Trying to find math inside everything else

Posts tagged ‘classroom routines’

What’s a routine?

At #TMC14, I made the following tweet,

Screen shot 2014-08-22 at 10.44.14 PMwhile I was in a session about warm-ups as review. I was reminded of what Jessica posted about her warm-ups, and how she does something different each day of the week.

I was thinking of doing something similar, but I also wanted to include things like Counting Circles. But…I’m having trouble with the disparity. Something like Counting Circles is very different from Estimation180 which is very different from a Throwback Thursday review problem. How can we get used to the norms of a counting circle if we only do it once a week?

I could just commit to one of these things, but I feel they are all important, so I didn’t know what to do. But now I had the thought…what if I did these routines but, instead of once a week, I did them for, saying, a marking period, then switched to another?

This could work because many of the routines match up with certain units – Counting Circles would be very helpful for linear functions, while Visual Patterns would be useful for functions in general (or perhaps for when we do quadratics). Does this sound like a good idea?

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schooling

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Starting Over

One of the reasons I wanted to teach 9th grade when I first started was because I wanted to, eventually, know all the students in the school. (There were other reasons, but that’s one of them.)  So after four years, I’ve taught everyone math and really enjoy knowing all the students well. (Well, I didn’t teach everyone – the students who skipped me to go straight to Geometry, but I managed to get to know most of them in other ways.)

So, because of that, I’ve taught a new batch of students every year, and every year I can refine my routines, toss what didn’t work, keep what did, and try out new things.

But next year there’s a very good chance I’ll be teaching Algebra II – the first time I’m teaching the course (and any main math course besides Algebra I). And that means my students will be the current sophomores, who I taught last year. And I’m wondering, how does that work? What can I carry over easily? Will transferring routines and getting started be faster (not just because they know the routines but are also older)? Will it be harder to toss out routines they liked that I didn’t because they know them? Will the honeymoon period at the beginning of the year be shorter, or longer?

I don’t know, but I’m hoping some people will having some insight. What do you do when you teach the same kids again?

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schooling

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