Teaching Thursdays - Halloween Treats

So, obviously Halloween is on Monday. For all you teacher out there, do you give your students candy on Halloween? On any major holiday (Halloween, Valentine's Day, Christmas, etc), I would jump back and forth between giving candy or holiday pencils. Pencils sound so dorky, but they are so much more pratical than a piece of candy! I usually bought them in the dollar section of Target or at the Dollar store. I would stand at the door between classes and hand out the pencils as students were walking in. Not one kiddo ever complained about getting a pencil and I saw those being used for several weeks after being handed out.

Speaking of pencils, when my MIL threw our rehearsal dinner, she put pencils in little goodie bags that said 'Brad & Jen - July 2006'. She gave me all the extras so I used those in class for the kids who forgot their pencil. It was pretty funny because kids did NOT like getting those pencils for some reason! I guess they were embarassed to use a pencil with writing on it??? As usual, those pencils ran out pretty quick since students don't usually return pencils in high school. Anywho, one day I was talking to my Assistant Principal in his office and wouldn't you know- he was using a Brad and Jen pencil! He said he probably picked it up off the floor in the hallway one day. Pretty funny how that pencil got back to him!

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Teaching Thursday - An Ah-Ha Moment

Can't believe it is Thursday already...I haven't posted anything in a week! Oops. :( Been one of those weeks I guess. So, on to our Teaching Thursdays post we go.

Some of you may think that stay at home moms get to just sit aound all day watching tv. Brad even asked me if he was going to come home to me watching Oprah every day. Well, let me assure you I hardly ever watch TV during the day. Mostly because John will want to change the channel to one of his {educational} shows, but that is besides the point.

However, one day John was at Nana's house and Matty B was a little baby who wasn't even crawling yet. So I flipped on good ol' Oprah for the first time in about a year to see what was going on. This happened to be an episode about two sisters who were sexually abused every day by their dad and brothers. I tried so hard not to start boo-hooing while reading Matty B some books during the show! One girl commented that no one at school had any idea (they were too afraid to tell someone) and that she wasn't doing great at school because all she was worried about was what was going to happen when she got home.

Well, that really made me think. I had a student come up to me one time to confess being abused at home, which was really sad and of course nothing happened to her dad. Besides that, I really didn't know what was going on with these kids at home. It is so easy to forget that some kids have major issues outside of the classroom. I feel bad that I may have been too harsh on kiddos when they didn't turn in homework, attend tutorials, make up a test, etc. Maybe that student had something more important on his mind. Not that teachers should be lenient, but maybe more questioning to see if there is something else causing the student's actions.

It was also frustrating when I might say something to a counselor or principal or parent and they would say 'oh, yeah, but this students is dealing with XYZ'. Hmmm, that would have been information that would have been very helpful to a teacher! So if you are a parent, or administrator, please keep those teachers in the loop!!

Anyways, so that was my Ah-Ha Moment. It is a nice reminder to be patient with students because we really may not know the full story on them.

Hope you all had a great week!

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Teaching Thursdays - The Wave

Well, it is Thursday, so you know that means it is Teaching Thursdays here! Woohoo!

Today I am sharing an activity that can be used for Algebra I, Algebra II, and Math Models. It is great for graphing scatter plots, finding linear regressions, extrapolating info, solving equations, comparing equations, and determining changes in graphs when the slope is changed. Plus the kids have fun which is a double bonus!

So....here is The Wave activity! This is just like when people do the wave at sporting events except we are obviously doing this on a much smaller scale.

Using this worksheet, the class will do the wave with increasing number of students added to the line and time themselves. Then the class graphs the scatterplots, gets an equation and makes predicitions. I make the kiddos stand in the front of the room and make noise as they are doing the wave. Some kids think they are too cool but most students have fun with it. You can get the worksheet HERE to use in your classroom.

Here are some tips:
1. Make sure the students do the wave the same way each time. So if an individual decides to do it super fast, they need to do it super fast at each trial to keep it consistent.

2. If you are short on time or have a large class, have the students do the wave in groups rather than adding individual students to the line. So maybe at each trial 3 students are added to the wave instead of one.

3. Set behaviour expectations up front. I told my students if they couldn't handle this activity, they would be sent to the hall with a worksheet to work on rather than have fun with the class. The worksheet would practice the same things we were doing in The Wave but would be much more boring!

4. Keep all the data in your calculator so that you can graph the different waves on one screen. It shows a GREAT comparison at how the different slopes shifts the line.

5. You can add in changing the y-intercept by saying the first person in the wave has to wait 4 seconds before starting the wave. Or waiting 10 seconds.

6. Maybe another class is doing this the same day. Then you can go in the hall and see if your prediction of 50 students is correct.

7. If it is a nice day maybe you can do all the data collection on the football stands outside. Or in the gym if no one is using it. :)

What other ways could we make this activity run smooth in the class or make it a better activity? Have you done this in class and have modifications to it? I would love to hear about it!

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Teaching Thursdays - Open House

Welcome to another Teaching Thursdays post! So glad you stopped by!!

Some of you may be having Open House soon. So I wanted to share three quick tips on making Open House slightly more bearable for parents. AND...I stole two of these ideas from non-math teachers! See- you can totally learn from other teachers outside your subject area. :)

Message to the Students
When I was teaching in Lewisville I was lucky to have met Mr. Serge Moreno who taught Spanish. (Hola, Serge!!!). He is the sweetest guy you will ever meet...and funny too! He is probably one of the best teachers I have seen and he truly cares about his students. I am so sad I only got to teach with him for just over a year. Randomly, I had two of his sweet nephews in my class when I was teaching in Frisco! Anyways, I stole this idea from him and did this almost every year for Open House.

I put a large piece of butcher paper on the back wall and set out a box of markers. As parents stopped by I told them to leave a message to their student on the back wall so the students know they are supported by their parents. Some parents were hesitant (and some didn't do it which still baffles me) but by the end of the night there were tons of messages to students. Well, tons means about 15 because high school parents don't seem to attend Open Houses. Some messages were really funny, some serious, and some were from younger siblings. When the students saw the messages the next day you could just tell they were excited even if they were trying to act cool in front of their friends. I left them up most of the year and even I still liked reading those notes at the end of the year.

If I did this again, depending on the schedule of Open House, I might have out small sheets of colored paper on the desks, have parents write the notes there and hang them up later. I wonder if they would be more apt to participate this way??

Candy!
Open House was always later in the evening for us and around dinner time. So I always brought candy or snacks to Open House and set them out near the sign-in sheet. Probably deep down I did this for myself because I love candy but let's pretend I did this out of the goodness of my heart. I think one year Open House was on my birthday so I even had cake in my classroom. Either way, those snacks were readily eaten by parents.

Pictures
I think I saw Casey Wohlers do this one year. She had pictures of her students working in class, doing projects, etc and put them into a slideshow. She had it playing through the projector while parents were waiting their turn to visit with her. I think this is also a great personal touch so parents can see their precious babies in action.


Do you have any creative or unique things you do to spice up Open House nights?

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Teaching Thursdays- Partner Activity

I hope everyone had a wonderful week and you are getting back into the swing of teaching again! Last week I shared how I set up my classroom that allowed for partner work at all times and quickly switched to group activities. So, at the request of Mrs. H from Math Tales from the Spring, (Hi, Mrs. H!!) I am going to share an activity today for students to do with partners.

Mrs. H said she found these really cute small sheets of graph paper at Target.



These would be great for Mix, Freeze, Pair activities in class. I am a cheapo and would laminate the sheets of paper and let the students use wet erase markers to make them reusable. Or you can put them in sheet protectors instead of laminating. And because I am a cheapo, I would probably skip buying those all together and just print out a class set of graph paper and laminate those. But I digress.

So, since most Algebra II classes are reviewing linear equations right about now, I thought I would share a Mix, Freeze, Pair activity for graphing a linear equation.

1. Give each student a notecard or have them use a sheet of scratch paper. (I always kept my extra worksheets and used the backs for scratch paper).

2. Have students write down their favorite ordered pair. I mean, who doesn't have a FAVORITE ordered pair?!

3. Students will stand up, MIX (walk) around the room, and as they pass another student, they say hi and trade cards. They continue doing this until you say FREEZE. When you say FREEZE, they PAIR up with a person next to them. They now have two notecards with two ordered pairs.

4. Using their notecards, they can find the slope, equation, and graph. I usually give them a worksheet to carry with them for writing down their calculations, but again they can use scratch paper. They could also use a small dry erase board instead of a handout or paper.

A sample worksheet that I would have had them use can be found HERE! :)

5. Once you see that the students are ready to switch again, have the students MIX (continually trading cards so they aren't using the same point for each problem), FREEZE, and PAIR. I usually had them switch 3 or 4 times, depending on time. I also insisted they found a new partner each time they paired up so that way they were working with new people all the time.

To add a little fun, I also did this with music. So they mixed while the music was on and when I turned it off it meant for the students to pair up.

Some reasons I love this activity:
1. It is very little prep on my part. The students make up the cards, they carry a reusable graph, and I can just facilitate and answer questions.

2. It is versatile. Think of all the concepts you could use this with: graphing/ solving systems, finding slope between points, are the equations parallel/perpendicular?, graphing systems of inequalities, adding/subtracting/mult/dividing rationals, mult/div exponents...

3. Kids are getting to move around the room, work with new people, ask questions, teach others.


Lastly, I wanted to add a sidenote of using wet erase markers or dry erase markers in class. Whenever we used something out of the norm such as the dry erase boards, I ALWAYS let them play and doodle for about 2 minutes. I told them to draw to their heart's content for those two minutes because after that, we are focused on math and I didn't want to see any hearts, flowers, boyfriend's initials, tic tac toe, etc. It worked pretty well and I didn't have problems with kids off task during the activity. Just a little tip for ya!

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Teaching Thursdays- Classroom Set Up

First of all, did you enter the giveaway?! I hope so!!

Today I am going to touch on how I set up my classroom and how to get students working with their partners or groups.

Classroom Set-up

For the last several years I taught, I always had my students in pairs and I LOVED it. So I had 3 or 4 columns of paired desks. Like so:



In this picture, Student 1 and Student 2 would be partners. Everyone is facing the front all nice and neat. Everyone is SUPER excited to be in math class. :) I encouraged (and forced) my students to talk to their partners for help, guidance, assistance, praise, etc. Throughout the class period, we worked out problems with our partners, we compared answers with our partners, we discussed solutions with our partners. I often would say 'I don't hear you talking! I should hear you talking to your partner about this problem!'. I think it really helped those students were are too embarassed to ask for help when they are forced to discuss the math with the person next to them. Those students start to gain confidence because they more than likely understand the material better than they think and can start to solve the problems on their now. This also helps the student who is helping the 'struggler' because they are learning by teaching and explaining. They are having to really understand what the math is to explain it to someone else. So, it is a win-win situation! I will posting tons of ideas of specifically how to do work in partners, but not quite yet...hang tight on that one!

Now, I also wanted to do group work or group projects often. So, I wanted the students to be able to quickly move their desks into groups. So, I had the students turn their desk so they are FACING their partner and then squish in to either the partner in front or behind them (depending on where they are in the column). So the first two pairs in the column is the first group of 4, the second two pairs is the second group of 4. This will take literally 20 seconds so it cuts down any excuse for not doing group activities in class. :)



In the picture above, partners 1 and 2 are now facing each other and are group with partners 3 and 4. So Student 1 and Student 3 are now shoulder to shoulder and Student 2 and Student 4 are should to shoulder. All students can easily see me at the board because no one's back is to me. I INSIST they move their desks like this so I don't have backs to me. I won't continue the class until everyone is in their groups exactly as I want them. Some students complain but they quickly realize it is wasted breath because they have to move anyways.

Obviously, I have very specific seating charts. I have been to a couple Kagan Cooperative Learning worskhops where they talk a great deal about how to seat your students. I found it kind of time consuming and so I just kind of did a shorter version of basically pairing a stronger and weaker student together based on a recent test score. However, I never paired the person with a 100 average with the person with a 20 average. There is just too great a gap there and wouldn't be beneficial to either student. I also had to make sure that when students were in groups, their group mates and 'shoulder' partner in their group was compatible. So it takes a little tweaking each six weeks when we switched seats. The best way I made the seating chart was using sticky notes for each student so I could literally move them on the paper to configure them the way I wanted. It is also easy to move a student to a different class period when schedules start changing. :)

Getting the kiddos to work as a partners or groups

Another big Kagan idea is to have partner building and class building activities throughout the year. It sounded kind of cheesy but I tried it out anyways and I really think it worked. These were very short and informal activities for students to get to know each other outside of math work. This would get them to know each other better as a person which would make them more comfortable with working with them during the math part of class.

One way I did this in partners was by having students answer questions. Every time we got new partners (or new groups), we introduced ourselves to our new partner (yes, even in May we had to introduce our names!) and I would have them answer questions. I had a whole list of questions at my desk and would just call two or three out to the class and they shared their answer with their partner. It only took a couple minutes, students got a break from math, and we moved on. Here is my list of questions I had handy. Feel free to download a copy for free! :) You can also find tons of questions online pretty easily if you have different ages of students or just want different questions.

Another way I had students get to know each other in groups was with an activity called "Likes and Dislikes". They shared the following:
1. Things they liked that they were supposed to like. (ex: candy)
2. Things they liked they weren't supposed to like. (ex: math)
3. Things they disliked they were supposed to dislike. (ex: veggies)
4. Things they disliked they were supposed to like. (ex: ice cream)

The kids gave some pretty interesting answers with this activity and if we had time I might have them share some answers with the class. Again, this takes maybe 5 minutes out of the class yet has a big impact on getting students to work together easier in the classroom. I think we can all spare 5 minutes once every other week or so, right?!

Do you have any fun partner-building tips to share?


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Teaching Thursdays Kick Off Giveaway!

I am super excited about having Teaching Thursdays here at lil Mop Top. I hope you were able to stop by last week when I shared two activities for the first day of school. If you ended up using those, let me know how it went!

So, onto the big Teaching Thursdays Kick Off Giveaway. I am going to be holding a drawing for one of you amazing teachers to win a gift certificate to TeachersPayTeachers. Woohoo!



If you haven't been to TpT, you need to check it out. It is a wonderful resource for your classroom and before you get all freaked out that you have to buy something, there are TONS of items for FREE! Very awesome. Many more items are super duper cheap (like $1.50) so I bet you can find some wonderful things there. If you happen to poke around, you can see my shop, but if you win, you don't have to buy from me. So that means even if you teach English or elementary school, you should still enter this contest because you can use the gift card for anything on this site.

So, here is how it will work.

1. MANDATORY: Like lil Mop Top on Facebook OR Follow me on this blog.
2. To get your name entered in the drawing, you need to comment on this blog post OR comment on my facebook. If you don't comment, I won't know to enter your name into the drawing so please don't forget! :)
3. If you want more entries, share this with your friends. They can do the same steps and just tell me you sent them. For each of those friends you sent my way, I will add your name to the drawing.
4. The contest will run from Monday, August 22nd, to Thursday, August 25th. I will draw the name randomly and announce the winner on Friday, August 26th. And don't worry, I will probably use my fancy TI-83 calculator to draw fairly. (Nerd Alert!)

And in case you were wondering, TpT did not ask me to write a review of them or give me the gift certificate for the contest. I am using money from my little piggy bank to pay for this contest (which means it won't be a HUGE gift certificate!). I am sure you can understand! Good luck and don't forget to tell your teacher friends to enter too!

Remember to stop back on Thursday for this week's Teaching Thursday post.

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Teaching Thursday - First Days of School

Welcome to Teaching Thursdays! For info on how Teaching Thursdays came about, check out this post!

Many of you fabulous teachers will be meeting this year's students next week. Or maybe you met them recently. Either way, I always spent the first day or two adding in 'get to know you' activities as a class or ice breakers to do in groups. Here are two of my favorites:

1. Starburst Game -


image from here

Grab a whole bag of starbursts (or similar candy with colors) and pass out to students. Tell them they can have 1, 2, or 3 starbursts (or whatever your {personal} budget allows). After all students have their starbursts, put on the board the following:

red- share an embarassing moment
yellow- share a goal for the year
orange- tell the story behind a scar on your body
pink- share your best personal quality

Students will then share based on the starburst color they picked. And those greedy kiddos get to share more. haha! You can have students share in pairs, groups, or as a whole class. Of course you can change what you want the colors to represent, but it is a fun way to get the kids talking with each other. Be sure the students also say their name when they share their colors. I mean, don't you hate it when it is May and students still don't know each other's names???

2. Throwing Soft Balls -


image from here

Ok, so it might sound scary to have students start throwing objects around the room on the first day of class, but my students always loved this one. I actually learned this one from Mrs. Karen Kraft several years ago (who had a great new-teacher inservice when I was at her school!). And if these instructions are confusing, and you teach at Wakelnd HS, find Mrs. Renshaw and she can explain it to you!

For this activity I used soft dog toys that looked like baseballs that I found in the dollar section of Target. If you don't want to buy anything you could probably use paper wads or even balled up socks.

-Students start standing at their desk.
-First person has a ball, calls out another student's name and then throws the ball to him. (First student DOES NOT sit down).
- The second student now calls out another student's name, throws the ball to him, and takes his seat.
-Once a student takes a seat, he can't be called on again.
-Continue until only the all students have thrown to another student and the last person to catch the ball is the first person (who will then be the last student to finally sit down).
-Now have everyone stand up again and the first person starts the SAME EXACT pattern of throwing. So, each person calls to the SAME person and throws to the SAME person they threw to the first time. Go through the pattern maybe two more times. At this point, they don't have to sit down after they throw the ball; they can keep standing.
-Now the fun really begins. As the kids are throwing through the pattern, every 5 seconds or so, hand the first student another ball. I used 5 balls for this activity and kept them in rotation for a while (until I noticed them getting bored with it). It is fun to see the chaos of balls being throw across students over and over again.
-If you have time, have students complete the pattern in reverse order.

I love that the students have to say each other's names over and over (you don't want to throw the ball to someone who isn't paying attention so INSIST students call out the names before they throw. I also love that it is just a fun way to break the ice between students and do some class bonding.

As with any activity I did in class, I was sure to set expectations of behavior. I made sure students knew I expected the balls to be used properly. If a student chose to chunk the ball at someone, or misbehave, they would be excused to the hallway and would miss out on the fun. I think this type of activity is a great intro to class activities that are out of the norm, yet behavior expectations will be held high by the teacher. Teaching freshman? Perfect opportunity to use this to show how you can do fun things in class if they can handle themselves in a mature way. :)

What are your favorite get to know you activities or ice breakers?


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Teaching Thursdays - NEW -

As some of you may know, I taught high school math for 8 years before becoming a SAHM. I absolutely loved it and every once in a while I actually miss the craziness of teaching. Last month I presented a session at a huge math conference (CAMT) and LOVED sharing my fun ideas and activites I have stored in my box of goodies over the years. So I was inspired to continue sharing through my blog. Therefore, I decided to dedicate every Thursday to sharing ideas, activities, lessons, tips, etc for teaching high school math. I will be calling it Teaching Thursdays (how creative, right?!).

Many activities and ideas can be modified to teach at various levels and various non-math classes, so these posts will hopefully be beneficial for a broad range of readers. So, if you are a teacher of any sort, please be sure to read my blog on Thursdays! I even made a cute little button for you to put on your blog to share the teaching love. Woohoo! So, tomorrow will be my first edition of Teaching Thursdays and I would love it if you stopped by!

If you are a Facebook user, I will be posting the weekly links there as well. Like my Facebook page so you don't miss out!

Oh, don't forget to add your button and spread the word to your teaching buddies.






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Also, if have a math blog and would like to be featured post here one Thursday, please let me know. I love having visitors! We could even do a fun blog swap.

If you aren't a teacher, don't worry, my blog will still be back to its old self the rest of the week with crafts, toddler activities, and party ideas. :)

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