Full-Time Math-Time

I can not believe the summer is quickly...maybe a little too quickly...coming to an end. It's the end of July (beginning of August) and I am currently getting back into the swing of things. Starting to get new ideas flowing, plans in the work for this upcoming year, and of course a full week of Math collaboration! #WhoopWhoop The middle school Math teachers got together this week at the District Office to collaborate, plan, and overall just do some work.

We started the week thinking about what our students did wonderfully-awesome on this school year, what we felt we, as teachers, had to revisit multiple times throughout the year, or even what the students would need revisited in their next course, and finally what was in our text that we did not cover...or new pieces of our curriculum that we have to implement this upcoming year. This sparked great conversation between the grade levels. We saw multiple ideas and topics that were needing to be "revisited" across the board. We also discovered that what students may not have understood or struggled with in sixth grade...the students eventually got it by the end of eighth grade. That was super exciting for all grade levels :)

To end day one, we got some time to think about our own curriculum and pacing in each grade level. As an eighth grade team we focused on Algebra first. We actually got to use the time and tackle our entire pacing guide for the 2014-2015 school year. We basically rocked it! Not to mention we were able to work through the curriculum faster this upcoming year then we did this previous year. Yay for being able to review more at the end of the year before those dreaded state tests. ;)

 

To work through day two and three we worked on understanding more of our Mathia component that correlates to our textbook in the classroom. We, as an eighth grade Clover math team, got to use Mathia this past year during our Academy time. We were able to take our students once a week to the computer lab and give them approximately forty minutes to work through the program. For our explore time during day two we were able to further look into Mathia, create our own custom module (with the help of our fabulous Carnegie supporter Megan Friedlander...she's basically the best thing ever), and even get our classrooms set up and ready to go. We also got to talk to Mr. Courtwright (our principal) about getting to take our kids this year to the lab twice a week; yay double time :)

To finish our fourth day at our Math planning we were able to focus on our Pre-Algebra pacing guide, using our Carnegie textbooks, and looking into where our Mathia personalized curriculum and method would fit in. It was fabulous to get the opportunity to work for four straight days of total "math-driven" discussions! I loved it to say the least :) I am so looking forward to using the information, pacing, and unique-ness that we discovered and talked about within the upcoming school year. It's early August and I have to say I am looking forward to this school year. Zack, my hubby, and I are off to Washington, D.C. to visit my parents this week.  Then it's back to school for this girl! It has been a great summer just enjoying our time together and not having anything to worry about. I have to say that I am excited to see my parents this week, but I am also excited to see my kiddos for the next school year.We are going to go enjoy our last week of summer vacation and then it's time to beast this upcoming school year! Let's do this 2014-2015 :)

Until next time.... :)