During the first days of summer, I usually catch up with my guilty pleasure TV shows and get a few projects around the house completed. However, I found myself jumping into my first book “A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart. It is sold on Amazon, but I also found a PDF here. Someone on Twitter had posted a quote from …
NCTM 2019 San Diego
It’s Monday night and my head is still reeling from all that I learned, experienced, and witnessed at NCTM San Diego. Whenever I go to such a big conference, I just act like a sponge and soak it all in. NCTM is a place where we all learn from each other. I haven’t been to the NCTM Annual conference since …
What’s Our Purpose?
Something has been rattling on my mind for about a week. I wasn’t sure if I should write a post about it, but then again, I haven’t posted in a while. (6th grade can really kill your free time). If you were asked as a math teacher, “What’s your purpose?“, what would be your response? I know that it’s a …
Combining Like Terms
6th grade learns to combine like terms
CMC 2018
I love having a 3 day weekend, because I can catch up with a blog post or two. Came back last weekend from a wonderful weekend of sunshine, the desert, and math. Yes…I’m talking about California Math Council’s conference in Palm Springs. Haven’t been in 2 years so I was anticipating some amazing ideas. First of all, I had the …
Ten Percent Increase – Pt.2
During the last blog post, I described the circumstances at the beginning of the year (September 2017). Teachers were fired up about comments made by our superintendent. As a matter of fact, there were teachers who attended and spoke at a board meeting. Let’s just say the board wasn’t thrilled by our superintendent’s words. And this brings us …
Ten Percent Increase- Pt 1
Oh the joys of the start of school. The smell of the newly sharpened pencils, clean unmarked whiteboards, and teacher’s CAASPP scores being reviewed. As part of my district’s annual tradition, we always start off with a district wide kickoff. The Board of Ed waves and smiles. Our district’s Teacher of the Year says a few inspiring words. Teacher with …
12 Ways to Get 11
As I have said countless times in previous posts, my 6th graders have been math buddies with a kindergarten class. The other kinder teacher and I spend numerous hours trying to create and plan different activities for both classes to do. One of the books I came across on Twitter was 12 Ways to Get 11 by Eve Merriam. …
Tallest Teacher
In the fall, my kindergarten collaborator and I did a heights unit with her students and with my 6th graders. She covered the standard that directly compares 2 objects with a measureable attribute (K.MD.2) while I covered my standard on inequalities. Both Mrs. Z and I thought it went extremely well. It really contextualized the math standards. …
New Heights
One of the reasons I decided to make the move to elementary was due to my strong partnership with a kindergarten teacher. When my coaching position was dissolved, I had the choice of heading back to middle school. However, she convinced me to teach 6th grade at her school (and literally across the hall from her). I really …