The conference that I attended last week for the Kentucky Math Council was awesome.  I came away with some really great ideas that I am going to start implementing into my classroom.  I think that the biggest idea that I came away was the idea of teaching to mastery.  The speaker done a really good idea of demonstrating the ideas that he used in the classroom.  I am going to start doing formal assessments on or around an average of every fifteen minutes.  This will give me the ability to evaluate my students mastery of the concept in a more proficient manner. Also students will now have a card on their desk that will be red on one side and green on the other.  Students will simply flip the card to the red side when they are getting confused or lost on the topic and intervention will be provided quickly.

Tomorrow I will be attending The KCM Math Teachers conference in Lexington.  I am really excited about the opportunity to listen to and learn from different educators with various levels of backgrounds.  The main focus of the conference will be centered on the implementation of the core standards for mathematics.  I think that this training will be very beneficial for me as I draw nearer to my participation in the task force in charge of deconstructing the new standards.  There are going to be various seminars that look at the vocabulary and the depth of knowledge contained within the standards.  I think that this training will help me serve as a better member to the task force as I will have some background on the structure and breakdown of the new standards.

9:00

I gave the pre test today for teaching my unit and was able to look at the results and really excited about the opportunity to teach this lesson.  It will be very interesting and I think motivating to the students for them to see how they improve from one point to the finished result.  The students really put forth their best effort and I know that this will be able to help me improve my effectiveness as an instuctor.  The test lets me know the areas that are of major concern for me to help strengthen the skills necessary for them to complete the objectives and the tasks contained within the unit.

2/14/11 9:30

Just finished Task F and I am really excited about the opportunity that I have before me this summer to take part of the Math Task Force for the district.  This task force made up of five math teachers throughout the county will deconstruct the new standards and update the current curriculum documents.  This gives me a great opportunity to be a leader and take a leap toward my ultimate goal of administration.  After training on how to deconstruct standards and updating the curriculum documents we will spend several days presenting and explaining how the new curriculum documents were formed and the objectives contained within them to help guide our instruction.

2/8/11  11:15

Wanted to write about the professional development vertical team meeting that we had yesterday after school.  Today is another snow day for us here in Laurel county.  Yesterday during the meeting we discussed the new requirement of an end of class exam in Algebra II.  I had the opportunity to discuss my views on how we can help prepare our students for this exam.  With the MAP testing that we are participating in we have the opportunity to track our students and place them in the appropriate areas for improvement.  I had the idea of creating an Algebra 1A and Algebra 1B for those low achieving students.  These classes would be year long classes that would result in just one math credit when completed and an elective for the other.  This would allow us to help prepare these students that need this remediation to become more prepared to take these exams when they are more mature and knowledgable to do so.

2/2/11  6:00

Just returned home from a professional development on incorporating writing assessments into the curriculum for our students using writing.  The emphasis was on writing to learn and how we can use this to help our students retain more information.  We sat in groups within our content area and was able to complete tasks together that helps give ideas and also the ways that we are already using writing to learn in our classrooms.  I think with this training I will be able to use this more even in my math class to help students learn using writing.   

2/1/11  1:50

Today had a conversation with one of my students who is getting ready to turn sixteen and he says that he is dropping out of school as soon as that happens.  I tried my best to motivate and look for ways to help him see the significance that an education will have in his life.  In these conversations from the past I have found the best way to strike a conversation about the interest that the student has.  Then look for some way to gather some information for him or her that connects education to that specific area of interest.  I have found that through doing this that the students eyes raise as to the fact that to be the best at what I want to do I may need this.   Hopefully through this intervention I may have an impact on a student staying in school to receive his or her education and graduate.