I still have a ton of work to do tomorrow before the students come on Tuesday, but here it is so far…

3 Things That Happened This Week….

• School started, for teachers, on Friday so I spent the entire day getting my classroom semi-organized. I really love the feeling of getting that done the first inservice day so I can begin digging into organizing my classroom activities and planning. Twitter is so wonderful, but I think it has put me on learner overload with SO MANY INCREDIBLE ideas to try this year, so needless to say, I need A LOT more time with the planning than the classroom setup! Here is a “before” with some “afters” of my room so far…
• Next Tuesday, I organized to have Max Ray do professional development with our K-5 teachers, so this past week I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with Max on the phone about our vision for the PD day. Such a VERY caring and thoughtful presenter, absolutely cannot wait to meet him in person. (I am sure I will be blogging about it soon:)

• I spent the free time of my final summer days enjoying the last weekdays with early morning runs and lounging by the pool with the pooch.

2 Things on my To-Do List….hard to narrow down to just 2, but here goes….

• I MUST make myself sit and plan for my science classes! I am so naturally curious about mathematics and students thinking around it, that science has taken a backseat in my planning.  Not that they aren’t so many dimensions where the two subjects intersect/ overlap/are the same, but Ecosystems is my first unit of study and I am not finding that so easy to integrate into my first unit in Math, 3-D Geometry and Measurement. It will get done though!

• I need to finalize my first week activities for math. I have so many great ideas that I blogged about: https://mathmindsblog.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/first-days-of-school-planning-begins/ but I haven’t gotten it organized down to the actual day. I am really excited about trying out some new activities this year!

1 Thing I Am Looking Forward To This Week….

• As mentioned above, Max Ray is coming down for PD on Tuesday and I am SO excited. We are focusing on purposeful communication in the classroom. I am not only excited for my own learning, but also for that of my colleagues. Obviously, because of funding, not everyone has the opportunity to attend conferences such as NCTM or NCSM, so it is such a wonderful opportunity for the district to bring someone to us! What a way to show the teachers that the district administration cares about their learning as an educators.

Have a Great Week everyone,

Kristin

I love when I can check things off my to-do list! Today my teaching partner and I finished up our beginning of the year letter that goes home to parents before the start of the school year. With the opening letter, I wanted to give parents all of the outlets for easy communication throughout the school year as well as introduce them to a couple of the technologies we will be using this year.

We created QR codes for various communication tools and directions for viewing an image on our class Aurasma Channel. I plan on the students using that Channel for newsletters and explaining their math work! I would also like to think using it for our district science fair, but that is lower on my to-do list!

QR Codes:

Parent Letter:

Aurasma Dolphin Card:

Now first week organization begins!

-Kristin

During the first day(s) of school I try to design activities to get to know my students and their parents, offer opportunities for them to get to know each other, build a safe, risk-free community, start them with their ipads and establish routines….wow, that’s a lot! I keep reading blot posts and tweets trying to get some new ideas, and I have them favorited, bookmarked, Pocketed so I thought it would be most helpful for me (and maybe others) to put them all in one place.

Two things that are definitely a part of my first math class are Number Talks (to set up norms for classroom discussion) and @mr_stadel’s Estimation 180. They are such a part of my daily math class, that I want to kick off the year with them!

I want to do a community building activity that also brings out the opportunity to talk about the Mathematical Practices. I really like @fawnnguyen’s Noah’s Ark activity (https://www.dropbox.com/s/12j62b9e2yr3f2p/Noah%27s%20Ark.docx)

Then I read @cheesemonkeysf’s post on Exploratory Talk and got really interested in the idea of Talking Points: http://cheesemonkeysf.blogspot.com/2014/07/tmc-14-gwwg-annotated-references.html

She has compiled all of the resources you would need to think more about this: http://twittermathcamp.pbworks.com/w/page/82580935/2014%20Group%20Work%20Working%20Group%20-%20Exploring%20Our%20Blind%20Spots

Below is a piece of her basic format directions for the students. I am in love with the idea of starting the students with talking about talking! To get to know their mindset about math, these points are also really interesting: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NoCcvuibW6BtlM6UDiaX3WAU3ijgZ1mgTqqPc3Tho8o/edit

Thinking about getting to know the interests and personalities of my students, I like @ddmeyer’s “Who I Am” page: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2007/the-first-day-wiki/To involve the ipads in the opening days, I think I am going to have students complete the “Who I Am” page and create a PicStich that represents themselves, minus a selfie, (you will see why in a minute) based on their answers.

For open house, I am looking at flipping it a bit so the parents can see a video of the classroom, have links for class schedules, specials schedule and such so we can use open house time in a more valuable way. I would like to get parents involved that night with the math we will be doing (maybe a quick number talk with them highlighting the Math Practices), the technology we will be using in class and ways in which we can easily communicate over the course of the year (class FB and Twitter).

I got an idea from @KleinErin’s site: http://tinyurl.com/lfk2msk on using Aurasma at open house. It is an intriguing way to have parents involved with the technology. On Erin’s site, she gives a parent letter template that gets sent home to parents before open house. If they don’t have the Aurasma app downloaded when they arrive, we can do it together or if they don’t have a phone to do it, I will have the student ipads available for use. I will hang the student PicStich’s in the hallway and have the parents guess which one is their child (hence, no selfies allowed) When they think they have it, they can scan it with the Aurasma app and I will have the video tagged to it of the child giving a “congratulations” message.

This will be helpful because I would love to do Augmented Reality newsletters this year in class and have students do some Aurasma math explanations with their work. If the parents have the app and understand how to use it, it will take the fear out of trying to learn it later on their own!

So, as you can tell, my Twitter PLN is ridiculously helpful and if you don’t follow all of the tweeps mentioned in this post, you must! I am looking forward to starting the year with great new things I have learned….now to just get planning!

-Kristin

As the beginning of the school year quickly approaches, I am attempting to look beyond “projects” and “initiatives” I would like to implement this year and really write some overall goals for myself. I hope in writing them down, I feel more accountable than I do with “resolutions,” of which I have given up even wasting my time.

I think of my school year goals in four separate pieces: as a learner,  as a math lead learner in my district, in my classroom practice, and sustaining my mental well-being, all important in improving my practice as an educator.

As a learner, my goal this year is to really push myself outside of my elementary K-5 math realm and take a deeper look at the connections with the math instruction in the middle/high school.  I am extremely curious to dig into big ideas such as equivalence and decomposition that are evident in all of the math work we do K-5, and really see how those foundations are built upon in the secondary grades.  I have begun a lot of that work through Twitter and my state level PD I am involved in, but I would like to push myself to do more.

As a district math lead learner, I aim to do some collaborative work with a couple middle school teachers to see Number Talks (or some form of math routine) being used in their classrooms. I also would love to see our professional development running a little differently, thinking a bit outside of the box. ISTE 2014 set an amazing example of using IGNITEs, Playgrounds, and Twitter/Google Hangouts for PD that is differentiated for all teachers and meets everyone’s needs.  This year, I want to organize a small piece of this for our teachers.

In my classroom practice, I always have many goals! First, is organization! I think we all know the school year starts completely organized…materials are all in a designated place in the classroom, lesson plans are written neatly, papers are given feedback and returned in a timely manner, and office paper work is turned in on time. Then, the year gets going and it is just about keeping my head above water! Although I am sure this will continue to be the case this year, I aim to prioritize and use my time more wisely during the school day.

Secondly in my classroom practice, I want to improve on giving feedback on student assignments. Not grades, true written, focused feedback. Again, this is about prioritizing school obligations and making the time.

For my own mental well-being, running continues to be a necessity in my life! After the whirlwind that is the school day, I always need to clear my head! I have been so motivated this year by our #500in2014 Twitter running group, that I am averaging 100 miles/month and on pace to reach 1200 before January 1st. That is so exciting and something that is a continuing goal throughout the year!

Let the countdown to the school year begin!

-Kristin