#16

On Monday I'll start my 16th year of teaching.  Where has the time gone?!?  I honestly can't believe I'm that old!

I'm going to continue using Standards Based Grading and Interactive Notebooks this year.  I'm also going to get serious about my flipped class.  I kind of dropped the ball on it last year - I just took on too much and something had to give.  I'll finish my Master's degree on October 26th, so I'm hoping I'll be able to do a better job keeping up with the videos.  When I quit making the videos last year my students would ask if I was going to start back up again because they loved them!

I've been crazy busy this week with staff development and trying to finish up my classroom makeover, but I thought I'd go ahead and share a couple of things.

First off, my classroom!  It makes me so happy to walk in and see my chevron wall and cheery yellow paint.  And I finally had them replace my stinky dirty carpet with tile.

A close up of my desk

I'm going to spend the first few days of school setting up Interactive Notebooks and introducing my students to my TI Nspire calculators (I'll also be talking up my beloved Desmos).  Here is a basic calculator reference sheet I made for their notebooks.  I plan on making calculator guides like this anytime they learn how to do something new with them.

I really wanted to buy a set of radian protractors for my classroom, but I just can't spend the money on something that we really won't use for long.  Luckily inspiration hit and I came up with my own version printed on old transparencies (I mean who even uses an overhead projector anymore?!?).  When we first start talking about radians and I'm trying to get them to understand what a radian is and how it relates to degree measure I'm going to have them use these to measure and draw angles in both radians and degrees.  I'm pretty stoked about it!  I made a little pocket by sealing an envelope and cutting it in half.  They can store their protractor in the pocket.  It's just so cute!