Whole Brain Teaching

I'm joining the "new blogger initiative" sponsored by mathtwitterblogosphere! 

Here's the prompt I chose:  

3. Talk about one or two specific things you plan on doing differently this year... and how specifically you are going to implement them/get the buy-in. Why do you want to do these things?  (If you are a new teacher, what are two specific things you plan on doing this year?)

We had a our first week of school in my system and it's been a little bit crazy.  I mentioned some changes that our school went through in this post.  We've gained a grade in a little corner of the building, and a lot of classrooms got moved (thankfully mine didn't).  It's been a little bit stressful, but we're getting into the swing of things.

I LOVE my 8th graders.  I had about half of them as 7th graders last year, so learning their names has been pretty easy.  The other thing that's helping me LOVE these kids is the behavior plan I'm trying out  from Whole Brain Teaching.  I first heard of Whole Brain Teaching when I saw the video below on pinterest.

To be honest, I thought "great if you're dealing with little guys, but could it really work with my not-so-little people?"  The answer is YES!  I introduced the five class rules on the first day (which was a half-day) and explained class-yes.  I also went over procedures for entering the class, bellwork, make-up work, etc. so that when they came in Tuesday, they would know exactly what I expected.  Tuesday, I was pretty strict about all the procedures and rules, and I made it clear how teacher/class points would be awarded.  Because most of what my procedures were new, I got several points in each class on Tuesday, but by Wednesday  my first class was determined to get more points than me.  By the end of the week, every class had either tied or beat me and so to keep up with their good days, I started making paper chains color-coded for each one to match the class color (I'm obsessed with making every class have it's own color for organization purposes) so that they could see how awesome they were doing.

The only modification I think I'm going to have to do is get a push light like this one on pinterest. The class I have after lunch is unsurprisingly my most talkative class.  That class also has two of my most challenging students, and one of them really tested me last year.  However, for the most part these two students have really just wanted to talk to me - nonstop.  So my idea is to get a push light and let them know they can't talk during a lesson.  Hopefully they will "see the light" :-)

I have a feeling this is going to be a great year!

Welcome to a new year

Well, it's that time of year again... time to start back to school.  My room is set up and "cleanish" (more organizing will surely come later).  I know basically what I'm doing for my first day of classes (our first day of school is only a half day) and just have to get the specifics down.  I'm ready to go!  Check out my room set up this year:

My MC Escher display that I kept from last year and one of the tables for workshop.

Front of the room with my "Do mor math" cow and "Playlist"

Close-up of the math cow and smart board

Close-up of the Playlist and my Make Up Work board (which went crazy on pinterest last spring).

I also reused three of my bulletin boards from last year.

My computer center and reference wall.

I covered the fronts of my filing cabinet drawers with contact paper I found at Dollar General. 

For the first time, I have a dedicated teacher area.

Well, hopefully all will go well!  Good luck to all who are starting back to school!

A BIG project to end our year...

Wow, I can't believe it's time to start back to school already!  We had a really crazy end to our year with 3 schools closing and lots of teachers moving around.  Thankfully, I didn't have to move this year, but there was still plenty going on and I completely forgot to blog about our last BIG project.  Sadly, it also ended up being my last project as a seventh grade teacher since I'm getting moved to full-time eighth grade for the new year.


For our final project, I teamed up with another seventh grade teacher to have the kids make scale drawings of Matchbox cars.  I've always wanted to do this project, but never really had the space.  To be honest, we had a hard time finding the space this time.


We were very blessed to have some very large (over 5 feet wide) paper donated to us by a local paper plant.  We divided our classes into groups of four, gave each group a car, rulers, and measuring tapes and let them work.  It took about three days for the cars to be completely finished, in full color, but they did an amazing job!

You might notice an anti-bullying theme on some of the cars, this was because our guidance department was using the cars as part of an anti-bullying campaign.  Needless to say this was a pretty big project for me to say goodbye to seventh grade with.


And one last announcement!


Coming soon...

Building Rafts... Part 2

Due to rainy weather, we had to postpone floating our rafts until today.  I filled 3 Rubbermaid tubs with about 4-5 inches of water, and had small buckets with enough pennies for each group.

Students started by placing their first raft in the water, and then placing pennies, one at a time, into the dixie cup, until the raft sank. 

           

Students collected their data into a table, and then created a scatterplot of their data.  Then, they found the line of best fit for their data.  In the future, I will definitely be using this activity during our unit on scatter plots and lines of best fit.

Aside from my person injury (most of my toenail got destroyed when someone slipped into me), I felt like it was a very successful activity, and one that the students definitely enjoyed! 

Building Rafts, Part 1

We are done with testing, and wrapping up the year.  In my seventh grade classes, I have a few things i want to do with them to get them as ready as possible for eighth grade (especially now that I've taught eighth grade for a year). 

On the other hand, my eighth graders are DONE!  So, today we began the first of our projects. 

Earlier in the year I stumbeld across the Building Rafts Project on TpT.  I actually wanted us to get to do it before testing, because it looks like it's going to be great for creating scatterplots and lines of best fit, but it will be a great activity to do with the nice weather.

Today, the groups built their five rafts, according to the specifications.  I had my students do this a day in advance because of some experience I had with glue and popsicle sticks not being very sturdy earlier in the year.  It was interesting to see them interpret the directions in their own way.

Tomorrow, they are going to see how many pennies it takes to sink each of their rafts... One group decided to try and "water seal" their rafts with extra glue, they might not sink haha!

Who Did it?

As we continue reviewing for "the Test", I'm constantly looking for new activities and ideas.  I came across "Systems of Linear Equations Activity - Clue Game" a while back, but never got to use it!  I announced to my eighth graders that we would be doing this activity last week, and I have never heard such disappointment than when I told them we were going to have to post-pone the activity until this week.

 

So, we picked it up today, and it was a hit!  They had a blast and enjoyed every minute of it!  They worked so hard and I even had students asking if they could work extra problem sets!  When does that ever happen?

When my last period seventh graders came in, they wanted to know when they would get to play CLUE... I guess I'm writing a set for them :-)

Who says review has to be boring?

Build-A-Burger

Now that I have enjoyed a nice Spring Break, it's time to start reviewing for the TEST.  I loathe this part of the school year.  I've already started reviewing through my bellwork, but now it's time to emphasize the topics that my students missed the most on their benchmark testing.  Tuesday, I'm planning a "whole body" review of how to tell if a function is linear, a direct variation, or an indirect vartiation (a post will follow).

As this is my least favorite part of the year, I'm always looking for ways to make me at least loathe it less.  I stumbled across the directions and downloadable pattern for the Build-a-Burger activity on TpT (the author has lots of other review activities, I'm excited to try).  I printed each burger ingredient on colored paper and laminated it, then I had some helpers cut them out.  I asked our cafeteria to donate small take out boxes, so that there would be something to store the burger pieces in. 

I wrote my questions into a powerpoint and for each question that a team (two students in this case) answered correctly, the team earned a burger ingredient.  I liked the fact that there is something for them to actually touch to signify getting a question correct, and the kids seemed to really enjoy it.  Of course there ended up being more than one winner, which was okay with me (they really knew their stuff for this chapter).

I'll be using this activity throughout the next three weeks to let them practice answering questions.  Hopefully this will help them "ketchup" :-)