Gearing Up for the Start! Post #2 (Classroom Decorations)

Oh, the hours I could spend (and money too…) on decorations.  Although I don't have aspirations of many elementary school teachers with decorations (bless you all), I do enjoy setting up my class for the beginning of the year.  One of the things I'd like to ensure, is that my bulletin boards don't become stale or boring as the year goes on.  I need to come up with interesting things to change them out with.

So far this year, I've created two bulletin boards that I'm in love with:

This first board is covering both the Mathematical Practice standards and the cool posters I've referenced before.  I had them printed in color on white card stock at Staples for about $1 each, then laminated at my school.  I hung them on the board and then surrounded them with the rick-rack border. I'm still unsure if this is how I'll leave it because the border might overwhelm the posters, but it's like that for now.  I plan to reference these often this year, so wanted them front and center for the kids to see.

I also included on this board the IB Mathematical Criteria for grading.  Since we're an IB school, these are items I also have to incorporate into my curriculum and things I wanted my students to be just as familiar with.  I created these in MS Word with borders and just printed them out.  I glued them together (homemade… that's why it is just a bit crooked) and also had it laminated.

I guess you could call this my "standards" board.  I probably should have put butcher paper in the background, but that's a project for another day :).

I absolutely LOVE my next board.  A big shout out to Ana Haywood and her "Math Around the World" web page.  I totally appropriated everything from this site.  It looks like she might not work at this school any more, but I certainly couldn't take any credit for the information.  I'm planning to implement these worksheets (some mandatory, some for extra credit) this year as well as add to the collection.  It's pretty amazing and I don't even want to know how much time she put into it!  Anyway, I went a step further and created a bulletin board for the worksheets, highlighting the countries.  I'm really going to encourage my students to take part in filling out the board completely so that we can cover all of the continents.

I have a ton of other posters up, but these two seem to catch the eye of a lot of other teachers.  The top I got many years ago when I was teaching in Oklahoma… I have no idea where.  I had to put the border around because one of the corners looks like my dog chewed on it???  I created the pink poster last year when we learned that the math teachers and science teachers were all using different terms for graphing.  I created this listing all terms we used and then gave all math and science teachers laminated copies to post.

So… it's a good start for the year.  I'll need to update with butcher paper and then come up with something maybe to change things up with come second semester.  All in all, a job well done, I think!

Currently… June!

I'm so enjoying the time I take to sit down and write all of this and I appreciate those of you who've stopped by to take a look!  I've jumped on the bandwagon to post a "Currently" for the month, just to give you an idea where my head is at (or really it's just what I'm thinking of for one particular moment, but we'll pretend otherwise…).  Many thanks to Sherrie at Middle School Math Rules! for her help showing me how to do this!

I'm truly enjoying summer.  I probably spent too much time the first two weeks off doing school work and spring summer cleaning, but my sister is here now with her two girls and they and my littlest are really enjoying some play time.  Not to mention that it's her birthday WEEK so we've had meals out, pedicures, spa treatments, etc.  We're feeling extra fortunate as well since we just missed the fires and tornados that happened here last week.  Now it's on to fun, sun, and vacation!

I have about ten days left with my sis and nieces and the two big kids come home from camp, so we're going to try to get in some water time, mini-golf, and hit some local attractions.  I promise to take at least one day for myself and not think about cleaning or curriculum!  After that, I'll be attending IB training for a few days, then off to ALASKA!!!!  I won't be able to have my phone or iPad on during that time (those stinkin' roaming charges), so I know it will be great.  Camera is primed and ready...

Mission: Math

I've come to the conclusion that if I want something to happen, then I just have to write it down.   Right?? I've been reading blog after blog this year, pinning items to my Pinterest account, bookmarked url's on my laptop, and have so many ideas spinning around in my head that I almost don't know where to start.  I'm hoping that this blog will give me some focus and, in the process, allow you to see my train of thought, inspire you to implement some of these ideas, and share some of your own creations.  Here's to hoping…

I currently teach 8th grade math, although really it's not 8th grade math, it's Algebra 1 and Geometry (2 of each class).  My school is on the block schedule and I have a crazy 111 minutes each block to motivate the kids to do math.  That might seem like a lot to those of you with traditional schedules, but I'm always amazed at how quickly the time goes.  I also have a daily 40-minute class ("Bridges") populated with about 25 students who need a little extra help (push?) with mathematics.

You should see the list I have going on my laptop of things I want to implement this year.  It's crazy long and I'm going to have to weed through it soon.  I know that summer is going to fly by way too fast…

My Top 3 Goals for 2013 - 2014

• Implement Interactive Notebooks with foldables (I'm going to call them MSGs - "Math Survival Guide" - sorry for any confusion to those of you military affiliated :))
• Create a "learner-centered" classroom.  I field tested this last year with good results and now want to use it with all classes.  This will be a lot of front-loading and revising this year.
• Incorporate more IB (yes, I'm at an IB school too) daily.

Sooooo…. I think you'll see that I'm a bit of a rambler as I like to think as I type.  I'll stop here for now and post again later with some more summer thoughts, but I hope that you'll enjoy following on my journey!