Today I began the First Steps in Math program with four other educators from our division. Several years ago our division sent one of our colleagues to the First Steps in Math training program and he has now spent time each year educating other teachers in our division and was actually trained by David McKillop, who I saw last year in Brandon. My new books (provided by our division): the First Steps in Math Number Sense course book & work book. First Steps in Math was developed in Australia in the early 1990’s as a means… Read More
How Much Time Is Enough?
In Manitoba students will be back in the classroom in approximately three weeks… three seemingly-short weeks… and I am beginning to plan out how those crucial first few hours, days, and then weeks, will play out in my classroom. When I look back at the beginning of last year, my first year in the classroom, I strongly feel like everything went as smooth as it could have been. I had over planned to compensate for my lack of experience, nervousness, and excitement… the students were reserved while they got used to the new setting and were pretty accommodating… Read More
Canada Day Blog Hop!
Happy (early) Canada Day! I’m linking up with Desiree at Reading with Mrs. D to participate in her Canada Day Blog Hop (and sale). Unfortunately, I don’t have a TPT store to participate in the sale portion of the event, but I can offer up some freebies from my classroom! (Click on the links to access the files via Dropbox) ________________________________________________ Editable Math Poster Set – Rainbow These posters outline criteria for mathematical thinking and were inspired by ones created by Sidney at Teaching is a Gift! What Makes A Good Blog Post – Student Blogging Outline A close-up view of my “What Makes… Read More
2014-2015 Teaching Schedule
It feels like I am in a time-warp, as I vividly remember writing this post last year when I got my teaching schedule for my VERY FIRST year as a teacher. Somehow, it has been over a year since that time… oh, where did the time go!? I am now almost finished up my first year at “S-School” and I have gotten my teaching schedule for next year. I am happy to announce that I will get to remain as the Grade 8 homeroom teacher (although I will still have classes ranging from Grade 8 to Grade… Read More
#MTBoS Mission 7 – A Day In A Life
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
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
Lets Convert the US to the Metric System! A Grade 10 Essential Math Persuasive Project
Today my Grade 10 Essential Math class was introduced to their unit project to conclude their unit on Measurement Systems. If you can remember back to my previous posts, they created board games as their unit project in their last unit on Personal Finance. Here is what they were tasked with today: – Time For A Change – The United States is the only leading nation not using the metric system, despite doing business with metric countries thousands of times a day. Your mission is to create a persuasive Public Service Announcement (P.S.A) designed to convince the United… Read More
These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things…
We’re at that point where the majority of my classes are finishing up their first units and preparing to move on. As such, I wanted to share some of my favourite projects and activities from some of my classes. Grade 8 Art Our first project in Art this year was a Famous Artist Research Mobile. Students picked an artist of their choice, created mobile using their pieces of art, and included artist bio’s and references on the back. These are now laminated and permanent fixtures in my room! Grade 8 Science In Science we explored cells and… Read More
#MTBoS Mission 1: The Power of the Blog
I am participating in the wonderful #MTBoS World this fall as a way to learn more about teaching and assessing math as well as to connect with math educators and grow my PLN. As a new math teacher (teaching Grades 8, 9, & 10 math) I am interested in learning as much as I can and am so thankful to all of the wonderful educators who are willing to share their experiences online! First off, if you haven’t heard about #MTBoS (or the MathTwitterBlogosphere), it is an 8-week series of missions designed to connect dedicated math teachers who are willing and… Read More