Musings from Mrs. Galvan

...as I am catching up on the blog, I am looking at my lesson calendar. For Tuesday, March 17th, I had originally scheduled a Game called the Shamrock Shuffle (truth be told, I only ever had the title and was planning on coming up the the game at some point). What did I end up doing? I gave them a pre-test! Doesn't that sound fun?! So here is the confession: Sometimes I don't know when to make class a fun, white-board, teamed-up game and when kids just need pencil to paper, old fashioned practice. On this day, one day before the big test on solving quadratic functions, I woke up fearing that my students might be struggling with meta-cognition issues. They might think they know what they're doing.. but they might be wrong. So on the board I wrote Meta-Cognition Activity and I distributed yellow pre-tests for them to complete individually... in silence... while I returned emails... #teacheroftheyear To close, I displayed the answer key and they worked with their pa...

One day recently (I am behind, I think this was Day 96), I had a thought after teaching two classes of Algebra 1: Sometimes students need to sit down and do a worksheet. I spend a lot of time trying to make class engaging and fun. I love playing games, getting them out of their seats and using the white boards to do group PrBL... They reflect, instruct, and create via their digital portfolios. I regularly feel guilty when class is just  a practice set. The day I had this thought though, class wasn't boring. Students were working on a (massed) problem set in pairs. The pairs were in sync, having great discussions, teaching each other the ins and outs of various factoring problems. I had pairs come to the document camera to present a few problems and they were comparing other problems with their corresponding graphs on Desmos . The last ten minutes of class was a low stakes assessment. Could it have been better? Sure. But I don't think I will do anything differently next ...

My classes for most of the month of January have been kinda boring. Sure, students listened, took notes, stayed organized, practiced concepts and demonstrated understanding on assessments, but save a game day or two and a Socrative Space Race, things haven't been fun. We haven't even added to our digital portfolios! Excuses: 1. Grades and comments were due January 21 2. Polynomials 3. My husband, two kids and I got the flu for a week 4. I had to go to meetings 5. Not enough class time (yes, I always use this one) Effect: My geometry students took the biggest hit. They learned about the interior angles of polygons without doing much exploration or any application. Similar polygons was covered with a boring lecture in which I presented one example. Then they did a worksheet at their seats. I have made my peace with the fact that not everyday can be a trip to Disneyland, but I do think I take my students' motivation and good study habits for granted. Recovery : ...

So last year I began making a concerted effort to have fun in class... and while I made clear progress on that front in Algebra, I have been less successful in geometry. Yes, my geometry students create digital portfolios and complete engaging projects and tasks . Yes they use geogebra .... ...but we don't play enough. It is quite evident that they desire to do so. I have a handful of students this year in geometry that had me last year for algebra. These kids are wondering when we are going to play zombie grudge and I am giving them lessons that look like this: That agenda just screams fun! Remember my excuse to be boring though. With our school's schedule I only have 135 class sessions that are 40 minutes each. That has to cover a rigorous proof based course (We use Geometry: for Enjoyment and Challenge ) and allow time for assessments. My colleagues are regularly confounded that I have any  time to blog, use geogebra, or generally do anything other than te...

While I was not officially trying to start a 180 blog... more like I was planning on blogging occasionally, I still take a photo of my agenda everyday and photos just need to be published. Hence, my thought to blog occasionally became a secret goal to blog daily, or almost daily. This wishy-washy goal for blogging resulted in almost a month of zero blog action. I can't just blame the weak goal setting - like all of us, my free periods are spent helping kids, planning, meeting, eating, making lists online, making lists on post-its and especially implementing standards based grading for Algebra. Things have improved on the SBG front. I used to grade assessments a page at a time. Now I grade one student at a time which I think helped to make grading the unit 2 tests go faster. But because part of my plan involves frequent skill checks that need a quick turn around for grading and because I am still learning how to use Active Grade, I can't call myself an efficient Standards Base...

Last week I obsessed about my tasks. This week I am releasing myself from an item that I didn't have the courage to include: I'm mostly a consumer in MTBoS land.  I won't be participating in most of the interesting chats. I won't be able to reach out to many teachers in need. I probably won't blog every day or every week for that matter. My blog readership isn't going to take off - I write to clarify my thoughts. I'm not great at designing innovative lessons, so I'm not contributing much for others to use (though I'll test a lesson and give feedback; maybe that's a wee contribution?). I can't make it to all the PD that I'd like or even watch all the interesting webinars. I've never submitted a picture to John's http://WouldYouRatherMath.com   or submitted a thoughtful question to Dan's  http://www.101qs.com/ .  Why not? Well I'm not  uniquely busy. I'm not moonlighting as a super hero (yet). At work, the usual tasks ta...