🙂

MTBoS mission #2: Confessions of a Twitter-Stalker

I created a twitter account quite a while ago. I was curious to see what it was all about. I started following celebrities, local news channels, MN Twins Baseball among other things. It basically provided some entertainment while nursing my son.

Two years later, I grew tired of the same old tweets. I stopped with the tweeting. Actually, I never tweeted, I just stopped looking at twitter for some time. By chance, I reopened my twitter account and saw a retweet from a coworker regarding some sort of mathy, teachery ideas. I was blind, now I see. Holy crap!

Now, stalking math tweeps has made twitter a whole new experience for me! I love the resources, the ideas, and everything mathy I’ve been discreetly following. And THEN blogs are introduced and that’s just another story. Now I feel overwhelmed (in a good way) with #MTBoS.

So, en route to the great state of Wyoming, I am catching up on my twitter stalking and my #MTBoS mission. (While my husband drives BTW.)

Mission #1 — Here it goes…

• I’ve been a high school math teacher for the past 12 years. I currently teach Algebra, Probability & Statistics, and Trigonometry. I loved math in school and I still do. The most enjoyable thing about my job is working with young students and watching them ‘get’ things. 
• My favorite problem to do with my classes is MysteryPlots. Students are given eight different unlabeled scatterplots and eight different pairs of variables. Students need to determine which variables match which scatterplots. I’ve been doing this problem for a while. I should probably do some updating to it. 
• What makes my class mine…. I’ve been teaching for a while now, and I don’t think I’ve found that one big thing that has stuck throughout the years. Or at least I can’t think of it right now. I do take pride in trying new things, and trying to be innovative. 
• What brought me to MTBoS? A co-worker actually sent me a link to check it out. I’ve been on twitter following some mathy bigwigs and I’ve been inspired to get on the bandwagon. Also, I just want to be a better teacher.