Category Archives: TMC

#1TMCThing + I Can’t Count

Posted on by • 0 comment

I decided that my #1TMCThing is going to be collaborating with Sheri Walker to make and USE some awesome Desmos stuff in Precal (and also Algebra II). But I have trouble counting, so it turns out I have more than one #1TMCThing. But hopefully some of them won’t be too difficult to implement!

  • Write daily learning targets that also include the Standard Math Practices (see Chris Shore’s examples on his 180 blog, starting at about day 160). Our school wants us to start using targets anyway, so this would be a good way for me to get excited about writing them. I’m meeting with our math coach Monday to help me get started. If you develop any (or want to discuss), we’re using #SMPTargets to connect.
  • Grow dendrites in class like Chris’s My Favorite.  Need to find brain poster and make dendrite stickers.
  • High-five at the door a la Glenn. I’m not that great at connecting with students early on in the school year, so I’m hoping this will jump start that. I really am a nice person, kids!
  • Use the hand signals from Chris Harris’s number talks (at the bottom of this PDF). And enforce not calling out. Although I am totally bad at that myself. I need to apologize to everyone in the blogging initiative seminar because I totally just blurted out stuff while others had a hand raised. Sorry, guys.
  • So simple…use Matt Vaudrey’s “End your discussions in 5…4…3…2…1” instead of “Ok, time’s up, guys!”
  • Using Brian’s quadrant plan for mixing up groups. I got lazier as the year went on and sometimes the kids got stuck in the same groups for a few weeks. Hopefully this would be easy to implement and keep up with-I could make a new quadrant plan every 9 nine weeks, and they could rotate through.
  • From Make It Stick #eduread, “Calibration Quizzes” 2x a week and spiral homework.
  • Finish posting all of my files, and continue to post new ones through the year! Thanks to all of you that let me know that you’ve been using some of my stuff or that my stuff helped make your stuff better.
  • Be proactive in welcoming newbies to MTBoS. Tweet out blog posts that I like so people know that someone is reading.  Keep an eye out for #nahf so I can send good vibes when needed.
  • Stay positive! Let others (students, teachers, and admin) see the nice and kind side of me that y’all saw at TMC.

I fear I may have too much on my plate, but I can’t decide what not to do. At least I’m super excited to go back to school!

Category: Reflections, TMC | Tags: ,

Important Things You Need To Know

Posted on by • 11 comments

[Updated to add #SMPTargets and t-shirt link]
[Updated to correct TMC16 date]
[Updated to include latest #eduread information]

There’s been a lot of talk about keeping the TMC spirit through the year, and to that effect there were a lot of links and hashtags thrown around. Here are some of them:

Hashtags to keep an eye out for:

#1TMCThing Choose one thing from TMC to focus on. Find other #1TMCThings that excite you. Check back in with those on October 26. This is not an exclusive thing…even if you weren’t able to be at TMC, you can still choose one thing you want to work on through the year. Some people are choosing big conceptual items, some are choosing smaller goals. Do what’s right for you. Mine is working with Sheri Walker to create and use some Desmos awesomeness.

#TMChange A lot of TMCers are starting at a new school next year. New things are hard. Hard things are less hard when you have supportive friends. Thus, #TMChange is for those that are changing and for those who have recently changed and want to give support to others. @sophgermain is also starting a slack (like a private twitter) to give y’all a safe space to talk. DM her your email if you want to join.

#nahf  A conversation on twitter last night led to a lot of openness about how there are so many people struggling behind the scenes. Mattie came up with “need a high five” (#nahf) as a “bat signal” to send out. Sometimes you just need some extra love with no explanation as to why you need it. (Even if you think it’s something about which #nobodycares)

#eduread ok, ok, so I’m doing a little non-TMC promotion. If you’d like to keep having wonderful, thoughtful, applicable discussions about math, please join us for #eduread. We are going to start reading What’s Math Got To Do With It and we should be starting next week. will be starting the first chapter discussion next Thursday, August 6th at 8E/7C. (We just finished Make It Stick which I would highly recommend, even if you just have time to read the last chapter!)

#SMPTargets If you attended Chris Shore’s presentation about using the Standard Math Practices daily, you will remember that he wrote learning targets that included the SMP focus for the day (for example, “I will persevere while solving right triangle trig problems.”) I am making writing those my 2nd #1TMCpage and Chris came up with this hashtag for others that would like to collaborate and/or support each other.

Important links!

TMC15 Wiki Check for presentation materials and info here!

bit.ly/MTBoSsearch the MTBoS search engine. Tweet @Jstevens009 if you’re blog isn’t listed UNLESS your blog is already listed on the TMC15 list. If so, it will be added in the near future.  If your blog is not on the TMC15 list, then go ahead and tweet him to add.

bit.ly/MTBoSbank A searchable database of activities sorted by grade level and topic. Share your activity by submitting it at bit.ly/MTBoSactivity

bit.ly/desmosbank A searchable database of Desmos activities.

bit.ly/TMC15archive If you wrote or will write about your TMC15 experience, add it to the archive (note: the actual archive will be up this Fridayish)

Blogger Initiation BrainstormingIf you want to help build the #MTBoS, add your thoughts to the document. A mentor idea was discussed, as well as helping people restart their blogs. The actual initiative is planned for late October/early November to feed off of presentations at NCTM Regionals.

Bonus t-shirts: At approximately 6:45, a few of us mentioned how we wanted “Find what you love. Do more of that.” on a t-shirt. At approximately 6:50, Mark (@hfxmark) had created it on spreadshirt. Here is the link!

I’m sure I missed some other important links, so please let me know and I will add them!

Oh, also, one other thing that may be important to know: TMC16 will be at Augsberg University in Minneapolis, MN, July 16-19 2016. See you there!

Category: TMC | Tags: , , ,