Never in my life did I ever imagine myself teaching in China, and yet, here I am for a second year at that! Below are images of welcome packages I put together for the members in the Math Department this year, which includes: - A door sign with the teacher's name, room number, and teaching schedule -Stickers, 'cuz duh -Coffee, a key element in sustaining the life force of a teacher -A pack of cards, essential in any math teacher starter kit -A math puzzle, fuel for the brain I'm super happy with the way they turned out, and I'm looking forward to a good year ahead! This year I'll be teaching Pre-Calculus 11 and Calculus 12, which I'm both excited and nervous about! It's been years since I've taken Calculus and this will be my first year working with twelfth grade students (I've been doing a lot of review this summer on Khan Academy). Here's a fun activity that I found on Kate Owen's blog that I plan on using this week with my Calculus 12 students. It's a great way to review concepts and vocabulary from Pre-Calculus to see what students already know and remember from the course. I've added some modifications and created an accompanying PPT that's a full lesson, all ready to go. Scroll down below to access this resource :) I'm a big believer in sharing teaching resources for free, and this is my way of giving back to the online teaching community that has given so much to me. Huge shout out to everyone in the #MTBoS, I love this community. The activity works as follows: 1.Students it with a partner, shoulder to shoulder. 2.One person faces the board, the other person faces away. 3.The person facing the board will be the explainer. 4.The person facing away will be the grapher. Warm Up: Teacher does warm up round with the students, describing a basic graph (ex. linear function) and students attempt to draw it in their notebooks. Discuss: What prompts were useful? Is there something the teacher said that could have made it easier? The Activity: (see above) Exit Ticket: Given a picture of a graph, students are to write a description that matches it in as much detail as possible. Extension: Students draw a graph and write a corresponding description. Scramble the results and have students match them!
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Another year, another country, and another school! Phew, all this moving around is getting tiring, and I've been teaching new courses every year. I'm so grateful to the MTBoS community (Math-Twitter Blogosphere) for sharing resources and teaching tips and tricks, it makes me so happy to be teaching math! I can't praise it enough! Sarah Carter from Math = Love, Sara VanDerWerf, and Dan Meyer have been my go-to's for classroom activities and lesson ideas. I'm teaching high school math (grades 10 and 11) this year. My school runs on 80 minute blocks. Here's what I did. Algebra Seat Finders and Visibly Random Groups - Rather than making a seating plan or having students choose their own seats I greet students at the door and hand them each a card as they walk in. On the card are algebra problems involving one or two step equations and order of operations that are easily solvable via mental math. The answer to the question will tell them which table to sit at. I've arranged my tables into groups of four and have signs taped to the side of the desks so they can easily find the group number. (If you would like to download copy of the seat finder cards I used, they are available at the bottom of my post). I do the same thing each day, so that every day students will sit in different groups. I like this activity because students are doing math as SOON as they enter the classroom. Some students will cheat and trade cards with other people so they can sit with their friends, but you will come to notice this quickly. I tell students that in this class we are a community and that they will always be working with different people so they get to experience different perspectives and meet everyone in class. Even if certain students don't get along, it's low stakes because the seating changes every day. On Fridays I give them a break and tell them to sit anywhere they like. It was interesting for me to notice that given the choice, students tend to sit with classmates with similar level. Peter Liljedahl has done some cool research on visibly random grouping, check out his free webinar here. Day 1
Next, I tell them a bit about myself and we grade the quizzes. #2 and #6 (distance questions) are a good chance to incorporate number sense and reasoning as most students have no idea how far it is from China to Canada or how long it takes to run a 21 km race.
I asked them to silently think of things they notice/wonder about the diagram. Then I did my first ever Stand and Talk and went around listening to conversations which gave me a chance to check in on students' English ability. I teach EL (English Language) learners so I found it helpful to model how a conversation might go the second time round: Student A: What do you notice about this picture? Student B: I notice there are two perpendicular lines. What do you notice? Student A: I notice the four dots are arranged in a square. What do you wonder? Student B: I wonder what the teacher will ask us to do with this diagram. What do you wonder? Student A: I wonder if this is a function. ..etc. We discuss and review parts of the coordinate plan. I ask them a few questions about the dots. (Which two dots share the same x-value? Which dot has the lowest x and lowest y value? etc.) The next time we revisit this activity I start with an example:
Day 2
Teach some content and continue reviewing and practicing start of class and dismissal routines.
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April SooInternational math educator who writes, occasionally. Archives
April 2020
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