Exploring MTBos Post #3

For the third Explore MTBos mission, I chose to use the "One Good Thing" resource.  Some of the resources I already knew of.  The other resources weren't anything that I could really find a use for right now.  I'll check back as they develop further.

One Good Thing is based on one of my favorite quotes:

 I truly believe this quote.  I am a trained optimist, but I noticed that I am usually the most positive person in my life.  I'm constantly surrounded by negativity, and it's a struggle to (a) stay positive and (b) have others be positive too.

Lately, however, I have not been feeling like this:

I'm hoping that One Good Thing can help me go back to being happy with teaching because I truly haven't been looking for the good things that happen each day.

Many of my students have been having a difficult time with Interactive Notebooks.  They are telling me that they are not learning using the notebooks, even though we are taking the same notes we would have taken without it.  I've been showing them how to use their Interactive Notebooks to study for tests and quizzes, and yet they tell me that they still don't know how to study.  They complain about numbering pages, dating pages, writing headings, and updating their Table of Contents.  I feel as though all of the hard work I've done is for nothing.

Last weekend I spent some time reflecting on this, and I was ready for another week of upsetting students with more notebook activities.  Then I had my ray of sunshine.  As students were grumbling about having to add to their notebooks, one student called out, "I like the notebook!"

It gave me some hope.  If at least one student likes the notebook, I can build upon that.  Hopefully more students will come around, and I have some ideas that I will be implementing soon to help with that.  I plan to blog about those in the upcoming weeks.

Exploring MTBos Post #2

So since the prompt for Exploring MTBos came up so late yesterday, I'm skipping the first part.  I've been using Twitter since July.  I joined because of a blog post that I read by another math teacher.  It has definitely been a worthwhile endeavor.  Shortly after Twitter became a thing in 200-I don't know, I joined and then immediately closed my account.  I didn't like it at all.  It was not offering anything that I wasn't getting elsewhere.  Now it is.

I love all of the professional development opportunities Twitter has to offer.  (Especially when you follow organizations that offer webinars.)  Most of all, I love using Twitter as a means of connecting with other math teachers.  The school I work in now is relatively small.  I am the only Geometry and Contemporary Math teacher in the building.  I often feel lonely and isolated.  The school I worked in previously was much larger and I was one of four teachers teaching the subject.  We shared lesson plans, resources, ideas, and experiences.  We were also centrally located, unlike where I work now.  In my school, teachers are located based upon the grade that they primarily teach.  While it is beneficial to be across the hall from two of the other 10th grade teachers, it is not beneficial to be so far from the other math teachers.

This past weekend, I tweeted a question to two wonderful ladies that have more experience implementing Interactive Notebooks.  They tweeted back right away with tons of advice and resources to help my situation.  An exchange such as this is the reason why I now absolutely love Twitter.  (I will add a follow-up post about that in the coming weeks.) 

Typically I use Twitter once a week during Geometry Chat (#geomchat - Wednesdays at 9pm).  I follow a few celebrities, but pay relatively no attention to the Twitter feed..  I peek in on some other choice hashtags (#mtbos, #mathchat, #made4math), and that's basically it.  The students in my school are avid Twitter users, so I've made my tweets private.  Of course, during Geometry Chat I have to go public, but I switch back and forth just because I don't want any students following me.  As an additional measure of security (just like with facebook), I'm careful about what I post.  It's a little easier with Twitter though because I don't follow any of the my friends and they don't follow me.  I use it specifically for professional development purposes, and I feel better about using it that way.

Unit 2 Reflection

I wanted to share some things that I learned about my last unit.  My first unit was interesting because I did all of the logic statements as its own unit.  Logic will not be included in the Common Core Geometry curriculum, so I wanted to isolate the topic to make it easier to remove for next year.  The logic unit went well, there is still one misunderstanding (that logically equivalent means anything that sounds like the original statement - which is never the contrapositive), but I keep reviewing it through the Do Now.  I also included a logic question on my unit 2 test.

Unit 2 had its strengths and weaknesses, and as a result I've learned so many great lessons.  Firstly, my success was moving Constructions to unit 2.  Last year I taught constructions during my tenth unit, which happened in March before and after spring break.  With constructions toward the end of the year, it felt like a little something extra that was tacked on.  This year teaching constructions toward the beginning had a few benefits.  (1)  Putting compasses in students' hands right at the beginning helps to send the message, "The math we are learning this year is going to be different."  Students transitioning from Algebra to Geometry really need to understand that, so I look forward to putting constructions first next year.  (2)  My favorite thing about putting constructions first was that it helped me to illustrate the basic Geometry postulates (two points can form lines, where lines intersect they form a point, etc.).  I sincerely believe its helped students to achieve better understanding.  They way I ordered my unit was to teach a topic, then the next day (or after a day of practice) teach the construction that went with it.  (For example, I taught parallel lines for two days and then taught how to construct parallel lines.)

My failure this unit was teaching angle pair relationships and the angle relationships formed by parallel lines and a transversal.  There are two reasons why this was such a disaster.  (1)  I tried to hold students accountable for remembering this topic from 8th grade.  I knew it was a risk, but I hoped students would be able to activate their prior knowledge.  Instead, I got to hear about they already knew that they didn't learn everything they were supposed to in the past years, which is a whole other issue.  (2) I was so focused on having students put these into their Interactive Notebooks, that I missed the opportunity really teach these topics.  Overall, Interactive Notebooks have been off to a slow start.  Students aren't into a solid routine with them yet.  Tuesday, I'm going to have them start a routine and go through it with them step-by-step. 

Our next unit is on Coordinate Geometry.  After that, our fourth unit is Transformations.  Transformations will lead into Congruent Triangles, and this is where I will start proofs.  This is where I will seize the opportunity to review (reteach) angle pair relationships.  I know many teachers start proofs during their Lines and Angles unit, but a retired teacher that subs in our district advised me to start with proving congruent triangles, and then go back to do the line and angle proofs afterward.  It worked for him for 42 years, so I'm willing to give it a try.

Geometry Interactive Notebook - The Second Unit

My second unit is the Essentials of Geometry.  This unit encompasses the topics that are to start Common Core Geometry (constructions, definitions, lines and angles), but in an order that makes sense to me.  Everything is a little more integrated than how I am supposed to do it next year for Common Core.

My second unit starts on page 9 with a pocket.  (I love pocket pages!  They are great for the less organized students, and the students that did not opt for a binder for their homework.)  Pages 11 through 13 are vocabulary foldables.  I love how compact they are.  You can easily fit 10 to a page when you have to (and for 30 vocabulary words, I had to).

My table of contents page (10) and the first of my three vocabulary pages (11).

Page 14 is for naming lines and angles.  I made up a table for lines, segments, rays, and the two ways we name angles.  I have students identifying what we say, what we write, and what we see.  Students will then add the symbol notation to the first page of our notebooks.  Also on this page, the formative assessment for the day is to write three Do's and three Don'ts for naming lines and angles.

 

On page 15, I have the first postulates we learn about.  It is all of the postulates from this unit.  The first seven postulates are the most basic postulates.  I have blanks that students have to fill in so that they hopefully process these postulates.  Under that, I have a foldable with five more postulates.  The name of the postulate is on the front, the postulate with blanks to fill in are on the inside with a picture describing the postulate.  Throughout the unit, students will have to fill in the postulates as we get to them.  This worked as a way to organize this information.  What has not worked so well was getting students to look back to page 15 to add the information to this foldable.  Students completed examples of the segment and angle addition postulates on page 16.

Page 17 is dedicated to constructing segment bisectors.  After watching a video on constructing perpendicular bisectors (this is before I teach students about perpendicular - it is also the perpendicular bisector).  I wanted students to write the steps for constructing segment bisectors, and then have students switch notebooks with a partner and construct a segment bisector using their directions.  If they were not usable/accurate, I would have them re-write the directions together.  Unfortunately, we did not have time for this.  Students glued in an example of a constructed segment bisector.  We did the same thing on page 18 for copying angles and constructing angle bisectors. 

On page 19, students glued in an angle pair relationship foldable and completed examples for each type of angle pair relationship.

Page 20 is just like page 19, but with the four angle relationships formed by parallel lines and a transversal.

Page 21 is for the steps on constructing parallel lines.  I gave students the steps with blanks for them to fill in, and an example for them to complete and glue into their notebooks.  I did the same on pages 23 and 24 for constructing perpendicular lines and equilateral triangles.

Page 22 has four theorems that students use for perpendicular lines.  They are given the theorems with blanks to fill in and pictures detailing the theorems.

 Now that this unit is finally over (after all kinds of hiccups - pretests that I was not planning to do and NWEA exams), I can finally start working on my Coordinate Geometry unit with the hopes that this unit runs smoother, and that students run into less issues.

Exploring MTBos Post #1

I'm participating in Exploring the MathTwitterBlogosphere for the next 8 weeks.  Learn more here.  This is my response to the first blogging prompt.

One thing that happens in my classroom that makes it distinctly mine is total organization.  Having my classroom organized is essential to my being able to teach.  It's also an extension of myself.  I'm a very organized person, and I love being organized, and re-organizing to make my organizational systems better.  It helps to make my students more organized, and keeps all processes running smoothly (most of the time).

I know the questions asked for one thing, but there's another.  My classroom is bright and colorful (or will be as we get through the curriculum).  This is unique because I'm a secondary teacher.  Most secondary classrooms are dull and boring.  I've never seen another classroom as colorful as mine.  I love to make my own posters and have students make posters to showcase what they've learned. 

You can find more about my classroom organization and decor from future and previous posts.