So I’ve been gone for half the year but now I’m back! Lots of things have happened in the past 6 months. My husband returned home from a year-long deployment to Afghanistan and I've been hanging out with him and our son...making up for lost time. I’ve enjoyed being a family again but I think my son is the happiest---he missed his Daddy! I also just posted my first product...okay 5 of them, on TpT too!!! That's something I've really been looking forward to.
Last school year I taught Algebra I in a 1:1 classroom setting. This means, all my students had individual laptops. Over the summer I taught two-weeks of Summer Bridge- a 4 week session of Algebra concepts to about 40 8th grade students. My class contained only 10 of those students. Summer Bridge caters to incoming freshmen that score below average on their end of year test in math. It’s like a boot camp for math. Students get a crash course on the main concepts of algebra and at the end of the session; they receive a high school elective credit. Great way to meet some of the kids I may have in my class for the upcoming year.
My teaching assignment for this current school year was up in the air until about the last week in July. I started school August 9. Not knowing what I would be teaching that late in the summer didn't do nice things to me...it made me a little anxious and crazy! At the beginning of July, I started planning for Algebra I again, we just adopted new textbooks geared towards Common Core Standards but I was also planning for a new class- Algebra Plus. Algebra Plus is a lower level math class geared to assist struggling students in Math. I taught one class last semester and this year was to be taken along with Algebra I. I requested to teach this class but didn’t know if we would be able to offer it and still have enough sections of Algebra I. I planned for about the first 2 chapters of Algebra I when I received word that Plus would be all mine!! I instantly requested a meeting with my department head to discuss the details of the class. I was told that there would be no homework and everything needed to be hands on—well almost everything. I went home immediately and started some hardcore planning.
I only had a couple weeks before school started but planned for the first two months of school. In the next few posts I will be sharing the preparation I did for the new classroom set-up and different things I incorporated into my curriculum to help out my students with organization and responsibility...two things I know that most freshmen lack knowledge of. I hope you continue to drop in and see what exciting tips, ideas and materials I have started using in my classroom.
It's good to be back!!
