It crosses our mind at the beginning of each year. How am I going to handle homework this year? I'd like to get to the point that I know how I want to handle things and just stick with that. There's different philosophies on homework. I think students should have extra practice outside of classwork. My beef is dealing with how to grade homework. I used to go through each problem and grade it that way. That got overwhelming pretty quick and soon I was swimming in paperwork. Near the end of last year, I would look at the paper and verify answers and see that they had shown work and base a "completed vs. not completed" grade that ranged from 0-100. 0 meant they didn't do work or show work. 100 meant they showed all the work and have mostly correct answers. We would then go over answers and methods that way kids who didn't know what to do, would at least get a chance to see what they needed to do. Its not the most perfect method but encourages students to try. Every so often I would have them turn in an assignment (about once every two weeks) for a closer look at their work and a more detailed grade.
Today I saw a re post from http://livelovemath.blogspot.com/2013/08/throwback-thursday-homework.html. She talks about how she handles work and relates it to quizzes. I'm liking her method and am interested in doing something along those lines. I want to instill responsibility and accountability in my students, but need to allow for some pretty interesting homes lives.
One thought I had for this year was to do a "no homework slip". Last year I toyed with the idea of a missing homework binder but that didn't make the end of the first week. I also know I need to collect work for record keeping. So i'm trying to put all my ideas together.
Want to 1) have homework to grade 2) scan homework for student files 3) not have to deal with late work 4) have a way to track missing homework 5) periodically do a detailed grading to make sure kids are doing what they're supposed to. Perhaps I can walk around and take a picture with my ipad and load the homework to Three Ring. Then have the missing homework slip that I take a picture of and email that to parents. HMMMM. Ideas are forming. Wish I could think this well earlier in the day. At least I got my ideas down. :) What do y'all do for homework? Are you into detailed grading or are you a skimmer? Let me know what you do!
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Syllabus thoughts
Many teachers I've seen have decided to change things up a bit and go from a several page syllabus to a brochure style format. The format examples can be seen on Pinterest and through searches on Google.
I really liked the idea from Mrs. Hester's blog (http://mrshester.blogspot.com/2013/08/updated-parent-handout.html) and am tempted to use that format this year. My intention is to have a brochure they can take home, then have a brochure they can put in their journal (to deal with the times they can look at the syllabus for an answer).
When I get that all put together, I'll get that posted. I hope to finish out last year's stuff so that I can be ready to post for this upcoming year. Are you excited yet? I'm not sure how things will go, but I'm starting to get excited to see my students again. What are your plans for your syllabus this year?
I really liked the idea from Mrs. Hester's blog (http://mrshester.blogspot.com/2013/08/updated-parent-handout.html) and am tempted to use that format this year. My intention is to have a brochure they can take home, then have a brochure they can put in their journal (to deal with the times they can look at the syllabus for an answer).
When I get that all put together, I'll get that posted. I hope to finish out last year's stuff so that I can be ready to post for this upcoming year. Are you excited yet? I'm not sure how things will go, but I'm starting to get excited to see my students again. What are your plans for your syllabus this year?
Saturday, August 10, 2013
What I learned on my vacation
It feels like it's been a long time since I posted, but really it hasn't. I forgot I posted while I was camped out on my in-laws sofa. The best thing a person can do is purchase or inherit a quality sofa. You never know who might need to sleep on it.
It was a good vacation. Saw my sister get married, visited with family, saw a couple national parks, and drove A LOT of miles. MANY miles.
I learned many things, like how to crash a 4-wheeler, that my sons are incredible strong, that bison don't care if they are holding up traffic. All good things.
The trip was also nice because I had the opportunity to learn about ADHD and Autistic children and what it takes to accommodate and help them face their challenges.
We go to workshops and learn about children who have a hard time in class. Then we go to work and are expected to know exactly what to do or how to accommodate and all we have are IEP's and Sp.Ed. plans that give us a little info but nothing like what we really need to fully understand what to do. There might be some who have had personal experience that are able to adapt quickly and then there's the rest of us who have only professional development to rely on.
I appreciated how my sister-in-law took the time to tell me about how they found out her children needed assistance. What their personalities were like, how they were able to make accommodations and she gave me the opportunity to better understand what some of my own students are up against, be it a learning challenge, or challenges with teachers who didn't understand or wouldn't take the time to understand.
It was fascinating to gain this knowledge and I hope it put it to good use this year in my notebooking, and also in being more compassionate towards my challenged students.
That's all I have tonight. I'll get back to posting my last year's efforts and then it will be time to start planning hard-core for this upcoming year. Still don't have a schedule and I hope my students don't get screwed with a 6th period math class since that class is only 40 min. long. Ok. Time for sleep!
It was a good vacation. Saw my sister get married, visited with family, saw a couple national parks, and drove A LOT of miles. MANY miles.
I learned many things, like how to crash a 4-wheeler, that my sons are incredible strong, that bison don't care if they are holding up traffic. All good things.
The trip was also nice because I had the opportunity to learn about ADHD and Autistic children and what it takes to accommodate and help them face their challenges.
We go to workshops and learn about children who have a hard time in class. Then we go to work and are expected to know exactly what to do or how to accommodate and all we have are IEP's and Sp.Ed. plans that give us a little info but nothing like what we really need to fully understand what to do. There might be some who have had personal experience that are able to adapt quickly and then there's the rest of us who have only professional development to rely on.
I appreciated how my sister-in-law took the time to tell me about how they found out her children needed assistance. What their personalities were like, how they were able to make accommodations and she gave me the opportunity to better understand what some of my own students are up against, be it a learning challenge, or challenges with teachers who didn't understand or wouldn't take the time to understand.
It was fascinating to gain this knowledge and I hope it put it to good use this year in my notebooking, and also in being more compassionate towards my challenged students.
That's all I have tonight. I'll get back to posting my last year's efforts and then it will be time to start planning hard-core for this upcoming year. Still don't have a schedule and I hope my students don't get screwed with a 6th period math class since that class is only 40 min. long. Ok. Time for sleep!
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Algebra 1 - linear equations review
I think Ms. Haley showed me this one. It's got pretty much everything you need to know about linear equations.
The source for this foldable is also from I Speak Math - NAGS Foldable. She has a file you can print up but do this well ahead of time as your printer may offset the result. I tried to print that morning and thought things were ok, until we went to write on the inside and everything was upside down. There was some reprinting involved and it took away from the time we should have been writing things down. "I Speak Math" used this for notes, I used it for review. The students liked all the information that was on here, but in the end, didn't like this foldable much saying it was too busy and hard to find information. "I Speak Math" also had her students write notes on the back for review but since this WAS my review, we used that side to paste down in our notebooks.
Since I like the info on here, I think some modifications we can do would be to make it a multi-page booklet so the info is broken up. You should probably check out the "I Speak Math" site to see what she wrote seeing as yet again, I didn't write anything down. (Don't worry, one day I actually do!)
Posted with BlogsyAlgebra 1 - slope
During the unit where we studied slope, we did this foldable as review. I got this from "I Speak Math". She also used it as a review but had plans for using it for notes. It's not a bad foldable but our class didn't quite put the components together like they ought to. If this could be used for notes instead, I think it would be more effective. Still, it's better than what I could put together on my own.
As you can see, mine is blank. Always write what your students are writing or the questions they have later may not make sense!
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Algebra 1 - problem solving
In between the solving equations and solving inequities we did a lesson on consecutive numbers problems and using Cross Products. As a way to make things easier, we cut the reference section of the worksheet out and pasted it in our books. This isn't the worst idea (use what you've got) but I think we lost connection by not showing some examples. I'm becoming a believer of drawing and writing as much as possible instead of using pre-fabricated foldables. This idea will come into play in some future posts.
I liked this reference for the students and think they would reference it more if we had used our own handwriting, had examples and we were consistent with journals.
algebra 1 - solving equations and inequalities
I've been trying to get this posted for a day or two now. I couldn't remember the source for the foldable that I used though so I didn't want to officially post until I could give credit where it was due. The foldable we used comes from "Mrs. MATH"'s site on Teachers Pay Teachers. The official title was:
Solving Linear Equations and Inequalities Foldable
It is a free download and worth checking out. She's got some other Algebra 1 materials but I haven't checked those out just yet.
We used this foldable to help us with multistep equations and inequalities. I believe we went over the concept in class and then before we moved on, we did this foldable with all the steps written out. It took some time to write everything out and more time to fold and cut. I recommend having the tabs pre-cut unless you're kids are pretty quick with foldables.
Keywords on the outside:
Description of steps on the left side with example problem on the right.
A couple days later we worked on inequalities and did a similar foldable.
The students liked having the example but near the end of the unit, they weren't referencing it as much as I'd hoped. I will probably try something else this year along the same lines. You know, I like the idea behind this foldable and am grateful someone put it together. My finished product is a bit busy and some of my dyslexic kids had a tougher time with it. To modify, I would probably have fill in the blanks for the descriptions and then have a more structured problem solving area to help them put things in the correct places. I really think I'll try something else this upcoming year though. If you know of some other foldable, please let me know!
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