Tag Archives: #SOTW

Stars of the Week Vol 6 #SOTW

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Since my last SOTW post was over a month ago (!!!), perhaps I really should take Pat’s suggestion from my last post and rename it “Stars of Whenever I Want.”

If you’re a #SOTW, grab the badge using the code below if you’d like it for your blog!

Stars of The Week
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Remember you can always use the nomination form and I will put it in my next post!

If you teach Geometry, you definitely need to be reading  @lisabej_manitou‘s Crazy Math Teacher Lady blog. She has tons of great ideas, but also realizes that sometimes you just need some no-frills, get-the-job-done, quality materials (a girl after my own note-taker-maker heart). Check out her quadrilateral collection. (BTW, if you interested in more materials like these, be sure to check out the comments on @k8nowak ‘s post that Lisa linked.)

I know we’re not supposed to have favorites in the #MTBoS, but I do, and @TPalmer207 is one of them. Ever since our TMC14 dash-to-get-cupcakes-before-the-store-closed, her great outlook and humor have always been something I look forward to seeing on Twitter (and in person!). Not only that, but she’s definitely the type of teacher I wish I could be – in the moment, not afraid to try new things, and constantly creating great discussions in her classroom. Check out this gorgeous teacher move of slowly revealing all the information with the absolute twist at the end that no one saw coming (not even Tina!). I know what you’re thinking, sure, everyone gets lucky once in a while, but no, Tina makes her own luck, as you can see in this segment addition postulate lesson.  You know, she only has about 60 posts so if you’re looking for a way to up your teacher game, spend an afternoon reading the entire collection. You won’t be sorry.

Speaking of teacher moves, if you teach ELL students, @heather_kohn is your gal. She is a great advocate of doing what it takes to bring the ELL student up to the goal, instead of lowering the goal down to where they may be now. Her post on scaffolding open response questions will make you rethink how you can help your struggling students (who may or may not be ELL).

Hey, here’s a great teacher move that easy to implement into any lesson on Monday: Ask Me a Question from @dsladkey. It moves the “Do you have any questions” to “What questions do you have” change to a whole new level.

Another one that’s so easy to implement, but can change the whole classroom climate: @a_schindy‘s Nevermind Strategy.

Wait, you want more teacher moves? This next post comes with a warning: This article will lead to great feelings of inadequacy and make you think most of what you’ve created is crap. So if your current mood is: ugh, I suck as a teacher, you might want to skip the @Desmos Guide to Building Great Math Activities. But if you’re feeling pretty good and want to pick up some ideas that will help make your next lesson planning be a little more thoughtful, go read it.

If you did read it (or even if you didn’t) and you’re looking for good examples of rich problems, check out @algebrasfriend‘s Algebra II examples. I LOVE the parabola one!!

Speaking of parabolas, you know function transformation are near and dear to my heart. @jreulbach created a wonderful Desmos marbleslide for them, but the key move here is the creation of an additional real-life worksheet for students to reflect on their learning and can have it for reference. (Also check out her Function Notation QR Stations–great practice problems for something my students always struggled with)

Ok: One more teacher move: let’s make mistakes a starting point for rich discussions. @Dave_Sabol shows how he used the results from a Desmos Activity Builder to decode mistakes in Calculus. (Also I think Dave should be in the SOTW Hall of Fame for his How I Teach series.)

Man, I don’t know about you, but now I’m overwhelmed by all the new teacher moves I’m supposed to be doing. So let’s take a brain break, sponsored by @mathequalslove‘s brainteaser collection.

And then let’s eat our feelings by baking these Salted Caramel Pretzel Crunch Bars from Sally’s Baking Addiction.

Now onto some starred tweets!

For reals, take David’s advice:

Yes, Zippy won (Adorable) Scruffiness of the Week!

Joel’s smartass reply (does he have any other kind?) to the discussion of how to say “apothem”:

Speaking of smartass replies:

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve looked at this tweet and laughed out loud:

I told you Heather has the pro teacher moves:

And speaking of that pause feature:

And other features:

You know I love my shortcuts:

And this one was brand new to me and I’ve used it every day since then!!! I’m even using it RIGHT NOW.

It always warms my heart to know that people enjoy my stuff; especially when it’s someone who has so much great stuff herself!

And when someone uses my suggestion and then the result is heartwarming:

And then when someone uses an idea I had and their students do so much better with it:

Be sure to send some encouragement to Kristin next weekend!

Do I like CalcDave because of his gifs or in spite of them?

Insert picture of two beautiful math teachers here.

Now I know what the first 91 books I buy as a librarian will be.

Genius.

Genius Part II.

Genius Part III.

And I think I’ll let Casey wrap this (extremely long) edition up:

What? I’m not crying. YOU’RE crying.

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Stars of the Week Vol 5 #MTBoSBlaugust #SOTW

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Here are my Stars of the Week–aka favorite posts and tweets! If you’re a #SOTW, grab the badge using the code below if you’d like it for your blog!

Stars of The Week
<div align="center"><a href="http://www.megcraig.org/?p=1378" rel="nofollow" title="Stars of The Week"><img src="http://www.megcraig.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Star-of-the-Week-Badge.jpg" alt="Stars of The Week" style="border: none;" /></a></div>

Remember you can always use the nomination form and I will put it in my next post!

Let’s start with a super happy post from Elissa (@misscalcul8). Sometimes it’s nice to reminded that, yes, this job can sometime rock. And it couldn’t be rocking for a nicer person! I bet making lessons like these is definitely helping the positive trend!

Man, I love books. Beth (@algebrasfriend) was nice enough to share some that are great for any age! (I added The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires because I LOVE reading that book to my classes. Look at this cute video of it!)

E (@cheesemonkeysf) is a pro at turning everything into a good set of Talking Points. Her newest one has the theme of (loosely translated): Keep Calm and Carry On; You Can Do This.

(I never know if I should use someone’s name if they don’t use it on Twitter. Thoughts?)

Pam (@pamjwilson) has a easy way of getting students to slow down and think about graphs.

If you need some logic games, make sure you visit Julie’s (@fractionfanatic) blog. So many good ones that are new to me!

I found Math PD for Substitute Teachers fascinating, both the idea of having PD for that and what Allison (@allison_krasnow) chose to do for it.

Scroll, scroll, scroll and you will see the most genius idea ever from Jennifer (@MrsCookKHS): ZIP TIE PENCIL POUCHES TO DESKS. I feel like it is so genius that everyone must already know it but me.

This has nothing to do with math or school, but it made me laugh. 🙂

And now for some starred tweets:

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Stars of the Week Vol 4 #SOTW #MTBoSBlaugust

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It’s that time again!  Here are my Stars of the Week–aka favorite posts and tweets! If you’re a #SOTW, grab the badge using the code below if you’d like it for your blog!

Stars of The Week
<div align="center"><a href="http://www.megcraig.org/?p=1369" rel="nofollow" title="Stars of The Week"><img src="http://www.megcraig.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Star-of-the-Week-Badge.jpg" alt="Stars of The Week" style="border: none;" /></a></div>

In case you haven’t noticed, I need to branch out more in my reading-I have “only” about 100 math blogs in my reader. My goal is to start clicking on some unknown blogs using  @MTBoS_Blogbot, but of course I can’t read everything that’s out there!  So if you’d like to nominate a post, you can either post on your own blog OR use this handy nomination form and I will put it in my next post!

Greta, @g_brgmn, is someone I want to hang out with more. I love her idea about using the “math about me” numbers later in the year to make kids think she has mind-reading powers! And then she confessed that she’s a font/quote lover like me!

Seriously, have I mentioned how brilliant Dave (@Dave_Sabol) is for starting the “How I Teach” series? Reading Anna’s (@TypeAMathLand) answers makes me want to go back and change mine because hers were so darn good!

Man, Sara Vaughn (@Vaughn_trapped) knocked the wind out of my sails with this post about being intentional. I’ve totally used up my share of miracles, too, Sara. Thanks for being so honest and giving me a much-needed wake-up call!

Two Saras this week! Love the 10 Things Not to Ask Me about Your Calculator from Sara Van Der Werf (@saravdwerf). I’m thinking I need to make one for Google Classroom!

Glenn (@gwaddellnvhs) is going to be so happy that he’s won TWO #SOTW! My goal this year is to find where I’m supposed to be.

Speaking of which, I probably would have starred Desmos’s (@desmos) post announcing their first cohort of Desmos fellows even if my name wasn’t on there. So many MTBoSers! So many rock stars!

Beth (@algebrasfriend) makes me want to DO ALL THE LABS for function exploration. Hey, wait a second…I do have this problem solving course with no set curriculum. That means I get to DO ALL THE LABS!!

Hey, are you following @SheaSerrano on twitter? He’s totally not-math-related but his tweets always make me happy. If you want to be happy as well, you should read his post (“article”) about the US Gymnastics team.

Wait, I bet you didn’t read it, did you? FINE. I will still give you the link from there that is a slow-mo breakdown of Aly’s first tumbling pass. (even though you don’t deserve it since you didn’t go read the original article) (unless you did go read it, in which case you deserve to watch the video again)

You know what else you probably don’t deserve? The best damn news story I’ve read in a while.

But you may have had a long week and maybe have the Sunday Stinkies/Monday Moanings, so you probably deserve some of my favorite tweets!

This is a GREAT cheatsheet for first-time twitter chatters!

And finally, everything about this picture makes me happy. 🙂

 

 

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Stars of the Week Vol 3 #SOTW #MTBoSBlaugust

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Sorry for the delay! I’m going ahead and making my post for the week, even though I still have 60+ posts to read in my reader. You’ll just have to stay tuned to see if there were any stars in those!

And for those of you that are SOTW, feel free to use the code below to grab the badge!

 

Stars of The Week
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Here are some of my favorite posts:

Glenn (@gwaddellnvhs) has achieved his goal of writing a post that was #SOTW-worthy with this awesome collection of MTBoS stuff. BOOKMARK IT NOW to send it to that teacher you meet who hasn’t heard of the MTBoS (or for when you think “who did that thing…?”). I even made a bitly for you: bit.ly/mtbosresources You’re welcome.

Casey (@cmmteach) has been knocking it out of the park with her MTBoS ABC’s. Maybe it’s back-to-school emotions, but her B post made me tear up a little.

Math by the Mountain, WHO ARE YOU?!? I mean, I know you’re @MathByTheMt, but WHO ARE YOU!?! I love her/his (but the font choice makes me want to say her?) justification posters! Wouldn’t it be great to have a wall covered at the end of the year with all the cool stuff you learn in Geometry?  And if you’re an exit slip type of person (or want to be) then this Exit Slip Extravaganza is for you!

So I think maybe I should rename Stars-of-the-week to Sara-of-the-week! This week Sara (@saravdwerf) has updated her math wall of shame  and posted a very cool visual for units. I love her visual course-at-a-glance at the bottom of that post. That would be so much more beneficial than a boring ol’ syllabus or table of contents!

And as if she didn’t have enough awesomeness, she’s now forcing other people to be awesome, too! I can’t WAIT to have my problem solving students make Stephanie’s (@mrswoldum) trig art BUT WITHOUT ALL THE GLITTER. (That was a very cool trick you played on your friend. I should revoke all of your SOTWs just for that.)

This feels a little self-promotional, but I LOVE Dave’s (@Dave_Sabol) idea of a “How I Teach” series! (and it just happens I was the first to volunteer as tribute.)

Hey, let’s give Ali (@AGEiland) a big high-five as she blogs her first week as a teacher! I’d say she picked two very good words.

And to book end Ali’s blog, here’s a great list of 13 Things I Was (and Right) About in My First Year. All of y’all follow the Love, Teach blog, right?

And now for some of my favorite tweets:

Be sure to join in the high-five padlet!!

THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (poster coming soon)

Becca coming to the rescue after NBC made it difficult for me to find a much-needed gif!

And some more gold-medal Olympic tweets:

PUPDATE: My Wall of Cute images were located and then scanned for posterity by Mr Craig.

And I think that is the perfect image to end this post on! Bound forth and be the joyous stars that you are!!

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Stars of The Week Vol 2 #SOTW #MTBoSBlaugust

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Back again for Stars of the Week! I even made a badge you can grab to put on your blog if you’ve been featured!

Stars of The Week
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First off, an apology. In my recent binge-watching post I recommended The Paradise before I finished the second season. Do yourself a favor and stop after the first season. I’d replace that recommendation with Stargate Universe (amazon, hulu) because it is good and you are good and good things should be together.

Now onto my starred posts!

I may be a bit biased, but my favorite new website of the week is Julie’s creation of AlgebraTeen! I’ll share some of the tweets that started it at the bottom of this post, but basically we want to create articles like you might see in Seventeen magazine, but with math. Be sure to read all about its creation and submit your own story idea!

I may also be biased about Heather’s Desmos Professional Development post. I wish I would have had it when I gave some PD in June! (I did learn not to start with awesome Desmos art or else they will become obsessed with it.)

[Side note: The reason I’m biased about the Desmos post is that I found out this week that I won the Desmos Lottery and will be part of their first fellowship cohort! {Funny side note: In this post from last year, I actually wrote, “Now I just need to figure out how I can get a job going around to schools and playing desmos bingo with teachers.” I’m not there yet, but closer! I feel like Chris Pratt predicting he’ll be in Jurassic Park 4!}]

Have you seen Sarah’s collection of Japanese logic puzzles, complete with semi-translations? I’m definitely going to be printing some of these off for 3 days of professional development meetings my own entertainment. I think it would also be great to have a stack of them for kids to pick up after a test.

I still can’t believe Sara VanDerWerf held out on blogging as long as she did when she has so much to say. Be sure to read her moving post on how to deal with the grief of others.

Heather also has a great post about reminding us we teach people.

I love Dave Sabol’s idea of spreading Which One Doesn’t Belong to outside the math classroom! Such an easy thing to implement!

I love it when Elissa reads a book: she gives such detailed notes that I feel like I don’t even have to read it. With Mathematical Mindsets, she even gave a nice summary of actions to take, and many of them are listed under the “easy to implement” column. Pick a few to try this year!

Beth may have retired at the end of the school year, but she has definitely not turned off her teaching brain! Check out her virtual filing cabinets and her five tips for teachers!

Jennifer also provided 5 great tips to read, especially for newbies!

Sarah came up with a genius idea on how to get students talking about awkward group work situations: make them give advice! (I would also love for her to make her students’ responses into an article for AlgebraTeen!)

Speaking of groups, Bonnie has a nice method of making sure all students participate during card sorts.

These chocolate peanut butter snack bars from Sally’s Baking Addiction look super delish. Maybe I’ll try to substitute them for my daily granola bar!

No, this wasn’t from last week but I just relistened to Pam’s video voice-over of her TMC16 talk about self-reflection to get myself geared up for the school year. Hers was one of the sessions I was most disappointed in missing so I am so grateful that she made this for me us!

And now some of my favorite tweets:

This may be my favorite joke ever:

And some of my favorites from #Alg17:

And for those of you (like me!) who are starting back to school this week…the struggle is real.  Good luck!!!

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