It's been a while...

Phew!  It certainly has been a while since my last post.  A few things have occurred to keep me occupied:  I moved, got married, my grandmother passed away, and I am the advisor for student council, who is responsible for the homecoming court and dance.  Somehow I survived the chaos and I am barely keeping my head afloat.  I wanted to keep you all in the loop as to how things are going!

First, the blogs had to get nixed.  Things were too crazy, and class time was needed to establish my classroom goals, rather than introduce another weekly task that could perhaps drive them away from the math.  Someday, perhaps, I can get them into writing about math and analyzing math in the news.  For now, these interactive notebooks seem to be working out really well!  So far, I have created a rubric in which the students grade themselves and their progress each time, and I assess afterwards.  I grade the notebook out of 6 possible points, 3 from organization and neatness and 3 from completeness and quality.  On the back, students have an opportunity to explain their grade; for instance, maybe they were absent for a period of time and didn't know where to get the notes, maybe they had a hockey tournament and didn't bring their notebook, or maybe they are sloppy and haven't paid attention to detail.

This has seemed to work really well with the notebooks.  So far, it is the 8th week of school, and I have done 3 notebook checks.  I am trying to get in more quizzes, and thus more notebook checks, but it seems that lately I have been neglecting the notebooks.  I have found it to be very challenging adapting the New York State modules to this notebook format, but I will be so proud when I have completed it!  Currently, my Algebra 1 students just took their test on Module 1 (minus systems of equations and systems of inequalities and polynomials...I chose to make these post-test items, that would be a nice bridge to Module 3).  The table of contents of a student's notebook looks like this:

Mathequalslove has provided me with many pages of inspiration that I have added to our notebooks. Some is simply reflected in our table of contents and our glossary.  Every day, I have our learning target (the standard in "I can" form), the TOC (table of contents) page numbers, and the WWK (words worth knowing) that the students will be adding to their notebooks that period.  Students have become good at checking the board, so much so that on an "off" day, a student said "I didn't know we needed to add anything because it wasn't on the board!"

Though I have taught before at other districts, this is the first time I get to take pride on my own curriculum.  I am thoroughly utilizing the NYS modules for my lesson inspiration, and am trying to meld this with Dan Meyer activities and the ease of Mathequalslove notebook notes.  I would be spending a ton of more time if I didn't have the #MTBoS!!!

In addition, as a Common Core State, and with our state Regents exams consisting of increasingly more word problems involving multiple forms of assessment of standards, I plan on taking a day or two to address this Close Reading protocol from ELA modules to apply to the math classroom.  I plan to start with 3rd grade word problems to practice the protocol and then move into some grade level problems.  My students are "averse to word problems" as Dan Meyer would put it, and I am hoping that this is a good start to giving them access to the content.  I will also have some "lab" type activity to get them motivated!

Here is another example of how I am melding the INBs with the statewide curriculum (Compound Inequalities):

Yet another example (solving equations with 2 variables):

I absolutely love how enageny makes the connection between truth values of equations, solutions to equations with one variable, solutions to equations with two variables, and linear functions.  It truly allows students to make connections with the function work from 8th grade to the equations work from this year!

Finally, here is a student example of an adaptaion from Mathequalslove blog;

I will keep at it, and do my best to post my work!  I don't think I can do as great a job as others, but I will do my best.  In November I am attending the AMTNYS conference, so hopefully I can post my findings from there!  

P.S., look for my new name on Twitter: @kayla_cappuccio