So NOT ready.

I have come to the realization today that I am so not ready for school to start next week. Despite all of the time and effort I have put in to planning and creating materials this summer, I feel as unprepared beginning year 4 as I did beginning year 1. Is this the curse of being a bit too obsessive for my own good? Perhaps. I am excited to meet my new, big kiddos, though!

Do-Now Revamp

 Still trying to get ahead a little bit.. I started making the first two weeks worth of do-now activities. Some days will be skill/content review from previous days, and some will just get my kids to think. Remember, I teach special ed, so what looks like it will take 30 seconds will actually take several minutes.

By the way, I found that nifty balance scale here: http://solveme.edc.org/Mobiles.html

There are many more; I think I will use one once a week!

Students will respond most days in ONE Google Form. Last year, I tried having a Form for each day and quickly gave up on that idea. Google will automatically time-stamp (including the date) for me, so that is one less thing the kids need to do. 

 

Lesson Planning

I have found the last few years that my lesson plans start out excellent, but then as the year goes on, they become more and more bare.

I am hoping to eliminate that decline in formal plan quality this year by getting a jump start!

First, I took all of my units and color-coded them in the gradebook/lesson planner. I added one lesson for each topic under each unit. There are 11 units total, but here is one screen shot.

Then, I took each unit and wrote a "Unit Plan". I included a unit summary, enduring understandings, essential questions, learning targets, interdisciplinary connections, and 21st century connections. There is also space in each unit to include a unit rationale and formative assessments. I have not completed those for any of the 11 units yet. I also attached all of the standards that will be addressed throughout the unit. 

Then, I went through the lesson plans for the first semester (and aim to have the year done before school starts) and inputted the specific learning target, essential question, and standard(s) to be addressed. That way, during the school year the only parts I need to fill out are the procedures, assessments, and homework! I am hoping since I  have the somewhat tedious part done, that I will not feel exhausted and tired of writing formal lesson plans during the year. 

I guess time will tell if this time and effort was well spent! :)

Organization! :-D

Alas, tomorrow will be both a sad and happy day. My brother (who am I kidding, he is really like my child) is off to college. I will be dropping him off with all of his stuff. I hope he has a great time, while also being successful academically. I hope he is more excited tomorrow; lately, he has been rather indifferent. My best friend, whom I have essentially raised for a few years, is moving out, but I know he will do great things! *very proud*

Anyway, that being said, I have not been doing much preparatory work for school the last few days, as I have been helping him pack and trying to spend more time with him.

However, I did start organizing my materials for the first few weeks. I have always been a very organized person, but this year, I may be even more crazier. Besides having binders for each unit, now everything is in sheet protectors! No more holes in the side of the "master" copies.

I also started sorting through all of my task cards, cart sorts, etc. and organizing and labeling them! I bought these poly envelopes because they were colorful, durable, and convenient. Why do I say convenient? Well, I am in three different classrooms during the day... and never the same room two periods in a row. So, I need something small and portable to stick in my backpack. :-)

Not colorful, you say? How about when you see the first tub? They are now in chronological order as well.

Hopefully I keep up with the organization and put everything back in its rightful place as we use it. 

Spoiler: I do not have a textbook for my resource level courses.

Spoiler Alert: I do not have a textbook for my resource level (special education) Algebra 2 courses. Why? "It's not in the budget this year." (or any subsequent year apparently).

This is both a positive and a negative for me. It's a positive because I actually like making my own materials. It's a negative when I have a parent like last year who insists on having material at home (in advance) so that he can try to work with the child. While I would much rather have 12 overly concerned parents than the nonexistent ones (which is what I typically find for my resource level classes), last year I had nothing pre-made as far in advance as he would have preferred. This led to a multitude of issues and headaches for me throughout the year... in just dealing with that one parent.

So, I vowed to myself that this summer I would get ahead making guided notes so that I can have them posted in advance in my Google Site. My curriculum has 11 units; I have created guided notes for 5 of those units. That is some definite progress!

This allows me to post the guided notes early as an outline, but because I still do not have a textbook per say, gives me the flexibility to change them throughout the year if need be. I am not bound to a bound book, so to speak.

I pull examples for these guided notes from a variety of places: our old college-prep level textbook, our new college-prep level textbook, a plethora of workbooks I have acquired in just a few short years, and my brain. I have my special education course organized following the same curriculum as the college-prep general education course (by law), but I have the flexibility to tailor the instruction to fit my students' needs. For example, while we will cover logarithms every year, we may not go AS in depth as the regular level class, because we have to spend more time on reviewing the fundamentals of algebra in the beginning of the year. I can set the pace for the course; I am not bound to the pacing calendar the way we are in my co-taught regular level course.

I can't tell you how many years I have started to blog in late summer and then stopped as soon as school started. The next summer I would go through and delete most of those posts and say "Hey, I'm starting over!". This year, I actually want to continue to blog throughout the school year.

I know very few people follow this blog now... and probably very few will in the future. That's okay. It is more a place for me to consciously think about aspects of my classroom and my teaching. If I blog about it, I will think about it more. Reflection is key. This forces me to do just that!

Formative! (My new favorite tech find!)

Introducing... formative... my new favorite tech resource!

I was looking at different apps or sites I have used in the past (Exit Ticket, Socrative, etc.) and saying "man, I wish these were a tad more user-friendly and math-friendly". Well, folks, enter formative. I have only been playing around with it for a few days, but I am currently in l.o.v.e.

You have two main options: (1) create a new assessment, or (2) upload an existing file.

I'm going to start with option 2, actually. Sometimes you already have a great worksheet made up and want to use it... but want to go green. My district is 1-1. Last year I felt like I was making too many copies but I did not want to recreate EVERYTHING I used all year. Well, you can upload a worksheet and have the students answer questions there. It will look something like this while you are creating it:

You can choose between four different question types/answer options:

Multiple Choice
Text
Drawing
Take Picture

Here I used "text" and "drawing". I can foresee using "take picture" in the future to have students snap a picture of their work for complicated problems that they cannot simply type their answer or equation in. Like I said... more math-friendly than Exit Ticket or Socrative.. at least so far!

When students complete the assignment, you can see live results. Not only can you designate an answer key, but you can grade them right there and then... on a scale. So if the question is worth 10 points, you can award 10 or 7 or 3 or whatever you want! SO EASY! 

Back to the beginning... option 1 is to create a new assessment. Want to create a quick exit ticket? There you go! Want to create a new quiz or assessment from scratch? There you go! You have the same answer options as above, but you get to create the question and/or prompt.

Are you in l.o.v.e. yet with Formative? Go check it out! 

Data, Data Everywhere

As a Special Education teacher, I am responsible for reading, monitoring, and upholding 56 student IEPs this year. That's a lot to keep track of - here is how I do it.

First, I create a cheat-sheat accommodations chart for each class period to serve as a snapshot. Which student gets to use a calculator? Which student requires a copy of my notes? Which student needs restroom reminders? Etc.

I also include a quick reference for who their Case Manager and Guidance Counselor are, as well as either their Study Skills teacher if they have elected to take that course. 

That's the easy part. Then there is all of the data. 

In addition to keeping track of students' assessment scores and struggles with particular concepts, I have a page for each student for each marking period to track progress toward their individual IEP goals.

The top, which I cut off, contains personal information: name, course, marking period, case manager, etc.

I have one for each marking period. As their IEP meetings occur during the year, the goals will change and I will run off a new sheet for the next marking period. I track weekly progress quantitatively and then I have a ton of space at the bottom of the page (and on the back) for anecdotal comments. 

This year I bought a bunch of address labels and I plan to keep them with me on a clipboard. I will jot down anecdotal notes on the address labels as I observe something in the classroom. At the end of the day, I can stick them on the back of the students' data page in my binder to reference when I want to write comments or progress reports. 

Day 1 - 2015

This is a draft of my Day 1 ideas for September 2015 for my resource level Algebra 2 courses.

When the students enter, the warm-up will be projected on the board. I want to get them in the habit of completing a do-now activity each day. Obviously, I also included directions to sign up for my Remind alerts.

The boring stuff needs to happen. I'll distribute the Course Outline (which parents need to sign) and the Family Info Sheet. But I made the information from the Course Outline into a fun and quick presentation. I had done this last year so I just needed to tweak it with changes I am implementing in my special ed classes. For example, Class Cash. I am going to reward students for participation, preparedness, and positive behavior with Class Cash. At the end of the marking period, this will become a participation grade. 

There must be math on the first day! Unfortunately, I know a lot of my students have tremendous anxiety about coming to school so I did not want to give them a group activity that involved a lot of social skills on day 1. That just comes with the population I teach. I also know that a lot of my students will not have picked up their Chromebooks yet, so I needed something that could be done on paper. Enter this Math Symbols worksheet. You would be amazed how many high-schoolers do not know what some of these symbols are. Hopefully working together with a partner, this will be an easy introduction and get their math minds out of summer mode! 

Like last year, I want my students to fill out a Welcome Survey for homework on Day 1 so that I can start to get to know them both as quirky teenagers and as budding mathematicians! :)

That's Day 1 in a nutshell for my resource level classes. I am planning to get started with content right away on Day 2!

Small Changes

The first day of school is quickly approaching! Teachers return on September 1st, and students come back on the 3rd!

Something that I thought I liked last year, but ended up being really annoyed with was how much "extra" stuff I did in the beginning of the year before getting into the math! It seemed like a good idea at the time - my True Colors survey, a Multiple Intelligence Survey, and some activities. However, in reality, it just ate up a good 3 days when really two of those should have been spent on getting started with content.

This year, I'm going to plan for a much shorter course introduction.

One thing I want to start is Google Classroom. It seems really easy to add announcements each day. I am currently planning to post an abbreviated agenda each day - the warm-up, what we are learning, etc. I can also post assignments. I just wish it was connected to Google Calendar. Also, It seems like I can integrate it with a Google Drive folder to share materials.

What I do not know is if this is better or worse than a Google Site. I guess I really need to think about using both of them in tandem to accomplish what I want. The Google Classroom for announcements and the Google Site as a file cabinet and calendar. Hmm... 

I also created a Google Form to streamline do-now activities. Google will automatically collect their usernames and timestamp.

I had wanted to use Google Forms for do-nows last year, but after the first three weeks of school, I had so many forms and so many spreadsheets, I simply quit. This way, I can have the do-now projected on the board, but all of the responses go to one central location. I hope that will work out better. 

This summer I still want to blog about:

- My first day of school plans

- General ideas for my resource level course

- Big changes in my CP co-taught course

- Anything else I can think of :)