This Tuesday was the first math class I was teaching all year. This means\u00a0Monday night I was wringing out my\u00a0twitter feed like wet dish rag, trying to squeeze\u00a0out every drop of teaching ideas into my class the next day.\u00a0The turnover and structure of our school means that every marking period gives teachers the\u00a0first day of school ‘blank page’ feeling.<\/p>\n
My first day of school for this quarter needed to have some routines to build number sense, promote\u00a0discourse, and get the kids prepared for an exploration of quadratics that put procedural knowledge in the backseat. \u00a0I settled on starting Tuesday with a\u00a0counting circle\u00a0for 10 minutes each class. \u00a0Sadie’s post from a few years ago<\/a>\u00a0seemed to be within six-degrees of separation of any post you can find on counting circles, and it pretty much convinced me to start my first class with this routine.\u00a0As the cycle goes on I may try to work in a Problem String<\/a> or some other routine.The idea is to start class each day with everyone working together and talking, as opposed to my usual Do Now-Review.<\/p>\n I like to think of this class as a unit in quadratics that puts procedures on the back burner. To plant the seed for\u00a0some discourse around the quadratics I asked to get in groups and have a little conversation about two different kinds of visual patterns and to talk in small groups about what similarities and differences they saw in the two patterns. \u00a0The worksheet I used is below, and was a lightly modified version of one from last year.<\/p>\n