In part 1, I talked about how I set up interactive notebooks with my students. Let’s look now at how I grade this stuff. It’s 4.5 weeks into second semester, my grading period is closing soon, and kiddos need grades in the computer. Time for a notebook check! The prep work I did for this day: [...]
Archive for the ‘teaching’ Category
With a semester’s worth of practice, I’m ready to share my experiences with the Interactive Notebook in math and physics. An Interactive Notebook (IN) is a bound notebook, typically a composition book or spiral notebook that a student uses for notes, practice, and reflections during a course. The interactive-notebooks Wikispace is a great place to [...]
A highlight of my job at Clarkston High (probably the most diverse high school in the US), is sponsoring the Muslim Student Association. The club holds weekly meetings in my room and I have a blast learning from the club’s many members. In return for all I get from the kids, I take it as my [...]
Jackpot! Summer is half over for me[1], so naturally it’s time to start working on classroom stuff. Today, I visited teacher heaven — or, as it’s properly known, the Jim Cherry Teacher Center. Employees of my school system get a $3 credit every visit. And with prices like poster board for $0.15 or laminating for [...]
I regularly drive kids home from tutoring after school and they’re usually surprised to hear my radio tuned to a pop or hip hop station. Two years ago, I couldn’t have named a single song by Jay Z, Rihanna, or TI. Now, I can spit some lyrics* to “Empire State of Mind”, “Rude Boy”, and [...]
(I’m still writing about the really amazing treasure hunt we had last week. In the meantime, check out this folding trick I learned from some kids today.) I needed my kids to make a booklet for all the properties of special quadrilaterals we’ve learned recently. One of my students showed me a paper-folding trick he [...]
The beginning of every semester finds me in a quandry: how detailed should my syllabi be? How detailed are your syllabi? Here’s the geometry syllabus I just finished. The syllabus is way more detailed than any I’ve ever written. What drove the uber-detailed syllabus? One of my weaknesses has always been long-range planning, so I’m [...]
Last week, Dana shared with readers her fall preview — yes, the summer’s over, the cheap crayons and notebook paper are looking picked-over at the store, and the tax free holiday is behind us. Time for my Fall Preview, too. Today’s the first day of pre-planning for teachers at my school. (Aside: My mother, also [...]
This week is the end of my second very intense week of grad school at Georgia State. I’m in a teacher certification program called TEEMS that includes a Masters degree (an MAT) as well. While I also took classes in the spring, it wasn’t officially a part of the program nor was it as intense. [...]
A) I haven’t blogged in over three weeks. B) I miss the blog-reading-and-writing cycle. C) My Masters program at Georgia State got in the way. Because of A, B, and C, I decided to share this story. The Kids are Talking About You. Are You? [The following story is something I thought long about before [...]
