Popsicle Stick Math Puzzles

With pre-planning just a couple of days away, I am putting some finishing touches on my summer preparations. I am using choice activities this year as a means to increase small group instruction time, to engage students in learning, and to motivate students to finish their work.

One of my choice activities is popsicle stick math puzzles. These are all over Pinterest. I created a few from Pinterest (with a couple of edits), and then I created a few of my own (shown below). Hopefully this will help you start up centers or choice activities for your own classroom.

Why Middle School Math Centers?

I have been thinking a lot lately about implementing centers in my math support classroom. I have been doing more and more research on the subject to prepare myself for implementing them this next school year. Although I do have a ways to go, here are a few things I have found out.

Retention is a very challenging problem that struggling students face. I saw this every day in math support. We would learn a new concept, and two days later students have already forgotten it. Therefore, we as teachers need to bring up those concepts often and further down the road. Centers can help you do this. For example, if you teach a concept on week one of a unit, on weeks two and three, you can include a center that practices that concept. You can also bring that same center out when you are reviewing for a unit test or for your state's high stakes testing. This teaches students not to brain dump information, because it will pop up again.

Centers is a strategy by which you can gain more small group time with struggling students. While all other students are busy practicing concepts in centers, you can pull 3-4 students aside for small group instruction. You can use any number of strategies for your small groups time, and you can pull students out for remediation or acceleration.

Centers build responsible people. During centers time, students will have to learn to rely on themselves or a partner because you will be busy doing small groups. They will have to pay attention to directions, remember directions, and find a buddy that they can ask for help.

Planning for Next School Year

With my first year of teaching behind me, I am always thinking about what I am going to do next year. I know that I still have a month and a half or so before pre-planning, but I still wanna get a jump start on planning. I don't want to spend evenings trapped at my teacher desk wishing that I could go home.

So I am going to "pay now, play later" as the saying goes. 

Here's a little look into what I am working on this summer.

After filling in the time frame (at the top), the standards , and making my learning targets (first column) I can focus on finding resources. When I find something that would help achieve a particular learning target, I will put it in one of the other columns depending what type of resource it is. Notice I do have TPT as one of my resource types. As a first year teacher, I LIVED off of TPT. I was told going through college that your first year teaching you will have to beg, borrow, and steal lessons. Although stealing is an extreme word for it, they really weren't kidding. I spent so much time and money on TPT this past year. At least I got a lot of TPT store credits for providing feedback, and I will have those resources for the years to come.

Why am I doing this?

First of all, it's important to establish goals. That's where the learning targets come in. Yes, the regular math teachers in the building have to come up with learning targets during common planning, and I could totally use theirs. However, as a math support teacher, I need to have my own learning goals that focus on the needs of my students. Creating goals is always step number one when you want to achieve something great.
Secondly, planning for three different grade levels is an insane task in itself. With this chart already filled in, I can simply go to the learning target that we are about to start and look at the resources that I have to teach that specific concept. I don't have to look in books, browse websites, etc to find what I'm looking for. I will already have the specific page number, url, etc right there in the chart. Then I can just come up with a warm up, opening, and closing.

Then the lesson is done!

Next Year's Reward System

With this past year's mistakes fresh in my mind, I am thinking about what to do next year for a reward system. After talking with other teachers about what types of reward systems work for them, and asking other adults which reward systems really stuck with them when they were young... I saw a common denominator.

The ticket system/point system kept popping up in peoples' answers. So this year, I think I am going to try this system. Here's what I came up with --

For every week, students can reach up to 10 points for good behavior. I made a list of common good behaviors that I will be looking for such as: turning in work, attendance, not getting on my consequences list, and making good grades on assignments. I thought I'd focus on turning in work and having a good work ethic as I am teaching math support again this year. I really need to nurture the basics in math support. Students may also loose all of their points by going to ISS or OSS for any reason.

I am going to have a tiered reward system. The students will turn in their points for rewards in one of two boxes. One box will be worth 20 points, and the other will be worth 40 points. I am thinking that rewards in the 20 point box should cost no more than a dollar, whereas rewards in the 40 point box can cost anything between $1 and $3. Some rewards will be free as well. Laminated tickets that say "pick your seat for one class period" or "use your phone for one class period" will work well. I know that I need to make my rewards more appealing to the middle level students, and that will be the challenging part.

Also, keeping up with the point system will be difficult. At the moment, I am thinking of keeping a tally on a clipboard. I can just use my roster sheets to keep up with the tally. Then at the end of the week, I can add the students' tallies up and give out 10 point tickets. The students will be responsible for keeping up with their tickets. This teaches them a little bit of responsibility too. If they want something, they've gotta work for it, and keep up with the money or paperwork to get it.

I don't have everything worked out yet, but I do have a whole summer to think about it.

If you have any suggestions to add to this reward system, or any experience with this type of reward system please leave a comment.

Live and Learn - Reward System

So this past year, I tried 2 different reward systems. They both flopped. 

As a math support teacher, I was met with a wide range of discipline problems in all of my 6 classes. Dealing with that as a new teacher was rather difficult, so I enlisted some help from my principal. I went to her a few times and asked what I could do better as far as classroom management goes. She suggested a reward system.

The next weekend, I went to the store and bought some little pebbles. You know, like the kind you put in a fish tank. I got little containers and marked a line on each of them, one for each class. I decided that if the class did well, they would get points for the day. When they filled up the container to the line, they would get a whole class reward.
  

There were a couple of issues with this reward system. For one, I kept forgetting to give points to classes on a daily basis. The second, I didn't have a standard number or goal for a certain amount of points. I was just kinda putting them in based on how I felt the class went. Three, it took my classes a looooong time to fill the containers up because of their difficulties in the behavior department. Four, the students soon became disenchanted because one or two students would ruin the reward for the whole class.

With all that being said, one event put the icing on the cake. This showed me that my first choice in a reward system was pretty terrible. One day, my principal came to me with one of my little pebbles in hand. She told me that I had to get rid of the reward system because of an incident in the building involving my students and the pebbles. Apparently, one of my students had stolen a big handful of the pebbles the previous day. He brought them to school in his pocket the next day and gave them out to his friends. His friends preceded to throw them at each other right before the bell rang for the school day to start. At the time, all of the students were in the gym or getting breakfast. One of the pebbles just happened to hit a girl right beside the eye. 

Needless to say, the students involved were punished, and I took my pebbles home that very afternoon. 

After that, I tried ClassDojo. I thought that giving rewards on an individual basis would be a good change, and no one would get hurt. However, I just could not find time to keep up with giving and taking away points in the middle of class. ClassDojo is very wonderful if you have a tablet connected to the Smartboard. Then you can give or take away points during class, and students can see who needs to keep their behavior in check. However, I do not have this in my classroom and it just didn't work for me.

This year was very much so a lesson learned. 

Current Sewing Projects (As of 5/30)

This is a daisy quilt top that is currently sitting on my work station (the dinning room table). I have been working on it since the latter part of 2014. It is almost impossible to find time during the school year for hobbies! I hope to finish it this summer though.

I have 14, 1 ft blocks done!

This second quilt is in its final stages. I finished the quilt top some time ago, and put it aside for my busy schedule. I am excited to get back to it as it will be a present for my sister when it is finished. 

He must approve of every project.

Lastly, I have an idea for an ocean inspired quilt. I plan on making this for myself. It's weird how when you craft, you usually think of making something for yourself last. At least, that's what I tend to do. It is going to be pieced in an arrow head pattern. I do not have pictures as of yet, but I will post them when I get started on this quilt. Right now I am still collecting fabrics for it.

Live and Learn - Beware a Pretty Room

This past year, I definitely think I focused on the wrong things during pre-planning. One of which was the way my classroom looked. Don't get me wrong, it's a good idea to make you and your students feel at home in your classroom by decorating and rearranging. However, "nesting" should not be your first concern. I learned this the hard way.

I had a beautiful room that I was very proud of during open house and on the first day of school. However, after I got home from my first day of school (in tears might I add) I realized that I was no where near prepared for what I had gotten myself into.

My students were completely different from what I was expecting. You see, I moved 2 hours away from home for this job. You know how the job market is for new teachers.. I had no idea that the culture would be completely different at this school. I lived in a small town in Georgia, and I was teaching at a small town in Georgia. I thought my students and I would have some similar backgrounds and thoughts. Not at all.

I also wasn't prepared for the level at which my students were at. I was told during my interview that I was teaching Math Support. My classes would consist of students who did not pass the math portion of the standardized test for Georgia. I knew going into this position that I needed to support my students at their learning level. I was not told however, about the students' discipline problems. It seems, low achievement and discipline problems are a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" type situation. Some students misbehave in order to "look cool" or to get out of doing the work when they cannot do the math. Others can't do the math because they have been busy misbehaving instead of learning. Either way, on the first day of school, I found out that my classroom management was not tight enough.

Here are a 3 things that I should have done before focusing on decorations:

Ask the hard questions - Don't be blindly happy about getting your first job, or that dream job you have always wanted. Ask your principal the hard questions. If you think your principal is sending sunshine up your skirt, then ask someone down the hall from you.

• What kind of issues did the last teacher encounter in this position?
• What types of difficulties do you think I will encounter in this position?
• How can I combat these difficulties or issues?

Plan, plan, plan for the worst case scenario - This is self explanatory. Plan like your students know absolutely nothing about school behavior and classroom procedures. If you assume.. you know that saying.
Start off strict - This is the one piece of advice that I swear every teacher in the building gave me after I started off my year the wrong way. They always said something along the lines of "start off with the brakes on, and you can let off as the year goes by."