Finishing Touches

Ready or not, here they come.  My classroom will be “almost” done when the kids rush in tomorrow morning.  The laminating machine broke on the first day of pre-planning and did not get fixed until late Friday.  I’ll be there, they’ll be there, and all the truly important things will be there, so it will all be good.  If you have been reading my blog, you know that our little corner of the building was trying to come up with our annual “theme” for the outside wall.  Below you will see the group theme first, and then our new classroom motto. 

 

 

 

Here’s hoping it inspires some minds and souls while eliminating mushy math minds everywhere.  Here is one of my new pictures that is still in the mile high laminating file:
 

The first day will be taken up with orientation, policies, and procedures.  Day two in my room will be an icebreaker activity:

             6th Grade Icebreaker          7th Grade Icebreaker   
 
                                  8th Grade Icebreaker

Two years ago, I switched to using “sandwich” homework in my math classes.  Regular, advanced, co-taught, ESE, intensive, honors – it didn’t matter.  I’m a fan and parents seem to be on board.  My students?  Well, it all depends on the day and their mood, but that is typical middle school.  The premise is simple.  I give my kids the problem and solution for their homework which is represented by the sandwich bread.  Their job is to fill in all the good stuff in the middle.  My goal was to stop students from practicing their new math skills wrong.  We’ve all had days when we thought the lesson went great.  The kids say they really understand it and it was easy (first clue).  The next day I’d put the homework answers up and dead silence followed by groans and head banging.  I’ve always believed it was easier to teach math that my kids have never seen.  Unteaching and unlearning is truly hard on everyone. 

So what happens if they can’t figure out how to get the correct answer?  That’s where my homework parking lot comes in.  I mentioned it in last week’s blog, so don’t worry if it sounds familiar.  At the beginning of class students write any question numbers they could not figure out on a sticky note and post it in the homework parking lot.  Since we only go over the questions they struggled with, I find that we are saving 5-10 minutes of class time each day.  Some students do resist writing out the steps at first, but no work equals no credit so they normally get with the program pretty quickly.  I try to avoid arguments like “I did it on the calculator” by insisting they write down (both numbers and operations) owhatever they put into the calculator.  Here is a copy of the parking lot in case you missed it:

 

If you are heading back to school soon, my best wishes for a great start to the year.  If you are one of our friends winding down your year, enjoy your rest.  We all know it is very well deserved.

Happy teaching!

Laura