At the start of October I signed up to participate in #MTBoS as a way to connect with more math educators and learn about different strategies/activities that could help me as a first year math teacher. I’m not exactly sure what I did wrong, but I signed up to get the weekly challenges emailed to me and added their wordpress blog to my Feedly account and for some reason I never got any updates! 8 weeks later… I noticed that a few of the bloggers that I follow have jumped on the #MTBoS wagon and are blogging about week… Read More
Stanley the Koosh Ball!
This post is for all of you that have a SMART Board or other brand of Interactive Whiteboard in your classroom. Did you know that you can use a “Koosh Ball” to activate your board and, thus, create a kinesthetic learning opportunity for your students? Before I graduated with my B.Ed I spent a lot of time substitute teaching in a Kindergarten class near our home. As part of their morning calendar time, students reviewed months/days/years by activating review prompts on their SMART Board with a “Koosh Ball”. These rubbery balls are the perfect sensory tools if you have… Read More
My 1st Parent-Teacher Experience
On Monday of this week our first round of report cards went home and officially kicked-off Parent-Teacher Interview week. Being that we are a K-12 school, our K-7 teachers scheduled and organized their own meetings which ran throughout the week. In the 8-12 end, our school secretary scheduled our meetings for us which were primarily held on Thursday after school and Friday during school-hours (there were no classes on Friday). Thursday marked a full day of teaching from 8:50-3:30 and then straight into interviews beginning at 4. By the time I had straightened up my room and ran… Read More
An Open Letter To Parents
Dear Parents/Guardians, As I sit here, reflecting on my first parent-teacher experience, I want to share the following thoughts that have been infiltrating my mind more and more. First, I would like to thank you for sharing your children with us:– for allowing teachers to have the opportunity to be a part of their lives… – for allowing us to witness their personality and appreciate their quirks…– for allowing us to be there on the good, bad, and out-right crazy days…– for allowing us to be a part of their development (academically, emotionally, etc)…– for allowing us to be… Read More
Report Cards For Teachers?
When I was student teaching, I had my students complete assessments of me as a teacher. This was not something I was required to do but it was a big learning opportunity for me so I continued doing it throughout my last year of my Education Degree. I actually got the idea from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog (here is his most-recent example). When student teaching, my evaluation questions were centered around the statements/categories that were included in my evaluation checklists from my university. Now that I am out of school and have my own classroom I am not sure… Read More
Report Card Reflections
Today our Semester 1 Report Cards went home with students and I could breathe a sigh of relief. The past two weeks have been emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting as I’ve attempted to survive my first report card experience as a first year teacher. To be honest, I don’t feel like there was any one aspect that was genuinely hard (although they were time consuming). The most difficult part, for me, was making sure I actually did everything that was required of me. I felt like there was a lot of aspects that I simply wasn’t aware of, so… Read More
Making Time…
This past month has been a weird one for me as it has been the first month in almost two years where I haven’t been blogging regularly. They say that if something is important to you, you will find a way to make time for it…. My viewpoint towards my blog has not changed. In fact, my time away from my blog made me realize how much it truly meant to me. So much has been happening in my teaching-life over the past few weeks and there has been several times where I have wanted to share it with… Read More
Visualizing the Circulatory System
We are currently discussing the circulatory system in Gr 8 science as we near the end of our Cells & Systems unit. Today my students had an opportunity to learn some interesting facts about this system through some activities: The Box of MysteryWhen students arrived, I had a large Rubbermaid storage bin on the table. After taking a few guess about what was inside, we blindly pulled items from the box until each student had an item (they were all containers of various shapes and sizes). Without giving any insight, I asked students to find somewhere in the school… Read More
2 Stars & a Wish: Week 9
*Unfortunately, I do not have a reflection for Week 8 as I was on a hiatus/break haha. November is upon us and reality is beginning to hit home. Number one, report cards are due in 10 days…. Number two, my first parent-teacher interviews are in 15 days… Number three, there are only 34 teaching days left until Christmas! Seriously, was it not just the first day of school last week?!? I guess the only thing to do is take a deep breathe and take one day at a time. In the mean time, here are some things that I think went… Read More
Using Siri in Math Class
Today I was playing around with the Siri application on my iPhone and I discovered that it can solve math problems! Not only does it solve the math problem, but it also visually represents the answer in different ways! I have a few students who have difficulty with realizing that numbers can be shown different ways. For example, the fraction 4/5 can also be written as: – 0.8 (decimal) – 80% (percent) – 8/10 (equivalent fraction) It could also be represented using a: – number line – 100-grid paper – pie chart – cubes or other manipulatives After experimenting… Read More