For the past few months, I’ve been completely sidelined with another project that required my full attention and writing skills. Luckily, the project is finished and now it’s the waiting game. SO my apologies for my disappearance. However, I have a few blog posts that I’m going to catch up on in the next few weeks. As most of you …
Asilomar 2017
My math partner, Stacy and I were once again fortunate to present this last weekend. We were invited to speak at California Math Council’s northern conference at Asilomar. We had never been to the northern conference, so we were eager to compare it to our experience in Palm Springs (last year). I had heard that this was smaller and more …
Mills, Bills, and Trill
The first week of school lesson plans usually consist of getting-to-know-you type activities. In planning, I figured it would be a great time for exploring in math. I hemmed and hawed about it. At first I thought I’d do a 3 act lesson. They are always exciting and engaging, but I couldn’t think or find one that these kids hadn’t …
Welcome to Acosta Academy
Welcome back to a whole new school year! I’ve spent the whole summer steadily preparing for my new assignment and it’s one that I’m embracing. Here is it…the night before my first day at a new school, new routines, new students, new colleagues—actually, they aren’t that new to me. I’m supposed to be trying to rest up and review …
Cents clothesline
Recently, I was invited into a 2nd grade classroom to work on money (2.MD.8 Solve word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, using $ and ¢ symbols appropriately). The teacher wanted to try out something new to go along with this standard. My suggestion was to try out the clothesline. Let’s see if students could put …
Names on a clothesline
It’s incredible to have teachers take something you introduced them to (in this instance–the clothesline) and see what they do with it. And I can’t emphasize enough to my teachers that they should use whatever I give them and make it their own. I usually tell them to “make it work for you.” And then, they invite me in for me …
Kinder clothesline with 6th grade
Some of my 6th graders went back to kindergarten. They didn’t know it and we didn’t tell them till the end of the activity. The teachers and I just wanted to do it out of sheer curiosity. And it turned out to be a curiosity that was worth exploring. Let me back up a bit. Just last week, I …
Clothesline Fractions
Fractions is one of the “F” words in math. (The other is functions, but I’m not working with that grade level). Whenever these two words are said, teachers usually groan with frustration (that other F word). Understood because both can be hard to understand for students. Part of my job is to turn that frustration into FUN! Third grade has …