Memory games + a love/hate relationship with the laminator

I've really been trying to come up with new activities for my classes. I don't think I worksheet them to death or anything, but I do want them to come to math class everyday wondering what new thing they're going to get to do. Some days are notes and straight up learning. Some days are all review. And some days there's a perfect balance of new learning and activity that go hand in hand.

So technically scientific notation is not "new" learning for these guys. Or at least it shouldn't be. But since we switched to common core in the middle of the year, and it's officially an 8th grade standard now, I felt I needed to throw some sci no review into our polynomials unit. Scientific notation and exponents fit nicely into the beginning of polynomials, I feel. And my kids seem to have a good grasp on scientific notation right now, though we're still struggling with nailing down those exponents. 

The Memory game was easy to make in InDesign. I made two versions. The blue, pictured above, is the beginner game, where all problems can be simplified by the kids in their heads. Things like 8 x 10^5 and such. The advanced decks are printed on orange and require some scratch paper because they consist of multiplication of expressions in scientific notation. And while it looks like you can see through to the other side, one of my kiddos quickly discovered the backs actually just picked up some of the ink from other cards while they were in a pile waiting to be laminated.

Speaking of lamination, let's talk pros and cons. While I really like seeing these cards all nice and slick looking on the tables, the days of work to cut them out is kind of a pain. And I don't even cut them out. My minions do. 

Anyway, I seriously had kids on the floor in the back of every class for two days cutting those things out. They love it, but I don't love the constant mess and how seriously long it takes to prep for one activity. And with 8th graders, there's no guarantee that even lamination is going to save these cards for next year's kiddos. I've found myself much more often forgoing the lamination and just printing on card stock, sending a kid to the chopper to slice them out unevenly (perfection is overrated in 8th grade), and just warning the kids in each class that they have to last all day. And they always do, though they're definitely more worse for the wear at the end of that 4th mod. Then I just toss them in the recycle bin. No storage. No planning weeks ahead to send them off to the laminator (ours isn't on our campus). No planning days ahead for minions to cut them out. 

To sum up, laminating is overrated. But it's so pretty and shiny! But it's time consuming. Bleh. I guess I'll keep my love/hate relationship with it for now.

Dorky 8th Graders

Today was a good day.

I LOVE my 8th graders this year. They are too funny.

They're also all super dorky. But I'm dorky, too, and I think that's why I love them so much. They just are so innocent and have no shame.

For instance, one of my boys today told me about how he was googling me the other day. Now, I know my kids do this (one reason I don't have my last name anywhere on this site, or I'd be hearing it on Monday about how I called them dorky), but usually they don't tell me they've done it. This kid was super excited because he found all Chris' and my wedding pictures online. What thirteen-year-old boy is super stoked to tell his teacher that he found all her weddings pictures online? One of my silly, innocent thirteen-year-olds, that's who.

Now I do know they've found my Instagram. I don't exactly hide it. All they have to do is find our photography website and they can access it from there. Last year I knew kids kept tabs on my account, but no one ever said anything, except an occasional slip of asking about something I'd done over the weekend before realizing they'd seen it on my Instagram, and not heard about it from me, which always tipped me off to who was following me. This year the following is not lurking in the shadows. I get likes from several students, and one likes everything I do within about ten seconds of posting about it. I'm not sure how he does that...

A Saturday in November

It has been raining like crazy around here.  Somehow I've been fortunate to not get caught in anything heavier than a mist, despite a three mile walk on Thursday with my 8th graders. (We walked to a local middle school to see a CYT production of School House Rock.)

Luckily the rain should stop this morning, just in time for me to run out and take care of some errands.  (Got to pick up a new teacher stamp and some white board erasers.) If our house stays freezing, we're even throwing around plans for dinner and a movie. We're not crazy over seeing Catching Fire though, especially with everyone else seeing it today, so everything's still up in the air.

Aren't Saturdays just the best?

Friday Happiness

Today I am happy to be a teacher. 

It's hard a lot of the time. I know last year it was hard because the group of students I had were just... not nice most of the time. Not all of them. But the "leaders" definitely had malice in their hearts, and sadly, most of the other kids were followers led astray. Each day was an emotional battle. Even still, I loved (most of) those kids very much. They were my first group of students that were mine.  And if you got them away from the leaders, they were mostly sweet, helpful, fun-loving kids.

I cannot get over how different a group of 100+ thirteen-year-olds can be from one year to the next. This year is a night and day difference. There is honestly not one child in any of my classes that I would consider a true troublemaker. At most, I've got some kids who are squirrely and have a hard time concentrating. That's it. I am so enjoying these kids. The majority want to learn. I can have them do activities without having to worry about my classroom being destroyed or someone throwing a chair or having a temper tantrum. (All things that happened last year.)

I told Chris that this year I actually get energized from the kids. It's still tiring and hard, but the emotional drainage isn't there this year. The kids have fun in class and I can in turn make class even more fun. 

Yesterday we did mixture problems, one of the worst Algebra concepts to teach. I love teaching it though. Last year I discovered that hyping it up as one of the most Difficult Things Ever just spurred my lovely and ever-contrary 8th graders to prove me wrong. I did the same this year, along with making up a couple of graphic organizers to work through in class. Throughout all four classes, I would hear gasps of horror when I first read one of the problems. Then we did a little demo that involved mixing two solutions of varying amounts of food coloring to give a visual of the chemist mixing up two solutions. They liked that. Then it was just a matter of putting all the information into the graphic organizer and all of the sudden... click.

I had my weakest kids solving these things like nobody's business. They even told me this was the easiest thing they'd ever done in math. (Hardly, but okay, kiddo.) Today when we went over homework, I overheard one boy commenting, "This homework was sooooo easy. I helped (insert name of student who was absent the day before) figure it out. Me. I never help people!"

Today we moved onto motion problems, the dreaded "one train leaves at 1pm going this way, and another train leaves at 3pm going this way..."problems. Luckily for me, you set them up exactly the same way you set up a mixture problem, so I knew the kids were going to be fine. I was going to print up more organizers and have us all go through it together as a class again, but at the last minute (like midnight last night) I decided to simply review the distance formula with them and let them group up to figure out problems on their own. They totally struggled, but it was the good struggle. A few figured out they could make a table of values or do guess and check to find their answers. Others needed hints along the way, but most of the time I'd get halfway through the hint and then hear, "Oh! Then this person was going x + 25 miles per hour!" It's so great when you can easily see that they really are getting it. It's also great hearing the cheers of a team finding out they found the right answer and seeing the big, proud smiles. 

So, yeah. Today made me a happy teacher. :)

Lately

Lately it's been busy around here. Lesson planning and curriculum designing + being a photographers wife are time consuming. Sometimes I wish I had a normal 9-5 job, where I could come home and be free for the rest of the day, instead of coming home tired and sitting back down at my desk to prep for tomorrow. Though this second year of teaching is going so much smoother than the first, it's still a huge time commitment. Man oh man, I hope it gets faster...

No Whales in Royal Russia

This school year started with a bang and has just kept going! Every day I think, "I should blog that!" And then I spend my prep period actually prepping, get home, eat dinner, finish prepping for tomorrow, sometimes take a nap (8th graders are emotionally and physically draining), and then realize it's like 10:22pm. When did that happen? And usually I think: "Well, it's too late now. I have just enough time to start thinking about the day after next, and then I'm hitting the sack."

Well tonight it is 10:22pm, and I will blog, darn it!

My 8th graders this year are super awesome. Super awesome. You wish you had my 8th graders, Algebra teachers. They are a fun, sweet, innocent, creative bunch who genuinely seem to want to learn this stuff called math. 

The first week of school, we started talking about real numbers and their subcategories. I had them do a foldable in their interactive journals, and the next day I had them draw out the nesting boxes to show which numbers are part of which categories. Then I showed them the really easy way to categorize any number: figure out at which category the number first appears (i.e., negative numbers first appear in integers, 0 first appears in the whole numbers, etc.) and then go up. Everything above that category is what that number belongs to. They totally got that. In the weeks since, we've even started 'visualizing' the nested boxes. I can put my hand low on the white board at "natural numbers" and work my way up pointing out the invisible categories and the kids totally know where I am and what I'm talking about. 

My third module decided they needed an acronym to remember the order of the rational side of numbers, and "No Whales In Royal Russia" was born. We've said it so many times over the last few weeks, that I feel like it's a trick I grew up learning. On quizzes, I always see the phrase scrawled into corners of the paper. It's caught on in my 5th module as well; one of the girls called it out today during our test review. (Already the end of unit 1, what?) 

The above artwork was made by one of my 3rd module girls. She gave it to me the day after "No Whales in Royal Russia" was born. I seriously love that she took time the night before to cut all these out and make such an awesome representation of the nested boxes! And I was thrilled to have such an awesome piece of "math art" to put up before open house!

This school year is awesome so far!

new classroom

Last year my classroom was really, really small. 

Like, really small. 

Thirty-four junior highers did not help.

Over the summer I got the most amazing news: the school was knocking out a bunch of unused offices to create a brand spanking new classroom... for Algebra! 

That's me! Yes!

This is what my new room looked like back in July:

There was a lot that needed to be done.

Last week when we were in Catalina, I was getting picture updates from several people. The last wall got knocked out! The dry wall's done! The carpet's in! 

On Friday I went in for a 9am meeting and ended up staying till 2 moving stuff over from my old room. A couple of wonderful guys brought over the furniture for me, including NEW stuff. Ikea bookcases! A kidney desk! Tables for the kiddos instead of desks! I'm in heaven.

After training tomorrow, the plan is to put that room together officially. I got confirmation today that the boards are up, which is what I was waiting on to start decorating. For now, I'm off to sew up some more pennant banners for my room!