Amplifying Awards

Note: I am participating in a blogging challenge for the month of August. Learn about how you can participate here. Send me a tweet and let me know if you are participating!

My last blog post was about giving more thanks in forms of writing a card. I loved how many people contacted me and shared their ideas about how they give thanks to others. I love when someone takes something I posted about and gives me several more great ideas.

With everything others shared, it has inspired me to find ways to praise students more often for things they are doing in the classroom. I learned about a couple of different things one can do at TMC18. Elissa Miller is going to do this with brag bracelets you can read about here. Allison Krasnow does this through stickers you can read about here. Both of these are awesome ideas and I am going to try something similar.

I know that bracelets are not really my thing and keeping track of all those different stickers when I travel and teach in different rooms will be too much and then I won’t end up following through with it. I have decided to make a few cards that will let kids know I am proud of them for a few different things that have happened in class.

I am going to print out a few sets and keep them with me. I can pass them out to kids whenever I feel like it would be good to give one out. I will not even say anything and just put it on the kids desk or hand it out to them as they are leaving class. I am excited to use these this year.

Find the files here for your own use. Let me know if you use them or plan to use something else for your classroom!

 

Thrilling Thanks

Note: I am participating in a blogging challenge. Learn about how you can participate here. Send me a tweet and let me know if you are participating!

How is it August already?!?!

Once this month hits everything gets real and joining this mtbosblaugust will be just the thing I need to get back into the swing of things. (My goal is to blog at least twice a week…hopefully more!) I am slowly going through stuff from last year to prepare.

As I was going through I found some thank-you cards from students as seen here

These are always so amazing to receive and their is something about getting a handwritten card at the end of the year from a kid makes everything seem so worthwhile. This has caused me to stop and think about how often I write a thank-you card for someone.  I have decided that a new goal of mine this year is to write more thank-you notes and not just when I receive a gift. Maybe when a colleague shares a great idea, maybe to a parent of a kid that has made some great strides, maybe to a friend who is willing to listen to me vent about something stressing me out.

The world needs more appreciation these days. Next time, instead of just saying it verbally, I am going to take those couple of extra minutes and put it in writing. I believe it will be much more valuable. Special thanks to my students who continue to inspire me with their notes and words of encouragement!

TMC Tsunami – Hit With A Huge Wave

TMC 18 has come and gone. I have had some time to reflect about what I learned and how it went. This was my second year at TMC and I am not sure how but it was even better than my first in Atlanta.

After getting off the plane that had no working lavatory (thank goodness for teacher bladders), I was worried that would be a sign of an awful trip. I immediately ran into a bunch of people. At the hotel, I ran into another group and we all ventured for dinner. I was impressed to see so many, that I met last year, and it was like we never lost touch. As someone who considers themself introverted and can hide in the background, it was so great interacting with my twitter friends that it made the trip amazing. I had great conversations throughout the entire trip and always felt welcomed.

Throughout all my sessions, I felt like I had been hit with a huge wave of ideas and my brain was so full! I have been pondering how to deal with the Tsunami of ideas and what I want to change for next year. I think my one main goal this year is to be intentional.

• Be intentional with using debate techniques in the classroom.
• Be more intentional with spiraling material to make it stick
• Be intentional with utilizing technology.
  • Try to play with CL and geometry more this year
• Be more intentional with giving and receiving feedback

What will you be intentional with this school year?

POTW – Putting it all together with triangles

What this is: I am going to highlight problems I used with my honors geometry students that I thought were valuable. You can see all posts in this series here. I am taking no claim that these are necessarily original as I might have stolen them from many of you reading this!

How I used it: This was a review problem I gave in class.

What is it: This was a problem to practice and review proof skills.

Why I like it: This involves a few different ideas such as auxiliary segments and you can prove a couple different pairs of triangles. Their is also a couple different ways (as well as ways that would not work) so it was a great exercise for the learners to determine how much proof practice they needed. It made my top kids stop and think for a moment so that is always a good thing!

Let me know if you used this and how it went!

POTW – Fun Triangle Proof

What this is: I am going to highlight problems I used with my honors geometry students that I thought were valuable. You can see all posts in this series here. I am taking no claim that these are necessarily original as I might have stolen them from many of you reading this!

How I used it: This was a problem on a quiz I gave.

What is it: This was how I tested to see if my kids could prove triangles congruent using more than one pair in your proof.

Why I like it: There are so many different ways to solve this problem so it made it quite interesting. Some saw other different pairs of triangles than others so it lead to some great discussion when I passed it back. Talking about how to prove isosceles and what is enough to show is also interesting to see what they think.

Let me know if you used this and how it went!

POTW – Intro To Tougher Triangle Proofs

What this is: I am going to highlight problems I used with my honors geometry students that I thought were valuable. You can see all posts in this series here. I am taking no claim that these are necessarily original as I might have stolen them from many of you reading this!

How I used it: I gave this after students finished a quiz to play with before we got back together as a class.

What is it: This was the very first dive into proving a pair of triangles congruent and then using them to prove another pair congruent.

Why I like it: The kiddos were able to complete this without anything from me! I like the way it is scaffolded to lead them to what I desire. This allowed us to jump into problems with much more difficulty (see my next post).

Let me know if you used this and how it went!

POTW – Parallel Lines Strike Again In Proofs

What this is: I am going to highlight problems I used with my honors geometry students that I thought were valuable. You can see all posts in this series here. I am taking no claim that these are necessarily original as I might have stolen them from many of you reading this!

How I used it: This was an exit slip I gave to the learners before they class one day.

What is it: This is checking to see how they are doing with triangle congruency proofs and whether or not they can match up the corresponding parts.

Why I like it: I had so many kids get #2 wrong. They either marked sides congruent instead of parallel or incorrectly marked the angles congruent. Why do parallel pieces seem to throw even my best honors students off sometimes? This was eye-opening and allowed me to adjust some instruction. I am happy to report on the quiz a couple of blocks later they all rocked the question similar to this.

Let me know if you used this and how it went!

POTW – One Important Proof

What this is: I am going to highlight problems I used with my honors geometry students that I thought were valuable. You can see all posts in this series here. I am taking no claim that these are necessarily original as I might have stolen them from many of you reading this!

How I used it: This was a problem I gave to students to work after we had practiced how to prove triangles congruent.

What is it: This is the first time kids see a proof that will involve auxiliary segments.

Why I like it: The goal is to tell them nothing! You let them sit there and try to figure something out. Eventually, one kid draws in two radii and everyone at his table gasps and ask if they can do that. I swear my kids are like meerkats and then everyone else wants to know what happened and they want to do it to. News soon spreads and next thing you know we have a great place for a discussion. Seriously, one of my favorite proofs ever.

Let me know if you used this and how it went!

POTW – Transformation Compositions

What this is: I am going to highlight problems I used with my honors geometry students that I thought were valuable. You can see all posts in this series here. I am taking no claim that these are necessarily original as I might have stolen them from many of you reading this!

How I used it: This was a problem my kids worked on during a review activity in class.

What is it: This focuses on using compositions and checking the order of transformations.

Why I like it: We were able to talk about whether or not something was an isometry and it came out naturally in this problem. It was also great to talk about how the order of a composition can change something. Whenever I can connect something from geometry back to an algebraic standpoint, i believe it is worthwhile.

Let me know if you used this and how it went!

POTW – Reflections With Coordinates

What this is: I am going to highlight problems I used with my honors geometry students that I thought were valuable. You can see all posts in this series here. I am taking no claim that these are necessarily original as I might have stolen them from many of you reading this!

How I used it: This was a homework problem as we worked on transformations.

What is it: A problem that focuses on finding the equation of the line that can be used to obtain the pre-image and the image.

Why I like it: I have always given problems similar to this in the past and asking for the equation of the line. For some reason, I realized having it in this format can really help the kiddos see that the equation of the line must go through the midpoint. So many students came in and told me next class that this homework problem was super helpful so we spent time talking about it in class then. Since this is my honors level class, the last two problems are not as straightforward.

Let me know if you used this and how it went!