5 Weeks Completed

Wow!! I can't believe I've survived 5 whole weeks teaching. This is crazy! But then again, I feel like I've been doing this for a while now. This week is going to be midterms and Student-Lead Conferences (a different type of Parent-Teacher Conferences). It will be interesting to see how that goes (I'll let you all know next week). But for now, here's an update on the last two weeks:

We've done lots of things and kept on learning more about math, specifically how to solve equations. I've been trying to do some different things with my students, rather than just lecture. One day, we did a rotations activity with the other teachers in my grade. The students had the opportunity to solve equations in different ways. We used a website, an iPad app, and a difficult word problem to help our student practice solving equations in a way that was maybe more fun. I think they enjoyed it for the most part, particularly my station because we were on the iPads and they got a Jolly Rancher when they got Bingo. :)

I taught a lesson on special types of equations (ones with infinitely many solution or no solution, if you know what that means) that really got my students excited. One of the teacher I work with me shared with me how she saw someone else teach it and it is a great way to show this. The students guessed what they thought the answer was to an equation and it turned out that when we tried it, it was a solution! Then we tried other numbers and they kept giving me numbers they wanted to try, thinking they could get one that didn't work, but every number worked! I think they thought it was pretty crazy. (The equation was one that any number was a solution, in other words, had infinitely many solutions.) I'll be teaching this lesson to my regular students tomorrow and I'm nervous to see if they will get as excited about it as the honors students did. 

My honors classes had their first test this past week. They did pretty great. I'm glad to see my and their hard work pay off. It'll be interesting to see what they think when they get them back in a couple of days once I've updated their grades for midterm, but at least I know that I'm doing something right so far since they can pass the test. My regular classes still have about another couple of weeks before they take the test and hopefully they will do well as well. I know most of them are capable and I will continue to keep working with those that need the extra help to be successful. It's so great to be able to help my students and to see their work when they work hard to understand.