Balancing Frustration and Perseverance

So today was the first day that students came around to their different classes.  So, today was the first day I had to mold these find students into what I would like!

I have talked about 'Get it Together' activities in previous posts and today made me even more of a firm believer that these activities are AMAZING!  Students came into the classroom, sat anywhere they would like to and I started with 4 ground rules. 

• Work with your group
• If a group has a question, all group members hands must be raised
• Don't give up
• Respect the materials

They did awesome today.  1 group throughout the day had some issues but other than that, everyone worked together, was excited about solving each puzzle, couldn't wait to get to the next one, communicated well and DIDN'T GIVE UP!

I encourage you to try it out!  Order the book on amazon and prepare to be amazed!

Connected Mathematics 3

My district this year adopted the Connected Mathematics 3 curriculum.  We had our official 'get to know you' session with the curriculum and a representative Monday after the students left for the day. Let's talk about overload!

So here are a few things that I found to be interesting and terrifying all at the same time. 

• Every lesson has a Launch, Explore and Summarize
• Scaffolding thought about
• You can assign students lessons
• The student can 'write' and save work in their digital book
• You can comment and message students
• Concepts are throughout the curriculum, not just seen once

I have not had much time since Monday to explore more but I am excited about implementing this curriculum this year.  It won't be easy but, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it!

Anybody have any tips or tricks to using CMP3?  All and everything is greatly appreciated. 

And it has begun... 1st day of school 2014!

The day that I feared and looked forward to the most happened.  The 1st day of school! This year, I will be teaching 7th grade again.  At our middle school we loop with students from 7th to 8th grade.  So after being spoiled with wonderful students (most of them ;)) and bonding over 2 years, I get a fresh batch to mold.

I decided to spend the days (6 to be exact) at the lake relaxing before madness started.  I set up some of my room before I left.  I always take a picture of the room and title it, "The Calm Before the Storm".

Calm Before the Storm 3

I did not do that much other than put new fabric on the bulletin boards, put up the things I know I want students to see everyday, arrange the tables and organize my desk area.  I figured out last year that putting up math posters at the beginning of the year really does no good.  They blend into the walls and become a backdrop instead of helpful hints and teaching aides.  What I did last year was as we came to a topic, I could create the posters myself, use them as a teaching aide then after find a permanent home of the wall for them.  This worked really well and allowed me to make them as we go and personalize them to students needs.  I will post more pictures as I add things to my room.

On a separate note, the night before school started, I was of course procrastinating doing things that I should be doing, so I made this flower pot for my classroom.   I had found some old glass beads and cool shapes in my college things (yes I graduated in 2007 and just got to going through things, don't judge) and grabbed a planter from the garage.  I spray painted the plastic pot black and hot glued the glass on it, purchased some wheat grass from the grocery store and ta-daaaa!   It wasn't until after I did some research that I realized that wheat grass has a shelf life of 2 weeks so as of now, it looks great.  Moral of the story, I have another week or so to figure out my next game plan!

Looking forward to getting in the swing of things this year.  Does anyone have an alternative to wheat grass that will last for months with minimal attention?  Suggestions are always welcome.