It's time for the summer Social Sundays hiatus. Before I go, I will leave you with end of year and summer ideas and share a preview of next year's Social Sundays.
End of Year: My one piece of advice for the end of the year is to not to let it escape without meaning. The end of the year is your last chance to make an impression on your students' futures. Make it count! Here are some of my favorite ways to end the year as well as teacher-saving tips for making next year easier today:
I like to think all math concepts are important, but some are so crucial to everything that comes after that to not invest the time for every student to master will make the concepts that follow for years to come more difficult. It is, I think, why so much time is spent on basic operations, fractions, and percents in elementary school. Without a deep understanding of those concepts, the next levels become extra challenging.
In sciences such as physics and chemistry, unit conversion is crucial. In Algebra and beyond, rational expressions are key. Even though my logical brain says they are just fractions, I am surprised at how rational expressions and equations can seem like a foreign language to students. So, when we get to rational expressions, I set aside 5 days (2-3 hours) to work with them. Although some students get it by about halfway through the second day, others need the full week to let the concepts sink in. Here's how the week looks:
UPDATE: Thank you to all who joined in the giveaway. Be sure to check your email for your free gift!
It's my turn to thank you for being loyal readers, customers and community members with a giveaway just for you!
Details:
- Answer the short survey (30 seconds) to enter
- Prizes include:
- $10 TPT Giftcard + $5 resources of your choice from Education with DocRunning store
- $10 resources of your choice from Education with DocRunning store
- $5 resources of your choice from Education with DocRunning store
- THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
Good luck!
Doc
It's standardized testing season. And while some tests will assess what students know, there is so much about each student that make them the unique person they are that won't be revealed. I like to point this out to my students with a quick brainstorm. I post our responses through all the days of standardized tests as a reminder.
Here's a partial list of our brainstorm this year:
I am more than a test score. I am...
The end of the school year is just around the corner (for some us sooner than later). There's lots of content and testing still to come. It's also a time when my students have seen just about every one of my creative tricks and activities. We've had gallery walks, created newspapers, completed notes, analyzed primary sources, built social classes, evaluated data, compared maps, built timelines, and... So, as we get ready to close out the year, I look to turning over the content almost entirely to the students. We have been building to this all year in my student-centered classroom. I am taking the training wheels off and letting them ride it alone.
Out for Spring Break...Math Mondays will be back April 23rd. See you then.
Math Mondays is a bi-weekly blog post (2nd and 4th Monday of each month) sharing tips, ideas, resources, and products for teaching math. If you have questions or think there is something I should include, you can leave me a message in the comments section below or at the store in the question and answer section.
As my readers know, I do not lecture. I have written on this here and here. Still, a 10-minute presentation on a topic can be very helpful for students, especially those who struggle with reading. Here's five history-related video series that my students find interesting and I find helpful to introduce or reinforce information related to a variety of units. I use these at stations, for homework, and as bell-ringers to kick off a topic.
Probability as a general concept is not that difficult. If there are 6 green marbles and 1 white marble in a bag, the probability of choosing a green marble is higher than the probability of selecting a white marble. Students see this with ease. But when we get to the difference between permutations and combinations as part of our probability unit in Algebra 2, it isn't as obvious. Here's how I teach these sometimes confusing concepts:
