July Blogging Challenge Day 15

I am a bit late to the game, but I just found the July Blogging Challenge from Teaching Statistics, and I am joining midmonth.  I've already had a few blogposts this month, but a challenge is way more fun.  I also appreciate the idea of the built in social network, and I've already learned a lot by reading posts by some of the participants.  

A bit of background info about myself is that I am beginning year 2 as a teacher on special assignment for my district. The job is still in development, and I get to wear many hats (new teacher support provider, professional development, technology integration, etc.).  This start-stop-continue post is very specific to my current role, but I expect that my blog posts in the future will be more about classroom activities and strategies.  If you read some of my other posts you will notice that I LOVE Geogebra, but I don't expect to be so Geogebra-centric in the future, since that is more of a summer project in preparation for the work that I will do with teachers in the fall.

Below are some things to work on for next year:

Start

-More classroom observations.  I am hoping to capture many of the wonderful strategies that are already in place, and hopefully create more of a culture where observation is the norm.  Since I am on special assignment and have no classes, I can cover classes so teachers can observe each other. 

-More demo lessons.  Last year was my first year on special assignment as a math support/resource teacher, and while it went well I didn’t have much time to get into the classroom.  I am also hoping some teachers will be willing to let me teach an entire unit with their students. 

-Blogging once a week.  I’m not sure I can pull off a 180 day blog, especially since I don’t have my own class, but if I don’t have something interesting to write about once a week maybe that is a sign that I am not spending enough time with students.

Stop

-Reading math education books/articles without taking notes.  I wish I could remember everything I read, but unfortunately I end up forgetting a lot of details.

-Reviewing homework with students in the traditional manner.  I would love to find a way to review homework that is more active for all students.

For this last one, I was inspired by Robin at Making Math Visible (cool name!).  She says in her “Stop” section,

-Over-booking each lesson. I tend to be overambitious in my lesson planning resulting in us working to the bell (which is good), but I then sacrifice the summary or exit ticket (which is bad). I need to either stop overbooking OR stop things early to get to the summary.

I am guilty of this as well, and I’ve seen how powerful the summary portion of a lesson can be.  I’d also like to focus on ways to make the summary more visible.

Continue

-Planning common lessons with course teams.   This has been an authentic and fun way to integrate common core lessons and lessons that involve technology. 

-Tech lunches.  At one of the schools that I work at we’ve had several informal lunch meetings to learn about a new tool in Geogebra, or to learn a new program.  We even had a lunch to learn how to use Pinterest in the math class! 

-Using mini-whiteboards.  I am making a travel set from sheet protectors, and I recently learned that felt works well as an eraser.  After reading all of these posts, I am also going to buy the red-yellow-green cups to keep in my travel bag.