Week 13: November 24 - 25

This is a short week at school so I thought I would allow the students to work on their creativity. Each student in the trig classes were to choose a topic in 2nd semester trig that they struggled with at first that they now understand. They are responsible for coming up with a unique way to teach it to someone that may have never seen it before. They are encouraged to find a real world example of what they are trying to teach and use it to help explain what they are doing. The projects are due the last 2 weeks of the minisemester when they will present them to the class. Some students began writing songs to various Christmas song melodies as we are heading into the Christmas season. A pair of students are working on a skit relating degree to angle measure in the unit circle. I have had a tough time not butting in when I hear conversations go in a direction that would not lead to a productive project but instead will guide them to look up what they need to make a better project.

The Concepts of algebra classes are working on their review projects on topics that they need help with for the EOCT . We have about 2 that are ready out of 12. I am interested to see what they come up with. With most of the people in this class gearing up to teach gifted students, I am taking it in order to get new ideas and creative ideas to teach my tech and college prep kids. We do not have gifted classes in the school that I teach in so I am not getting certified to teach gifted ,but to teach in new and more creative ways. My goal was to not teach in a traditional mannor, but allow my students to be active intheir own learning...it is a challenge to let go of the reigns!!

Week 12: Nov. 17 - 20

I have definately noticed that as I have been working on my own level of creativity I have allowed myself to release the control that I had always had to have and let the students have more control and influence on the activities/ projects that we have delved into. I would teach something in maybe a creative way, but I had not allowed the student's creativity play a major role in the past. I have tried to develop lessons that have encouraged that and though it does not always work the way that I would have hoped, I am definately better at developing student oriented tasks than I was at the beginning. I still need a lot of work and will continue to stretch my own creative mind as I do with my kids.

Week 11: Nov. 10 - 14

Well, my creative juices were struggling last week. I was sick and only worked 3 days and then was out of town for 4 days. But we are back on track. During the week last week my concepts class decided to come up with with their own method of reviewing for the eoct. Each student is going to take a unit and develop an activity to review or teach the unit to the class. They may do a powerpoint of key terms/ideas, they can do a skit, song, whatever it is that they want the class to do to get involved in the activity. Several of the students are developing games. The discussion was that they learned it better if they had the opportunity to teach it to others. I am looking forward to seeing what they do.

For the Trig classes we have them working on identifying trig graphs in the real world. They are to find a real world phenomenon that they can model with a sinusoidal function. They are to write up the problem, solve it and then present their problem to the class. More info on this to come.

Week 10: Nov. 3 - 7

The trig classes are brainstorming about their projects for this semester. I thought of even doing a sort-of invention convention with them as well. Many of them are graduating or this may be there last math class and I would love to have them do something interesting that they could take with them. I also have thought of having them do a role play using the trig function graphs and where the graphs are seen in the real world. We will finalize the project ideas this week.

The concept classes are moving right along. We are still struggling with deciding how to creatively work on our weaknesses for the EOCT and is in a month. I am really struggling with how to do that, but am still working on it. I thought of having them make a scrapbook of the key items that they have learned with properties, pics, etc. Again, we will have to finalize something this week.

Week 9 Oct 27 - Oct. 31

Trig classes are making headway with learning the foundations that will help them survive the rest of the semester. They are anxious and excited as many of them are graduating in December. Many of the concepts that they are learning are foreign to them as the material is brand new. They don't know what a radian is or how to connect it to what they know. We spent a lot of time just letting them become familiar with all of the new terminology and how they worked with what they did know already. I had the students come up with a creative way to remember the properties of sine, cosine, and tangent. One student wrote a song to Frère Jacques that told of the properties of all 3. It was very amusing. I have decided that my students are probably much more creative than I am. I guess that is why my skill is to work on just that.

The concepts students are working on their stories for the areas that they feel good about. I am excited to see what they come up with.

Week 8 10/20 - 10/ 24

Time seems to fly by. Having an EOCT this semester, I have been really looking at new and creative ways to get the students involved in preparing for this test. In the past, I have had pre, mid and post tests for them to determine their individual areas of weakness which I still do, but I have not had them do anything creative or new with that knowledge other than have a notebook of topics that they could pull from to do extra practice. I have really struggled to come up with a way to do that. I decided to have them help me. We brainstormed a list of ways that they could review for the EOCT and for ways that we could work on their own individual weaknesses. They decided that they wanted to make games to review for the test. Each pair of students chose a category and is responsible for that review game. Coming up with ideas for the areas of weakness was harder. One idea consisted of researching the topic on the internet and summarizing their findings to share with the class. Another student suggested having the students that were good in one area write a short story about the topic to explain it to others and make a notebook of everyones contribution. For areas where all the students were weak, we kind of did an attribute listing where we listed the attributes of the items that we were good at and then tried to link those with the ones that were weaker to find relationships between the topics that we could use to help us learn those better. This will be an ongoing process for the rest of the semester with this group so we will work on these strategies continuously.

In the trig classes, we are using a lot of hands-on activities to get them involved with the trig functions and their graphs. The projects that they turned in at the end of last semester are really amazing. I am working on what to do this semester that would be similar to what they have done.

10/13 - 10/17

The week of the 13th was the 1st week of our new semester. I am working on brainstorming for projects/activities that I can continue to do this semester. I am really struggling trying to get these new classes up and running. I know that I am extremely busy with taking 3 classes, working, and my son (age 4) taking baseball for the first time, but it seems my students are even more distracted. They could not remember that in a right triangle to find the missing angle to subtract the acute angle from 90. I almost passed out. This is by far one of the weakest groups I have had in a while and will have to devote some time to coming up with activities that really gets them involved and gets them learning.