How do you ask students to cover their notebooks?
Mathematically yours,
Miss B
Showing posts with label decoration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decoration. Show all posts
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Interactive Notebook Covers
My classes will do Interactive Notebooks this year. I got the great idea to do "Numbers About Me" from Sarah's post. I made a direction sheet and rubric along with my first sample cover today. I'll do a couple more in other styles for my model books. This book is the book I've been working on as a trial run.
How do you ask students to cover their notebooks?
Mathematically yours,
Miss B
How do you ask students to cover their notebooks?
Mathematically yours,
Miss B
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Graphing Quadratic Functions: one insight
Last school year, I remember my students had a miserable time remembering the different ways that a function was transformed when they looked at the equation. (Does minus 4 here mean that the graph goes up, down, left, or right? Does a negative in front mean the parabola opens up or down? Why would I want standard form versus vertex form?) This year, I decided we needed some memory tricks for these along with our notes and our families of functions scrapbook.
Cute trick #1 is an oldie but a goodie. If the a value is negative, the graph is opening down, so "frowning." Negative=frown, so that's should be an easy one to remember.
Cute trick #2 is inspired by my kids last year who struggled with the idea of vertical stretch and shrink. They so wanted to talk about horizontal stretch and shrink when they viewed graphs, but that's a bit backwards since an equation in the form y = 3x^2 has an a value greater than 1 which they understood to be an increase in size. To that end, I did a little demo today in MS Word with clip art pigs. I started with three equally sized pigs. I kept the "parent" the same. I changed the other two pigs based on a values of 2 and 1/2. Tonight, I added the annotations and tomorrow this will be on my wall.
What sorts of tips and tricks do you share with your students to make graphing easier?
Mathematically yours,
Miss B
Cute trick #1 is an oldie but a goodie. If the a value is negative, the graph is opening down, so "frowning." Negative=frown, so that's should be an easy one to remember.
Cute trick #2 is inspired by my kids last year who struggled with the idea of vertical stretch and shrink. They so wanted to talk about horizontal stretch and shrink when they viewed graphs, but that's a bit backwards since an equation in the form y = 3x^2 has an a value greater than 1 which they understood to be an increase in size. To that end, I did a little demo today in MS Word with clip art pigs. I started with three equally sized pigs. I kept the "parent" the same. I changed the other two pigs based on a values of 2 and 1/2. Tonight, I added the annotations and tomorrow this will be on my wall.
Mathematically yours,
Miss B
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Table Groups!
While seating students in table groups is far from a new idea, it's new in my classroom. I have been struggling with the best way to seat students given that my classroom furniture consists of only right-handed desk/chair combos. It's not practical to seat students side-by-side with these desks. Putting them in groups of 3 is possible in a T shape but this set up ends up taking up more floor space than I am willing to give, even in my large classroom because I need 9 groups to accommodate all of my kids.
I'm taking a graduate class on Kagan's Cooperative Learning Strategies. I was already very familiar with the structures but some of the rationale on team building is new to me. I've been enjoying the class and I came home from it last weekend inspired to change my classroom set up. I ran through a mental inventory of what is in my classroom and I realized that I had 5 trapezoid tables that could each seat two students. I decided to use one trapezoid table plus two of the old desks per group. I managed to get one more table from a coworker who had extras so I had enough to make 6 groups. Students can get in and out easily and can work together. The best part is that my classroom now feels huge! There is a lot of space to move around.
Changing my classroom set-up felt like an impossible dream until I got creative and decided to let go of some things I thought I needed (separate tables for pull out groups). The first day of the new set up (Tuesday) was rough as my students are just not used to sitting around a table and not talking constantly. We're working on understanding when we talk to each other and when we work alone. Wednesday and today were nearly perfect with my lower group of students. My advanced groups are having a harder time containing themselves but I have confidence we'll model correct behavior and have everyone in line before Christmas break. A few students have surprised me already at how well they're working together; I listened to some awesome coaching by a few pairs when we worked on volume problems using Rally Coach. For those of you familiar with structures, we've done Rally Coach, Showdown, Quiz Quiz Trade, Takeoff/Touchdown, Timed Pair Share, Rally Table, and more just this week.
Have you come up with a creative solution to a near-impossible problem? Let me know about it. I'd love to be inspired by your great idea!
Mathematically yours,
Miss B
 |
| Unfortunately,
this style of desk isn't as flexible as single desks with separate
chairs and doesn't lend itself to seating students in groups. |
I'm taking a graduate class on Kagan's Cooperative Learning Strategies. I was already very familiar with the structures but some of the rationale on team building is new to me. I've been enjoying the class and I came home from it last weekend inspired to change my classroom set up. I ran through a mental inventory of what is in my classroom and I realized that I had 5 trapezoid tables that could each seat two students. I decided to use one trapezoid table plus two of the old desks per group. I managed to get one more table from a coworker who had extras so I had enough to make 6 groups. Students can get in and out easily and can work together. The best part is that my classroom now feels huge! There is a lot of space to move around.
 | |||
| Here's a table group in my redesigned classroom! |
Have you come up with a creative solution to a near-impossible problem? Let me know about it. I'd love to be inspired by your great idea!
Mathematically yours,
Miss B
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Building Vocabulary with a Word Wall
I think most teachers are familiar with word walls. I've seen
elementary teachers organize them alphabetically. For my math students
in middle school, I organize the walls by unit theme. Each unit we
study is assigned a color so students can look for related words in the
group. We make use of our word walls in countless ways, but here are
just a few:
1. I place all of the words for a new unit on the wall. As we work our way through a unit and learn a new concept, students try to guess which word could have that meaning. This often guides us through a discussion of prefixes, suffixes, and roots as students break down the words and try to make meaning from them.
2. Students refer to the wall to help them recall words that have slipped their minds and for spelling.
3. Because I am lucky to have two metal walls, my words are most often individual strips with magnets on the back. We take them down and use them for games. One favorite game is the fly-swatter game. Give a representative from each team a fly-swatter (clean, of course), scatter the vocabulary words on the board, and give a definition, example, non-example, drawing, etc that the students have to match to the correct word. It's fast-paced and they get to smack the board, so they love it! My rules are that they may only smack the board and they must alternate turns smacking words (otherwise it looks like whack-a-mole gone bad and the kids don't pay attention to the words).
4. Review/Study. I give a final exam so I encourage my students to use the word wall to identify their weaknesses. They can read through the words and decide what to study based on what vocabulary is most difficult for them. This is true for unit tests and quizzes as well. I also find my students using the word wall when they help each other. They are frequently overheard asking each other about the words and the responses typically include the related words. I love hearing my kids use their vocabulary!
I have experienced a few set-backs with my word walls in the past. First, the words get a glare once laminated so they can be hard to read. Sometimes I end up with students who have trouble reading at a distance even with really large font sizes. So, readability is a big problem in my classroom. Second, the students can't take the wall home so they don't have that resource when they are completing assignments outside of my room. In response to those issues, I decided to do a little more with vocabulary this year.
New to my class this year will be personal word walls. Hooray! I designed a template to look like a brick wall complete with a graffiti title. Kids will be responsible for adding words to their wall when we first learn them in class. Each unit will be written in a different color and the kids will be able to place the words how they want to on the sheet though I'll encourage them to group like words in some way instead of randomly scattering them. I'm going to have the kids lightly shade or outline the boxes with colored pencil when they feel they have mastered the term. To me, that means they can describe/define it clearly, draw it accurately, and spell it correctly. I think we'll need two or more copies to fit all of our words depending on the course as each size holds about 75 words. When I taught Geometry in the past, we had nearly 300 words, so we would have needed 4 of these. I'm going to make this double sided and copy it on cardstock. They'll keep it in a sheet protector so they can use it to quiz themselves by marking things off with a dry erase marker.
If you would like to use this with your class, leave me a comment with your e-mail address and I'll send you the file.
How do you organize vocabulary with your students? What makes it meaningful to them? I'd love to hear more strategies that work with math.
Miss B
1. I place all of the words for a new unit on the wall. As we work our way through a unit and learn a new concept, students try to guess which word could have that meaning. This often guides us through a discussion of prefixes, suffixes, and roots as students break down the words and try to make meaning from them.
2. Students refer to the wall to help them recall words that have slipped their minds and for spelling.
3. Because I am lucky to have two metal walls, my words are most often individual strips with magnets on the back. We take them down and use them for games. One favorite game is the fly-swatter game. Give a representative from each team a fly-swatter (clean, of course), scatter the vocabulary words on the board, and give a definition, example, non-example, drawing, etc that the students have to match to the correct word. It's fast-paced and they get to smack the board, so they love it! My rules are that they may only smack the board and they must alternate turns smacking words (otherwise it looks like whack-a-mole gone bad and the kids don't pay attention to the words).
4. Review/Study. I give a final exam so I encourage my students to use the word wall to identify their weaknesses. They can read through the words and decide what to study based on what vocabulary is most difficult for them. This is true for unit tests and quizzes as well. I also find my students using the word wall when they help each other. They are frequently overheard asking each other about the words and the responses typically include the related words. I love hearing my kids use their vocabulary!
I have experienced a few set-backs with my word walls in the past. First, the words get a glare once laminated so they can be hard to read. Sometimes I end up with students who have trouble reading at a distance even with really large font sizes. So, readability is a big problem in my classroom. Second, the students can't take the wall home so they don't have that resource when they are completing assignments outside of my room. In response to those issues, I decided to do a little more with vocabulary this year.
New to my class this year will be personal word walls. Hooray! I designed a template to look like a brick wall complete with a graffiti title. Kids will be responsible for adding words to their wall when we first learn them in class. Each unit will be written in a different color and the kids will be able to place the words how they want to on the sheet though I'll encourage them to group like words in some way instead of randomly scattering them. I'm going to have the kids lightly shade or outline the boxes with colored pencil when they feel they have mastered the term. To me, that means they can describe/define it clearly, draw it accurately, and spell it correctly. I think we'll need two or more copies to fit all of our words depending on the course as each size holds about 75 words. When I taught Geometry in the past, we had nearly 300 words, so we would have needed 4 of these. I'm going to make this double sided and copy it on cardstock. They'll keep it in a sheet protector so they can use it to quiz themselves by marking things off with a dry erase marker.
Here's the file. You'll need the font "a dripping marker" for the title (or just choose a font that you already have).
If you would like to use this with your class, leave me a comment with your e-mail address and I'll send you the file.
How do you organize vocabulary with your students? What makes it meaningful to them? I'd love to hear more strategies that work with math.
Miss B
Classroom DIY
After looking at the black vinyl covering on my school stool for a little too long, I was inspired to recover it. I keep seeing all these adorable classrooms on Pinterest and while I'm not going to sink hundreds into classroom decor, I was happy to cough up $2 for this project!
I purchased 5/8 of a yard of striped corduroy from Wal-mart's clearance fabric. At $3/yd, this was a steal! I love that they brought back a fabric section in my store because they have really reasonable prices on fabrics when I need them for school. I got my curtain fabric there four years ago and it was very inexpensive, too. I don't have a strict color scheme or theme, but most everything I've brought into the space is a bright or neon color. When I've chosen things with a pattern, they've been polka-dotted or striped. It's a loose theme, but I'm trying to make it look happy!
I purchased 5/8 of a yard of striped corduroy from Wal-mart's clearance fabric. At $3/yd, this was a steal! I love that they brought back a fabric section in my store because they have really reasonable prices on fabrics when I need them for school. I got my curtain fabric there four years ago and it was very inexpensive, too. I don't have a strict color scheme or theme, but most everything I've brought into the space is a bright or neon color. When I've chosen things with a pattern, they've been polka-dotted or striped. It's a loose theme, but I'm trying to make it look happy!
At first, I planned to sew a cover with elastic. Then I reconsidered the effort that would take and decided to go a more permanent and expedient route. Enter tacks and a hammer. Free! A staple gun would have been ideal but as I didn't have access to one, I got creative. I may go back and paint the legs, but I first want to check if the matching stool is still at my parents' house. I took this one from their old basement bar and wouldn't want to paint this one if the other one is still hanging around and normal looking!
Have you done anything to make your classroom take on your personality? Do you have a theme, color scheme, or design aesthetic that influences your choices? Leave me a comment and tell me all about it!
Miss B
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