Summer Goals

If you have any ideas on resources I should look at for any of the above goals, let me know!

Read at least one peer-reviewed article on math education weekly

See my #EduRead posts.

Organize my curriculum into series of units and lessons

Primarily, I want to be able to offer my students a better overview at the beginning of a unit as to what is coming – big questions, key vocabulary, upcoming homework assignments/assessments, etc. so they can be more proactive. I think I need a better organization of my lessons and their hypothesized order so that I can achieve this.

Find and prepare an online learning management system for my AP Statistics class

I hope to increase the level of technology used in my AP class, starting by giving them a consistent expectation of where to find information about their class and how to participate. As I see many colleges incorporating Blackboard or something similar, I would like to incorporate a comparable paradigm so they will be able to begin transitioning to that mindset ASAP.

Develop a better paradigm for teaching students how to have mathematical discussions

I think in general, my students often struggle to communicate to one another logically, but there are many cases in which my students clearly get stuck, and they don’t even know how to ask me a question. I have heard a bit about “Accountable Talk” from some folks in my district, but am generally unfamiliar with it. I think I would like to offer my students sentence starters, and start by practicing these things with simpler math problems to help them feel confident in their ability to communicate.

Re-work my policy for following up on assessments

I have offered students the chance to do test corrections to earn credit back. I like the policy, because it offers the students a reason not to despair over testing, and also gives them a chance to learn from their mistakes. However the actual format I’ve had them use has been a bit clunky and rigid. Also, I’m trying to determine if there is a way I can have students work on similar problems, but not the same problems that were on the test so that I can prevent some incentive to cheat for those who need to do makeup assessments.

Create a plan for student jobs

My coach challenged me with a story from her teaching days where she realized a particular student was much more charismatic than she was. She engaged him as the designated emcee for learning games and other activities to get the class excited and involved. Upon further conversation, she said something to the effect of “If there are students who do ____ at the same level that I do, why should I keep that to myself?” I plan to invest students in my classroom by giving them the chance to volunteer for particular jobs (paper returner, emcee, calculator collectors, new student mentor, etc). I have a hunch that having some students responsible for the classroom could even encourage some of the more distant students to get more deeply engaged.

Make assessments cumulative

Plan out the first few weeks of school

I hope to incorporate a mix of math prerequisite skills, good student habits, and introduction to the technology I will be relying on (Desmos, Geogebra, plot.ly, and a few others)

Make my syllabus into an infographic

I saw this idea somewhere online, but forgot to save whose idea it was. This may be more for my fun than for my students…