NJCSA Conference

Today my school attended the New Jersey Charter School Association conference in Atlantic City.    Overall, the conference needs some beefing up, with better sessions for teachers and more vendors.  However, I can't complain today because I attended an amazing session called Getting Messi:  How Mistakes make Mathematicians and Scientists.  The presenter was the winner of the Fishman Prize for Superlative Teaching (which I didn't even know existed today, but it is really cool!) Check it out here: http://tntp.org/fishman-prize/winners/fishman-prize-2013/keith-robinson  Anyway, the session was all about Mindset!  My passion of late especially since taking Jo Boaler's class over the summer and now participating in the Perts study.  Most of the ideas presented I was familiar with but did come away with some ideas for really creating the growth mindset culture, such as presenting my "fake" mistakes for students to analyze and awards for class culture such as for the hardest worker, or the best question asker, etc.
The best part was I was a winner of Carol Dweck's Mindset, which I've never actually read.  So excited to get reading!

Then after lunch I got to be a speaker at a session!   I was kind of thrown into it as another teacher was going to do it and backed out at the last minute.  I am so glad I did!  We talked about some of the things our school did to increase math fluency, deeper conceptual understanding and incorporating the 8 mathematical practices.  It was really easy, I talked about our "Mad Math" program, how we set it up, how if runs, some of the changes and improvements we made since last year.  Then I talked about using KWI (What do I know, What is the questions, What are my ideas for solving) for multi-step or word problems along with TAPPS, Talk-aloud-partner-pair-share also for problem solving.  Finally I talked about using kid friendly translations of the 8 mathematical practices and how I introduce three to four main practice to focus on when I introduce the objective of the lesson and also how I have them hanging above my number line and refer to them often throughout the day.  I got to present this with our math coach and the Director of my school.   It was fun, I could talk about teaching math all day long!

Books, Books and More Books!

So we are on a little family vaca in Baltimore this weekend.  My daughter turned 16 and didn't want a party, she wanted to visit Edgar Allen Poe's grave site.

 In addition she found a "free" bookstore that she wanted to visit.  It turned out to be the coolest place!  We dropped off a ton of old books that were collecting dust on our shelves and headed in to the "store".

She ended up with about 5 and I found this:

I actually got 4 of those Math on Call books, so that each of my groups can have one for reference :)  Later on we went to the Hardrock cafe and while we waited for our table went over to Barnes and Noble, they were selling the same book for $32 each!!!

I highly recommend The Book Thing if you are in Baltimore, I will definitely like to come back at least once a year or so!