Eighteen Days and Counting!

As I mentioned earlier I am starting a new school this fall. The first day for students is August 18th. This will be a completely new experience for me as I will be teaching middle school instead of high school. Also my new gig is at a gifted and talented school private school, which I suspect will be a much different teaching environment from the public schools I have taught at in the past.

Anyway, it is time for me to start considering the norms that I want to establish in my classroom. There are many different things that I need to consider.

• Discipline
• Homework
• Presentation Style
• Organization of Students Work
• Group work
• Seating Chart and Desk Arrangement
• Communication with Parents
• Website
• Grading Structure
• Retesting Policy

I am sure there are others but those are the ones that immediately came to mind. I am going to spend some time the next couple of weeks discussing these topics. Some of them (Discipline, Grading, Retesting) I will delay until I learn more about how the other teachers at my school handle them. I have always thought it was important to try and follow the norms at my school as much as possible.

Per usual I am very interested in what others think of these topics. Check back the next couple of weeks and let me know how you handle these in your classroom. Most of what I do in my room has been stolen from those around me.

Graphing Basics

My plan tomorrow is to work on the discussion for graphing linear equations. I am always amazed at how many of my students are able to graph equations one day and then look at me blank faced the next. When I teach students how to graph from the beginning I emphasize its meaning. Thus I think it is appropriate to spend a considerable amount of time having students graph using T-Charts. Other forms of graphing are important for various reasons, but it is very important for students to view a line as a collection of solutions. In my opinion, the best way to accomplish this is to work with T-charts. Eventually, I teach the intercept method and obviously the slope-intercept method, but conceptually I think it is essential that students have a concrete understanding of the relationship between solutions and a graph.

What are some of your best tips for introducing graphs? I will be talking about slope later on, so I am just looking for ideas about how to graph using T-charts.

Google Knol

Google has jumped head first into the content creation business. There new platform is called Google Knol. It is very similar to squidoo, which I have discussed before and is what most of the sites listed at the right were created with. I decided to created a "knol" on euchre to try it out. The process of creating a "knol" is much easier than creating a squidoo. However, there are a lot less options. If you are a teacher looking to publish something for your class, knol would be a pretty easy place to do it. It will be very interesting to see how the knol project goes. Will google rank its own pages better in its search engine? I haven't decided if I will contribute any math content there or not.

30+ and Counting!!!

My math teaching website is coming along nicely. I have added over thirty resources and have begun to write some of the articles. I am very excited about the site and the relationship this blog is playing in its creation. I know two things for certain about it:

1) I have some good ideas about how to teach Algebra 1.

2) I have SOME good ideas about how to teach Algebra 1.

I definitely know that I don't have all the ideas about teaching Algebra 1. Thus I am very thankful for the contributions of some of the readers of this site. I believe collaboration with other math teachers is the best form of professional development and I appreciate those that are engaging in that with me. It is my goal this blog turns into a community of math teachers discussing very practical means of teaching math.

What's the Function of a Function?

While watching a 53 year old golfer winning the Brittish Open I decided to tackle the discussion on functions. I feel pretty comfortable with how to teach about functions. What has me struggling a little bit is the "why". I understand the value of functions, especially as they relate to Physics. As well, I understand the importance of one-to-one and many-to-one concepts in Abstract Algebra and the importance of domain and range. But my question is:

Why is it important to teach an Algebra 1 student if a relation is a function or not?

Any takers?

Should Teachers Avoid Social Networking Sites?

From 2005-2007 I went to Indiana University as a full-time math graduate student. In the timeline of my life this was 3 years after graduating from the University of Evansville. Thus, I essentially missed out on the Facebook revolution that took over college campuses. However, the majority of my classmates at IU were fresh out of college and were all on Facebook. Accordingl they coerced me into setting me up with an account. During grad school I pretty well ignored it except to use it as a means to identify students that I tutored at IU.

Fast forward to the last two weeks. I figure if I am going to create these resources I might as well try to market them to as many people as possible. Through my research on how to internet market, I was told sites like MySpace and Facebook were usually reccomended as one option. Thus I dove into Facebook and have been an active user the last two weeks. I am very glad I did because I have reconnected with an old college roomate and a friend from Brazil who studied at UE for a semester. Her whole family was at UE that semester and they were some of my favorite people I met at Evansville.

The question I have is what is the appropriate behavior of a teacher on these sites? I am of the inclinationt that I would not accept "friend requests" from students that are currently at my school and would definitely be careful what is posted on my page. It is an interesting question and one that more and more new teachers and schools are going to have to deal with...Let me know what you think.

And and Or

The latest article I have been writing for my website deals with combined inequalities(or compound inequalities). One of the difficulties in teaching this topic is helping students understand conceptually the difference between "and" and "or". I try to accomplish this by developing real world examples. For example I give them the statements such as:

"The sky is blue and the grass is green."

"Peyton Manning is a Colt and a running back."

"Barrack Obama is running for president or he is a math teacher."

I then ask them which of the following are true and why. The goal is to get the students to understand that both statements must be true for an "and" inequality to be true. And that at least one must be true for the "or" inequality to be true.

What are other ways to help students understand combined inequalities?