I am recommitting to keeping a blog  in order to reflect on instructional strategies that I am implementing in my classroom.

I want to use this space to keep track of my own initiatives.   I find myself getting excited by approaches and prompts that I find on Twiter or Pinterest and believe that by adding them into my classroom rotation, that I am increasing student engagement and giving more of my students access to the mathematics since I am presenting it in a new way.  But I worry that it is I who is engaged by the new strategies- as this is my 10th year of teaching and I use what is NEW to keep me excited.  But I also want to know what WORKS with my specific students-

• What initiatives/strategies are working for them and which are working for me and which are working for both?
• Are the strategies I am using engaging them in learning for a deeper understanding or simply engaging them with better classroom management results?

Here are a few of the initiatives that I would like to track on this blog:

– Transition to Algebra Curriculum- brought to you by the good people at EDC- I use this with my 24 ninth graders in a class called “numeracy”- it is a support class that intends to bridge them towards algebra).  I specifically want to track the time I spend each day doing “mental math” exercises and reflecting on how to show students their growth in this area.

– Google Classroom– I use this with my AP Statistics class to assign internet based assignments, such as watching YouTube videos of me “going over” the week’s problem set and asking them to reflect on the feedback I put on their paper or having them watch “Against All Odds” Statistics Videos which otherwise spend most of the class period “buffering” with my school’s internet

– Standards Based Grading- I use it in both Numeracy and AP Statistics.  I find tracking their growth informative and continuously surprising, but I worry that they are not reaching the level self awareness that I had in mind

– Interactive Notebooks–  TTA, Google Classroom, and SBG are already daily parts of my planning.  As we enter our coordinate geometry unit in Numeracy, I would like to dabble in making use of these foldable graphic organizers for notes and examples and will track my trials/successes/blunders on this site