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!

Mathematical Practices

So I'm now officially more than half-way through getting my second master's degree.  My first degree is from the University of Oklahoma, officially titled "Master of Education in Educational Instructional Psychology and Technology" - a long title for teaching with technology with some extra thought about the human mind and how we think.  Although I was glad to get the degree at the time, I've found that much of the technology is now outdated.  Since I took 12 years off from teaching to have my kiddos, I thought that it was time to learn about current educational theory.

Shameless plug…
I researched for quite a long time because I wasn't interested in going back to school for a master's of pure math.  Basically (being totally honest here) because I've been teaching just algebra for so long, I was afraid I wouldn't remember anything at a higher level.  On a complete fluke, I came across mention (In a discussion thread, buried way down somewhere) about a program at Montana State University.  I did some research and calling around and found that this program offers a Master's of Science in Mathematics for Math Educators!  I've been in now for a year and a half and I think it is fantastic.  It is mostly online with a small requirement for three weeks during one or two summers at the campus (which is in a beautiful location in Bozeman, MT, not too far from Yellowstone NP).  If you're looking to further your education, this is a GREAT program!

Ok… back to Mathematcial Practices.  This class I took this summer was all about teaching around the new Common Core standards and the Mathematical Practices.  I'll tell you what, I understand them so much more and will definitely have to look at my units and see if I'm covering everything.  I was back in my classroom a little this week and was thinking that I wanted to post something about the practices so my students are familiar with them.  As I was browsing online I came across these:

Oh my…. they are AWESOME!  The practices are listed and broken down easily for the students to understand.  Now I take absolutely no credit for these, but they were easily available by just doing a search for "math practices" and then clicking on images.  Search around and you'll be able to find several PDFs already created for you.  I can't wait to post them on my bulletin board!