July Blogging Challenge #5Things

July Blogging Challenge -Day 4

Have to admit the blogging challenge is hard, especially in summer and I am off. I do not regret starting it though, and one of things I'm enjoying the most is reading all of the other bloggers blogs.

My take on the #5Things will be the 5 things I'm looking forward to this year.

#1.  5th graders!!!  I've only ever taught 7th and 8th graders and maybe I'm being naive, but I'm looking forward to having some sweet little 11 year olds for a change.  Now I'm sure there are some teachers out there laughing hysterically at this, but I can't help but think 11 year old kids have to be a tad bit better than 13 year olds. Its not like I am clueless, I do have a 10 year old son and a 16 year old daughter.  Now I have to admit, I have had the easiest time with my daughter, but even I saw the difference in her attitude during those years.  I've always believed kids lose their mind in 7th grade so I am excited to teach them before that happens.  Although I'm sure my new 6th graders are going to be a handful as well.

#2  Using one of these for my calculators!

Each pocket will be numbered and then I will quickly know who has a calculator and more importantly if they are all back at the end of class.

#3  Longer class periods/a better schedule.  Lots going on here with this one.  First of all last year we cut ourschool day by 1/2 hour, we used to end at 4 and now at 3:30.  We got a new administrative team that decided to take on everything themselves and made the schedule at the last minute without input from the staff and it was horrible. So here are the things that I am hoping will make it better: Last year I taught 7/8 which has 5 classes in total, this year 5/6 which are only 4 classes.  Admin is getting help from our 8th grade Science teacher who is a wiz with scheduling.  They also PROMISED me more math time!  Yay!

#4 Going into this year with experience in a) Singapore Math b) PowerSchool c) Rubicon Atlas   These three things were introduced last year a week before school started.  I don't know about you, but I am a planner and love to learn, but hate being in a sink or swim situation.  That was how I felt about all three of these things last year.  Don't get me wrong, each of these things are really valuable to our school and can make life easier, but I am looking forward to having a clue before school starts!

#5 My comic/superhero themed classroom!  I can't help it I like themes and decorations.  I am excited to incorporate this theme since this is a passion of my entire family.  I'm pretty sure that my kids are going to be comic book artists as a profession.  I'm not even kidding.  Here is one thing I found that I'm sure I'm going to do this year: 

Yeah! Day 4 done!

(LOL count: 0, Exclamation Point count: 9) oops

The Book Post

July Blogging Challenge Day 3

Not feeling this post today, but have nothing else on my mind so I'm going for it.  I really want to push myself to blog everyday.  

Like I said the other day, I love to read and my kids do too. Seriously if you look around my house there are books everywhere.  

These books I picked to highlight are just ones that either I am constantly picking up and rereading/referring to (Mindset, What's Math, Attitude Gap, Minds on Math) or am just reading now for the first time (both Sammons books.)

This post is going to be short because I spilled a beer on my keyboard and now it randomly starts typing +++ and 11111 all by itself!  It is a pain to have to keep fixing it.  Luckily I get my work laptop back on Monday.

The Right Amount of Struggle

July Blogging Challenge -Day 2

Yesterday I was excited to read about and join in on @druinok's July blogging challenge and today I am also excited to join in on #eduRead.  I am constantly reading, especially math and math ed books.  Right now I am reading Guided Math and Building Mathematical Comprehension both by Laney Sammons.  I am also reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and my son's summer reading book, Loser by Jerry Spinelli.  Yeah, I love to read.  I especially love reading things and getting to discuss it with other people reading the same thing.  Last summer I participated in a book study organized by Sherrie at Middle School Math Rules! on Wendy Ward Hoffer's Minds on Mathematics: Using Math Workshop to Develop Deep Understanding in Grades 4-8, learned a ton and it really had a positive impact on how I teach.

The article this week is Faster Isn't Smarter: Messages About Math, Teaching, and Learning in the 21st Century by Cathy L. Seeley.  This is an excerpt from the book, and to be honest, I really want to read the whole thing!  The message I took away from the article is similar to everything I've been reading lately, that we don't offer students the opportunity to wrestle with complex mathematical  problems which is needed in order to develop a deep understanding of the concepts we are trying to teach.  It reminds me of when I was trying to learn to drive a car with a manual transmission.  My hubby (then boyfriend) would let me practice  driving his truck in the empty mall parking lot each week, but I just couldn't get it and never felt comfortable on real roads with real traffic.  Then I found a cute little red Toyota pickup truck that I HAD to have.  Only problem was it was a stick.  I bought the truck and that was it.  I had to learn or I couldn't drive it!  Sure enough it only took me about an hour to get it, and I learned to love it.

Back to students and allowing them to struggle, I admit I am guilty when it comes to sometimes swooping in to save the day and thankfully each year I get better and better about not doing this.  I've learned to answer kids questions with questions in order to lead them out of trouble or towards the answer.  One way of doing this is never picking up a pencil at their desk. It's too easy to say "here let me show you" and just doing the work while they watch.

One thing I highlighted in the article is the line "It turns out that offering students a chance to struggle may go hand in hand with motivating them, if we do it right."  My quest is finding out how to do that.  Last year I dabbled with the workshop model, and that is where I had the most problems, my kids didn't seem motivated or interested in solving the problems.  Its finding that "right amount" of struggle and making sure kids have the tools necessary for completing the task that I need to work on.

I think it also take changing students mindsets and ideas about what should be happening in a math class.  I have found that students think they should be able to immediately see the answer to any problem posed in a math class, just like recalling a multiplication fact.  I'll never forget when one student commented after I had just finished modeling a new concept "Mrs. Nehila, I would have never known how to do that without going over it like we just did."  She was so upset with herself until I asked her "Would you feel better if you knew how to do every concept before I taught it?" and she realized that she would be bored.  Kids need to know that not only is it OK to make mistakes, its also OK to not know how to do something before you learn how to do it!

One of my goals this year is to start the year off by not only teaching kids how to work collaboratively, but also HOW to struggle and to work though problems before we get into the curriculum.

July Blogging Challenge-Day 1

I always read about these blogging challenges and really want to do it, but never follow through.  Being that it is summer break I don't have the usual excuse of "I'm just too busy". So I am going to give it a try and hop on to ST's July challenge

Since one of my downfalls in these challenges is figuring out what to blog about, I am grateful for the idea of prompts and I am going to follow ST's lead and start with Start/Stop/Continue.

3 things to START
Daily Blogging-I know that daily blogging will make me a much better reflective educator.  I love going back and reading my blog posts to see how far I've come, ideas that I had and want to look further into when the time is better and what worked/didn't etc.  Its just when I start I get extremely self conscious, like if anyone reads my blog they are going to think I am a rambling idiot.  Then on the other hand, who cares!  I need to blog for MYSELF anyway.  However, I am hopeful that I will share something that will be useful to someone else, since I have found so much from reading other teacher's blogs, part of the reason I want to blog is to give back a little.

Immersing myself in the 5/6 standards-Since I'm changing grade levels this year, this is a pretty big priority!  I feel the urge to do a lot of prep work over the summer so that I can fully enjoy this new age group.  So much to learn, even though it shouldn't be too scary since I have a 10 year old at home right now.

 Math Club-This is another biggie for me this year.  I registered with MathCounts  last year but didn't really follow through with it other than taking group of students to a local math competition which they absolutely loved.  I am going to give MathCounts another try this year, and I am especially excited because I will be able to work with the 7th and 8th grades as well.

3 things to STOP
LOL and !- One of the first things I think I blogged about was how I was going to try and keep from using these in my blog.  I will not totally eliminate the exclamation point, but I am going to try to limit it in use.  You have no idea how hard it was for me not to use both of these in this paragraph.

Perfectionism-There are so many things I need to do, clean up my diet, workout more consistently, make my house spotless, tutor my son, etc, that I know will be so much more successful if I adopt a "progress not perfection" attitude.  

Wasting time-This is specific for summer.  When I have no structure in my day I am the worst time waster.

3 things to CONTINUE
ISN's- I felt like this should go in the start category, however, I did start them the year before last and just put it on hold last year while we adopted our new textbook series.  I am excited to bring them back again.

Studying Growth Mindset- this started last summer with the How to Teach Math with Jo Boaler course.  I love this so much and can't wait to work with my new students on this. I did a PERTS study and was given assignments to try with my class to encourage growth mindset in my students and I will continue to use these activities along with what I learn from reading this book.

Using Ipads and Laptops-We have laptop carts and access to Ipads and in the past I just haven't used them much because I hate the idea of using technology for the sake of using it.  This year I found some ways to really incorporate them without it feeling weird.  Things like having the students make paper slide videos, math stations where they practice on sites like xtramath.org, etc.

Whew! Day 1 down, wish me luck!

Summer Break Week 1 of 9

Goodbye Class of 2014 (my last 8th grade homeroom for awhile "sniff sniff")

My summer break this year is actually a day less than 9 weeks since I had to go in last Monday for a PD day.  On a good note, this first week felt very long.  I didn't start a great routine like I wanted to, which is going to include an attempt at regular blogging and some sort of early morning cardio.  I didn't do much of school stuff this week either, read my Bloglovin' feed though and finally browsed Pinterest, those are two things I really put off when I'm super busy with school.  Other highlights from this first week include:
Our very first trip to Liberty Science Center!  We had a blast!!  The best part for my 10 year old son was the Skyscraper exhibit where he got to walk the beams like a steel worker.  My favorite part was the Rubik's Cube exhibit.

Next up was the first of two concerts with  my 16 year old daughter, Friday night was Say Anything at a small little venue a few towns over from us.  I love this place because it feels like you are watching live music in someones basement.  She loves to get right at the front and I stay off to the side in the "mommy zone" lol!  These shows get pretty crazy with the crowd surfers and the security guards are constantly pulling kids out over her head.  I like being able to see if she is OK.

That's her in the blue short sleeve shirt before the main band came on.

Then on Saturday we went to "Monumentour"

I can't lie, I was definitely excited about this show, New Politics, Paramore, and Fall Out Boy.  Although "my type" of music is more like Metallica, Rush and Tool, I LOVE some of the kids stuff and Fall Out Boy is definitely one of them.  This was our third FOB show since last year and this was the first that wasn't general admission floor.  I actually bought lawn seats originally and let the girls have "seats" but the day of the show I went to the box office and upgraded my ticket and got an excellent seat.  I literally danced my butt off, LOL, according to my fitness monitor I reached 199% of my daily activity goal.

So here it is  6:28 am now and I am waiting for hubby to get home from work (he works a miserable 3rd shift job-totally killing him but its good for the kids schedule during the school year) and then I'm going to go for a walk.
I do have a lot I want to accomplish or learn about this summer.  Here is my list and I hope to blog about some of it:

• Creating better assessments-we are required to give 4 Benchmark tests a year.  They are built into our calendar and non-negotiable.  Our whole school shuts down for two mornings to do this-just like state testing.  I make the math test for my grades and they are horrible.  I just pull questions out of the test bank and format exactly like our state test.  6 sections, 8-10 multiple choice and an open ended each.  Its brutal, especially that first one in October.  So a major goal is going to be creating those, and not only do I need to do it to make them better, I also need to make new tests since I will be teaching 5th/6th this year!
• Bringing back INBs!!  I need to plan/learn this whole new grade level so what better time to do this!
• Implementing "growth mindset training"??? I guess that is what you call it.  I've been reading and studying this since last summer and love it so much.  I am really going to make it a priority this year.

Big Changes Ahead!

I am moving from 7/8 to 5/6!  I am so excited.  I've been talking about it for a year now and last Thursday was asked by my admin if I wanted to do it for next year.  I have to admit, when it finally became real I got scared.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE my team and I really love 8th grade.  The only grade I don't care for is 7th.
When thinking about the big picture, it will be a really good change for my school.  The current 5/6 teacher is too abstract and will be so much better with 7/8.  
I am really looking forward to getting back to the basics.  I am so sick of kids coming to me with a fear of fractions and long division.

I would appreciate any tips or tricks for this age level!!!

24 Game Tournament

I did it!  I held a 24 Game Tournament this year with my 7th and 8th graders!  It was a great experience for all and I can't wait to do it again next year.

Here is how it went down.  I have been using the 24 Game as daily warm ups and giving the kids lots of practice time in the weeks leading up to the tournament.  About a week before I started recording progress and engagement in the classes.  I used that as an elimination round to select the final competitors.  I ended up with twelve 7th graders and nine 8th graders to move on to the main event.  

Since we don't switch classes the last week of school we used my classroom and I sent out my homeroom students to other rooms and called in all of the competitors.  As they entered they were given the yellow game card.  

The cards told them the table they would go to for each round.  I had predecided the players for each group for rounds 1 and 2.  I put the 7th graders together and the 8th graders together.  After round 2 we added up the scores and I took the 9 highest scoring players and split them into 3 groups.  I had a nice mix of 7th and 8th graders in the semi-finals.  I was excited to see how the semi-finals would go because I had noticed during the class times that the 7th graders were much more into the game and excited for the tournament than the 8th graders.  However, the 8th graders stepped up!  For the finals I took the three highest scoring players from the semi-finals to play the championship round.  It ended up being one 7th grader and two 8th graders.  It was a tough match!  One 8th grader got disqualified and the other two players tied!  We had a one card tie-breaker and my 7th grader was the champion!  

I gave out the prize-large bags of Skittles, Starbursts and LifeSavers!  Last year my kids were all about Takis, this year its all about candy!

I basically used the rules from the Suntex website with some tweaking: http://www.24game.com/t-tournamentrules.aspx

The tweaks I made were I did not use the timing they suggest.  The proctors gave them one minute to find a solution.  Next I gave them the option of stating the pattern first or just jumping in with the steps of the solution.  I also gave them more like 30 seconds to get the answer out once they touched the card.  That wasn't such an issue, when they knew it, they were able to get it out.  That was pretty much it!