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Saturday, March 15, 2014

Happy Pi Day!

We celebrated Pi day yesterday. I always get excited when I can wear my "get rational" "get real" t-shirt :)

We created a chain of Pi from Miss Math Dork, ate Pi, and had a Pi memorizing contest. It worked out well because we had intramural basketball Friday afternoon so I only had my first three classes and missed my afternoon classes. We built our chain out to 800 digits, and as you can see it goes around most of my room. We have 200 digits to go to get to 1,000 so we will work on that this week when we have extra time.

Thanks to Kacie Travis for the super cute Pi Day decorations too!





Monday, March 3, 2014

Made 4 Math Monday: New School, New Ideas, New Products!



I have switched schools! I moved counties and went from teaching 8th grade and Math I to teaching 6-8 enrichment/remediation. I have no curriculum, no guidelines, just freedom for creativity and to target exactly what these kids need. I actually get to differentiate and be creative? WOAH! Crazy!

I'm still doing a mastery based method, but not like I had done in my previous school. 6th and 7th started off with adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers. 8th started with the real number system.

Monday--Teach
Tuesday-Thursday--Games, task cards, teacher time, AM
Friday--Fast Fact Friday and quiz

Fast Fact Friday is similar to multiplication facts. For 6/7 I used Super Speed Math Fractions from Whole Brain Teaching. They are given 100 fractions and have to write them in simplest form in 2 minutes. For 8th grade I gave them fractions with denominators of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 20 and they had to memorize the decimal equivalent

Quizzes are only 10 questions. If a student receives an 8 they move on the next week. If not, we reteach. So this week, about half of my 6/7 graders will be adding and subtracting still and the other half will be multiplying and dividing fractions and mixed numbers. As I expected, 8th graders need more time with the real number system. Repeating decimals are just so hard!!

I created these products to add to my TPT store:

Whack-a-Fraction: Addition and Subtraction
Students deal all cards out to players (2-4). Players flip the top card at the same time in an "I declare war" style and solve their own problem. We played where the first person to correctly solve their problem (must be checked by all other players) won all the cards, but it could also be played with the highest or lowest value winning.
Find it in my store here

Fraction Sequence Addition and Subtraction Version
Students select a card, solve the problem, and place a marker on the answer on the board. The first player to have two sets of five in a row wins. Can be played with 2 players or two teams of two players. 

Find it in my store here

C.U.B.E.S. Problem Solving Strategy Posters
Posters to reinforce the CUBES method for solving word problems. There is one poster that spells out CUBES with the corresponding strategy for each as well as individual posters for each letter.



Find it in my store here

T.E.A.M Group Management and Group Jobs posters
Posters for T.E.A.M to help manage cooperative groups so everyone is on task and has a role to play in their group.
Find it in my store here

I will be adding multiplication and division versions of whack-a-fraction and fraction sequence soon.


Saturday, March 1, 2014

Math is Gr8 in 6-8!

I just took quite the hiatus! Between family matters, stage managing three shows back-to-back between October and last weekend, growing a great distaste for my previous job, switching counties and positions, I've been a crazy person!

I have moved to a neighboring county and am now teaching 6-8 math enrichment/remediation. I say both because every child I have is on grade level and very intelligent but they either just barely passed or just missed passing their EOG last year by a few points. I get to make up my curriculum and only teach between 6-12 kids per period. It's wonderful. Updates to come!