This past week we covered Adding and Subtracting Integers. It was rough. We talked about when we add we can sing the Adding Integers song:
Same sign add and keep
Different sign subtract
Use the sign of the larger base
and it will be exact
They did pretty well with that (so I thought). Subtraction was harder for them. We talked about "adding the opposite" but it didn't stick with a lot of them. For those students who are going to retake the quiz I'm going to teach them "LoCO." Leave... Change... Opposite. Something they were doing was changing the first number, changing the sign, not taking the opposite. I'm hoping that LoCO will help because it's more specific.
I sent out progress reports yesterday and have already had quite a few emails from parents and kids both asking about the retake. Yikes!
Fractions are next...
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Monday, August 5, 2013
It's a good thing I'm tall...
Today we had a couple of hours of orientation at our school. When I pulled up there were people EVERYWHERE. Apparently today is one of the days the kids can come and get their schedules, lockers, and pay any fees.
I learned a few things in my subtle observations of the natives:
1) They're a lot bigger and taller than second graders.
2) It's much harder to tell how old someone is when they get this big. (I have a gift for pinpointing an elementary school students age... not so much middle school students)
3) Most of them still looked terrified and followed closely behind their parents, listening to everything they said (I bet the parents wished this happened more often).
One of the parents is the office manager at my apartment and I ran into her in the building. She was saying how she wished they could walk to the academic classrooms but that they were closed off for construction. I wanted to be like "You're telling me!! I currently have no classroom!" Turns out that her daughter will be in my 3rd hour pre-algebra class. Fun!
I also got to see my class rosters! I have one class that has 29 students (umm... ahh!) and the rest have 25-26. I texted a good friend from my school last year who teaches 1st grade and asked how he would like 29 students. He said I could keep them.
The district gave us some great bedtime reading material today. They supplied all 120 new teachers with a new copy of Harry Wong's First Days of School. Believe it or not, I spent about 10 minutes trying to locate my copy of the book just last night only to decide it's in my parents basement. How fortuitous.
Tomorrow we have math curriculum meetings in the morning and then more building orientation in the afternoon. It is the last day of new teacher in-service and then the whole school comes back on Wednesday. Exciting!
I learned a few things in my subtle observations of the natives:
1) They're a lot bigger and taller than second graders.
2) It's much harder to tell how old someone is when they get this big. (I have a gift for pinpointing an elementary school students age... not so much middle school students)
3) Most of them still looked terrified and followed closely behind their parents, listening to everything they said (I bet the parents wished this happened more often).
One of the parents is the office manager at my apartment and I ran into her in the building. She was saying how she wished they could walk to the academic classrooms but that they were closed off for construction. I wanted to be like "You're telling me!! I currently have no classroom!" Turns out that her daughter will be in my 3rd hour pre-algebra class. Fun!
I also got to see my class rosters! I have one class that has 29 students (umm... ahh!) and the rest have 25-26. I texted a good friend from my school last year who teaches 1st grade and asked how he would like 29 students. He said I could keep them.
The district gave us some great bedtime reading material today. They supplied all 120 new teachers with a new copy of Harry Wong's First Days of School. Believe it or not, I spent about 10 minutes trying to locate my copy of the book just last night only to decide it's in my parents basement. How fortuitous.
Tomorrow we have math curriculum meetings in the morning and then more building orientation in the afternoon. It is the last day of new teacher in-service and then the whole school comes back on Wednesday. Exciting!
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Wait... You want to hire me
Note to self: When blogger asks "are you sure you want to be directed away from this page cause it's maybe not saved..." HIT NO. Oh well. Here goes take 2.
About this time last summer I had the same moment of realization/panic. I went from... "crap, crap, crap I need a job!" to "crap, crap, crap I have a job!" I have focused so much on getting a teaching job this summer that I forgot that if I did actually get one (which sometimes I had my doubts), I would actually have to DO IT. Not that I'm not excited, I am, it's just that the realization took a while.
I really am excited about my new job! I'm delving into the terrible, horrible, worst-two-years-of-everyone's-life... middle school. Sound's fun! Right?! I have yet to encounter someone, who, when told I was going to be teaching middle school, hasn't said, "Oh! Middle Schooler's are awful! They're so mean all the time. I hated middle school!" Well geeze people, thanks for the boost of encouragement.
But seriously... I am excited about teaching middle school, despite what the general public has to say about they're horrible years in middle school.
I'm really blessed to have this job. It took one determined principal to get me hired. See... I'm not actually endorsed to teaching middle school math. I'm endorsed to teach middle school science and K-6 but not 7-8 math. The principal had to convince central office that I was worth the hassle and that come October I would have added the endorsement.
It does mean I have to take the middle school praxis exam in September. I've been using the last of my summer break to study up on some content that is on the exam. You might be thinking: She has to study for middle school math?! And they're letting her teach it?!
BUT: Before you start getting your knickers in a knot about my future student's lack of instruction, how many of you would remember what a multiplicative inverse was? Or the commutative property of addition? Or even how to find the distance between two points on a graph?
Probably not very many! But if you read that the multiplicative inverse was the number you multiplied to a number to make it equal one (aka... 354 and 1/354) you might remember it. And the commutative property just says A times B is the same as B times A. Not too complicated. The distance formula just requires making the two points into vertexes on a triangle and the using the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the hypotenuse. Okay, that one sounds more complicated, but it really isn't!
All that to be said, middle school math does takes some reviewing. I am confidant that I will be fine both in teaching math and in taking my test.
I'm off to make some STELLAR mac n' cheese for my boyfriend who had a hard day at work.
Until then, remember:
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About this time last summer I had the same moment of realization/panic. I went from... "crap, crap, crap I need a job!" to "crap, crap, crap I have a job!" I have focused so much on getting a teaching job this summer that I forgot that if I did actually get one (which sometimes I had my doubts), I would actually have to DO IT. Not that I'm not excited, I am, it's just that the realization took a while.
I really am excited about my new job! I'm delving into the terrible, horrible, worst-two-years-of-everyone's-life... middle school. Sound's fun! Right?! I have yet to encounter someone, who, when told I was going to be teaching middle school, hasn't said, "Oh! Middle Schooler's are awful! They're so mean all the time. I hated middle school!" Well geeze people, thanks for the boost of encouragement.
But seriously... I am excited about teaching middle school, despite what the general public has to say about they're horrible years in middle school.
I'm really blessed to have this job. It took one determined principal to get me hired. See... I'm not actually endorsed to teaching middle school math. I'm endorsed to teach middle school science and K-6 but not 7-8 math. The principal had to convince central office that I was worth the hassle and that come October I would have added the endorsement.
It does mean I have to take the middle school praxis exam in September. I've been using the last of my summer break to study up on some content that is on the exam. You might be thinking: She has to study for middle school math?! And they're letting her teach it?!
BUT: Before you start getting your knickers in a knot about my future student's lack of instruction, how many of you would remember what a multiplicative inverse was? Or the commutative property of addition? Or even how to find the distance between two points on a graph?
Probably not very many! But if you read that the multiplicative inverse was the number you multiplied to a number to make it equal one (aka... 354 and 1/354) you might remember it. And the commutative property just says A times B is the same as B times A. Not too complicated. The distance formula just requires making the two points into vertexes on a triangle and the using the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the hypotenuse. Okay, that one sounds more complicated, but it really isn't!
All that to be said, middle school math does takes some reviewing. I am confidant that I will be fine both in teaching math and in taking my test.
I'm off to make some STELLAR mac n' cheese for my boyfriend who had a hard day at work.
Until then, remember:
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