Musings from Mrs. Galvan

I have been asking my students' parents to refrain from telling their children if they were bad at math at Back to School nights for years. Why would kids want to try at a subject that is hard if their parents give them an out? Here is a good synopsis , backed up by a recent study linking the anxiety of parents to the performance of students, of how and why parents (and teachers) should change their tone and " jump into the subject they once feared with both feet."

Geometry teachers often have strange, geometry related dreams. This image came to me last night and 9th grader Nate kindly agreed to illustrate my vision. 

My algebra students' next blog assignment will be to create a concept poster online for Writing Linear Equations. I am going to suggest they use Google Drawing or Glogster. Any other ideas for embed capable online poster making? Here is the prompt: Alg Blog Post #5 Use this blog post to explain key concepts of chapter 5: You will write your own linear function and show it in all forms. You will use an equation editor like Daum, an online graphing tool like Desmos and an online poster tool like google drawing or Glogster. If you end up using other tools, let me know what you use so I can share new information with your classmates. 1.        Come up with your function. You will start with two points. Your first point will be determined by your birthday: x = the month of your birth and y = the day of the month of your birth Your second point will be determined by your mom or dad’s birthday (pick one). x = the month of parent birth and ...

My Algebra students are finishing a unit on slope and graphing linear equations. Each unit has a project and for this one, they summarized their projects by creating Prezi or Jing videos. "The Race" ran by Mr. Solid and Ms. Dash was represented by the following graph. They were asked to calculate the slopes of each segment and express their answers as unit rates. They also had to answer a few questions such as when the runners were in the same location and who was ahead at a given time. My favorite part of the project is the task of summarizing the race like a sportscaster. In years past, they would write a paragraph. This year, they had to create a multi-media presenation and put it on their blogs! Here is what their prompt looked like: Algebra Blog Post #4 Describe the race like a sportscaster. Write a story that describes what is happening in the race according to the sections below. You will record yourself reading this story aloud. Watch this for inspi...

I often take pictures of my agenda in my morning Algebra class so I'll remember what to do later on for my afternoon algebra class. I thought it'd be neato to look at a week or so of agendas and reflect on how we spent our class time.  Overall, I think we are doing a lot in and out of class. My students are moving forward on multiple goals at once: video lessons, note taking, practice, homework completion, long term projects, blogging, and learning new technology. That's a lot! They are amazing! Note: The last picture is purely self-adulation (I have two lovely students in period 8 who are good at showing their appreciation). I don't know what happened on Monday... This picture will remind me to make more signs!

I can't even begin to say how much I am enjoying my students' blogs this year in math. My geometry students will soon complete their first video blogs. I will assign each a different proof for them to explain. I decided to try out powtoon to introduce the prompt. Here is what it looks like on our LMS.

Yesterday we had the pleasure of listening to a talk by researcher Carol Dweck at our faculty meeting. She spoke about her research on mindsets . I enjoyed her talk and I am eager to put it into practice, though I think encouraging growth mindsets in my students won't be an easy, instant change. I consider myself a positive person and I try to encourage my students to have positive outlooks for success. I have also spent the last 6 months reading parenting books that warn against praising actions and encourage praising effort or simply summarizing actions to build self-esteem. In short, I was eager to hear her talk to learn more ways to help my students (and children) to succeed. Here are my notes: Fixed mindsets = non-learners Growth mindset = intelligence can be developed People with Fixed Mindsets are concerned with not looking dumb , believe talent in innate and tend to hide mistakes. People with Growth Mindsets will learn at all costs, work hard, pushing them...

Penny demonstrates her HW spirit.