Well hello self!!

It has been awhile since I wrote to this blog.  It seems fitting that the probability of anyone reading this sits at around 0% as it will be as if I'm writing to myself.  The odd thing is, I am. 

Last spring, when I was beginning my program to earn my teaching certificate, our instructor encouraged us to write a letter to ourselves that we would read upon graduation.  We did, and I did (just graduate)!  Wow, am I a good motivational speaker to myself.  I mean, if I could call myself up and take me out to dinner and a movie, it would be do on!  It is bitter sweet that the program has ended as I am forced to say goodbye to so many great people and turn to face the future with what feels like no one else.  Then I came along. 
Our instructor handed the letters back to us a couple of weeks ago but I didn't want to open it.  For some reason I just felt it wasn't the right time.  Well, here I am out on my own looking for that first elusive job.  Still volunteering in any classroom that will take me, and beginning a summer job teaching sports classes in local summer camps.  It feels so great to get going, but I feel so.....alone.  Today, things began to teeter on the side of "too much".  Today, I realized that I have been going nonstop for the past 4 months with nary a chance to even say "What's new" to my own wife.  Today, I realized that after all the school work, the experience, and the knowledge I've gained....$15/hr is my value.  Today the workload vs. cost to my health balance tipped over on the side of workload.   Today, for the first time in 15 months, the thought went through my head that I might have made a huge mistake leaving a good paying job to jump into teaching.  Then I saw my letter sticking out of my bag, begging me to open it. 

It was obvious I knew myself pretty well as I envisioned what might occur almost to a tee.  Then I offered myself words of encouragement, and even some much needed advice.  Then I read the line, "Trust yourself.  Something good comes from everything you are a part of.  Look carefully at what is around you...and be surprised at what is there".  If you ever wanted to see a grown man tear up, this was your chance.  It couldn't have come at a better time and it couldn't have meant more to me.  It will help set the ball back on the right track moving towards the ultimate goal....getting as much out of life that one can possibly squeeze.  Was I surprised at what was there?  Yes, and I smile every time I think about it. 

I turned to myself, whispered, "Thanks self", and then gave myself a big hug.  I knew exactly what I was going to blog about next. 


Cheerio!!

Xtra Xtra....read all about it

In the spirit of finding ways to keep people busy while I get things done I need to get done, let me introduce you to my friends Xtra, Hooda, and Dr. Daniels.

Xtra is the nickname I gave to www.xtramath.org because of its ability to consume my students attn on trying to beat their best time......at solving math problems.  Not the complex word problem math problems, but basic math arithmetic math problems.  They "graduate" from addition, to subtraction, and so on until they can bust out 12*12 in under 3 seconds flat.  They even get a certificate that I can laminate and give to them to take home.  Oddly enough, they love it!  Thanks Xtra, you are the best.

Just when I think I have enough math friends, along comes www.Hoodamath.com.  This site is torn from the same cloth as Xtra, but it has an added feature that connects all male adolescents together....video games.  Racing games, logic, games, even numbers games.  For example, in one of the car racing games, you get a boost of speed propelling you down the racecourse WHEN YOU SOLVE A MATH PROBLEM CORRECT.  8*7, 11*4, 13*7, 24/3, and so on.  Not only that....they get to play against each other!  Up to four players can join the same game and play against each other as they all solve math problems.  All of this to simply gloat about being the faster driver.  Yup, the byproduct is quick arithmetic and happy students.  Now I'll buy that for a dollar!

Stephano!!!  He's from right here in Seattle and somehow he is still on the show.  It must stink to be a young male in America where you are adored by 5 million screaming teenagers....well maybe not stink.  Maybe deafening.  For now, go Stephano.



Out track season started tonight for our elementary track team.  The track was dry but I lost 20% of the team to twisted ankles when I had then cut across the field to get to the long jump pit and found out all the rain we've been getting has turned the field into a mud pit.  Oops.  I told them to put some dirt on it, suck it up and be men!  The 4th grade girls began to cry.  Go team!

Y'all know Dr. Daniels.  No need to dig deeper into that one.

Cheerio

Human Planet

BBC has done it again.  The British television conglomerate produces some of the best trailers in the business.  Their upcoming mini-series "Human Planet" is sure to get many viewers based solely on this absolutely beautiful web-trailer.  Enjoy....then watch it.  It is our world after all!!



I encourage everyone who has a child or student in their lives to sign them up for (FREE) www.xtramath.org.  This site takes the basics of math and pounds it into a child's head in a way that feels like they are playing a game, even though they are being told they are taking tests!  Smooth slight of hand on the part of the website.  Check it out as we'll be using it in our class to help the struggling students have some fun while memorizing the basics (4+5, 7*8, 18/6, etc).


That is all for tonight.  Lesson planning and staring aimlessly at my wall are taking up all my energy. 

Cheerio



Friday? The people say "NO"

12 hours ago I had never heard of Rebecca Black. 7 days ago NO ONE had ever heard of Rebecca Black. Now over 71,000,000 people know first hand what gossip and YouTube can do to spread the word. Now if they could only work in tandem to cure a disease!

This song is auto tuned to the hilt, has some of the worst lyrics in the history of music, and doesn't make much sense. It doesn't take too long for people to respond in truly creative ways. Click here for a parody called Fried Eggs. Be prepared to sound hip with your students on this one.

Things to be aware of as April rolls around:

1) April Fools day is tomorrow!  To help get into the spirit check out this list of simple gags you can pull on your teacher or friends. The nice thing....no one gets hurt....too bad. Thanks Kidz!

2) Baseball is here!! Sports Illustrated has just declared my Mariners are going to lose only 99 games this year. I'm totally stoked as this means they are getting better....? Ouch. Luckily there are only 162 games in a season.

3) Upgrade your computer! I just spent two hours adding 3GB of RAM to my computer, a second DVD burner, a TB Internal HD, and a software upgrade to Windows 7. If you really want to feel like you've accomplished something simply open the case to your computer and put it back together. That in itself is quite a task (but don't forget to vacuum it out while you are looking at it). I ordered the holy grail of Adobe products and it supposedly arrives in the mail tomorrow (Friday, Friday, Partying, Partying yeah!). I feel like a kid waiting for Santa by the Xmas tree. When the UPS guy gets here tomorrow I'm sooo going to give him a big hug. Premiere Pro 5 here I come....or jail if the UPS person presses charges.

4) What do light, algebraic math equations, "The Giver", persuasive writing, and GIMP all have in common? Common, try again. I know you can figure this one out....try one more time. Alright fine, all of these will be subject matter I'll be teaching this spring. I'm pretty stoked as I've always wanted to teach kids how to GIMP....that totally didn't sound right. Check it out though as GIMP is a free "Image Manipulation Program" from Gnu....hence GIMP, that you can have your students use in the classroom to produce some pretty sweet art. "Bring out the GIMP!" http://www.gimp.org/

5) My school is AWESOME! We raised over $2000 for the people of Japan. I saw a 1st grader bring in 6 pounds of pennies and nickels to donate to the fund. As someone who used to work in fundraising, I can tell you seeing people come together to work toward one common goal is one of the best human emotions one can feel. So why can't the Mariners or Seahawks take a note from that little 1st grader?

That's all for now folks.

	"I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car." Cheerio

A New Hope

It doesn't take long when you realize things are out of balance that things tend to balance themselves out. For me it was simple. Get the college classes over with and get back in the classroom....it took two days of being with my 6th grade class to get me back to being more like myself. Yup, there is nothing like college course work to take the life out of you. Although my ramblings from last blog weren't for not; I was right in noticing that I had been replacing school work with keeping in touch with people around me.  Coming to this realization is great for me, but it comes with a sense of hesitation as I am about to embark on the journey that is the "student teacher".  I will learn why teachers get so frustrated with the system they work inside of and why they feel so taken advantage of as workers in our society.  Tonight I list out the top 10 things that I look forward to discovering during my days as a student teacher.  Ladies and gents.....LETS BLOG!!

1)  When do we get a chance to prepare?  Teachers have 6 and a half hours of teaching each day and probably 30min - 1 hour of meetings on top of that.  I know that I have spent three hours brushing up on my "rock cycle" knowledge this weekend while planning a lesson for Monday afternoon.  I know that I'll also put in  a couple hours planning for a math lesson on writing equations using variables.  There is a 100% chance that I'll put in over 5 hours of work for two of the 6 classes on Monday.  Then I will have to do the same for Tuesday....and Wed.....and Thurs.......oh yeah and Friday.  I might as well think about reading and writing, maybe some Social Studies....and also art.  Because we all know art projects take little to no planning.......right?  This time is spent planning assuming everything will go just fine....then little Timmy scraps his arm and starts crying in the middle of class, or the secretary calls 10 people from your class back down to the lunchroom because they didn't clean up properly.  20 minutes I loose in the classroom......and people say teachers get paid too much?  $30,000/year to work 80 hour weeks AND be told by society that I'm not doing good enough?  Now I'm griping, but it doesn't seem fair. 

2)     How to create a classroom library.  I definitely don't want a generic cart of books in my class with Beverly Cleary and the like.  But I do want books kids like to read.  I think I'll create a list of books students have already read (outside of school) and see which ones show up the most.  Then I'll go get those books.  Seems easy....but I doubt it will be.

3)  Bored are you?  I've always thought of myself as a laid back, and somewhat humorous and entertaining person.  I've taught about 15 lessons so far to the students and it come across dry and boring.....it is weird, but somehow I need to discover how to bring myself into each and every lesson.  I might just speak all day in the voice of Alex Trebek....maybe not.

4)  Field Trips!  Holy responsibility Batman.  You take on millions of dollars in liability every time you take your kids outside the walls of your institution.  Why on earth would anyone take that risk for a couple hours at the zoo, aquarium, or Old Country Buffet?  What? 



5)  How much weight will I gain?  Knowing the amount of hours I'm about to spend planning out lessons (notice I haven't mentioned grading yet?), it is clear I will be about 50 - 70% less active than what I had been up to that point.  This should in fact have a direct impact on the amount of pounds I weight here on earth.  I say 24 lb increase.  I guess you'll just have to trust me on this.

6)  How sick will I get?  They say your first year in the classroom is the worst when it comes to illnesses, but I've been lucky thus far in that I have yet to gain any illness over the course of 8 months in the classroom.  We'll see now that it comes to 8 hours a day in front of the little rowdiness makers.  I guess that would give me more time to plan:)

7)  Can I get 30 students to do what I want?  This I can't wait to discover.  So far it is hit and miss.  If I can find something that I know they want (B-Ball game at recess) then it is easier.  But when I'm struggling to keep their attention on a lesson that I spent hours putting together, the last thing on my mind is what can I hang over their heads".

8)  How much music/video production will I be able to accomplish?  I want to produce something that I can take with me to show that they had a great time and got something out of the time they spent with me as a teacher.  School districts are pretty strict with what they allow and don't allow when it comes to capturing students on film in any way shape or form. 

9)  Will I eat lunch in the teacher's lounge?  This is the age ol question for teachers.  The conversation in the fabled lounge has a 97% chance of sounding intensely negative as the words "Shafted and screwed" seem to find their way into every sentence uttered within the confines of the room.  It will be fun to walk in, hear this and simply start whistling Uncle Remus toons, but as of now I figure no one would notice.

10)  Will I be the teacher I saw myself being two years ago?  This is a touch one as I saw myself teaching students how to be happy in the life they find themselves living right now.  I have become learned in the politics, the curriculum, and the bureaucracy of teaching, and it isn't pretty as teachers truly are treated with little respect by the districts that support them and the parents that depend on them.  I recognize all of this going into it so I can only do my best to stick to my guns and make sure I'm doing what I want to be doing in the classroom.  Afterall, that's what I'm planning to teach my students!!

Joke of the day:

Teacher: I told you to stand at the end of the line?
Pupil: I tried, but there was someone already there!   

Cheerio

Point Break



Besides being one of the most defining movies of my teenage years, the movie above also describes the overwhelming feeling of this moment, right here, right now.  Today I finished the college coursework for my teaching certificate...today I leave college classes behind and begin full time student teaching.  I walked out of my last class today and the weight of the world seemed to hit me like a ton of bricks. 

I hear stories of my classmates achieving great successes, and yet melting down.  I see news reports of state budget cuts that will cut education spending more than ever before.  I feel the pressure of expectation.  I taste the dry mouth of trepidation as I prepare myself to finally move forward.  I smell the uneasy aroma of frayed nerves. 

My senses have always led me in the right direction, so why do I stress?  Why do I have more questions than answers?  Why is it so hard to stick to the beliefs that led me to the place where I currently reside?  I sit on the precipice of Point Break; a defining movie of years past....a defining moment for me now.    

I have my pals Raef Esquith and Lawrence Kolberg.  I have my friends the six strands, Bloom's taxonomy, and ol man Piaget.  I have my stalwart Reggie Routman.  I have the best 36 cohort members in the world to lean on; and I have a family who needs me home.  I have this blog to post my thoughts as fast as my brain can produce them.  I have a Master Teacher who is tops in the business.  I have musicians that play guitar with me whenever I get the feeling.  I have a lot of resources at my disposal..........but something is missing.

In all the hubbub, business, chaos, and school work that was the past 6 months, the compass that was guiding my path began to veer off course.  My instincts, my senses, seemed to waiver in their effectiveness.  Things that had once come easy to me now were misfiring all around me.  I plowed on believing it was just a funk; that I would break out of it if I could just make it over the next dune.  School work began to suffer, my health began to suffer, and most importantly, my relationships began to suffer.  It is at this point where I wish I could close my eyes and wake up to see my own Vanilla Sky.

At what point did I transition from the confident person who knew what he wanted in life to the person who seemed to not be able to make a decision to save his life?  Unlike the movie Vanilla Sky, I am able to go back in time and relive the past as reality....not in a planned out dream.  

So, as an aspiring amateur movie producer, I declare what hit me earlier today might have been the weight of the world, or it might have been my senses recalibrating the priorities of my life.  To me, seeing the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" when I was 10 years old set the tone for how I was going to live my life.  "No man is a failure who has friends!"  Plain and simple....RELATIONSHIPS are priority one.  I let myself believe that school was more important than the people in my life, and I don't plan to continue in this false reality.

It seemed so simple when we were growing up.  When you met someone that laughed at the same things you did, enjoyed the same experiences you did, and thought about life the same way you did; you became friends!  When you are all grown up responsibility clouds these possibilities.  We become afraid of losing what we think we have instead of gaining what we know is real.  In movies and books it is called "following your heart".  I call it trusting your senses and doing what brings happiness to your heart. 

Thanks Blog.  I think I know what to do now.

The purpose of this blog was to recenter, refocus, re-align, recalibrate, whatever you wish to call it.  I feel like I know the people I want in my life and I know the relationships I want to cultivate.  I also know that I will have the chance to make a HUGE difference in the lives of 31 lucky students in the very near future.  I am getting a second chance at this, there's not a chance in H-E- Double Hockeysticks I'm going to lose this opportunity.  Point Break?  Condition Clear!!

Cheerio

Bye Bye iPOD Touch.....Buh Bye

After using this revolutionary device for the past three months in the classroom, I'm not convinced it will be the most efficient method of increasing technology awareness in the classroom.  My opinion was pushed towards this frame of mind when each student in my class received a Netbook (from a district grant) allowing them access to a personal computer throughout the day.  Immediately we started doing art, math, social studies, and even reading right there on the computers.  It seemed so easy to integrate school work onto a netbook as most kids were used to how the software worked.  It wasn't so easy getting kids used to the iTouch.  With that in mind I doubled my efforts over the last two weeks to see if I could find any other uses for this grand device.  Here's my list:

• Voice recorder to build a story.  Get a pupil to record the first line of a story, pass it to the next pupil to listen to and add to, continue with each pupil adding a part until the story is complete. 
• Collect Data With Google Forms
• Create a Google Form and email it to your iPod Touch. When you click the link, it will take you to the Form formatted for the Touch, with multiple choice scroll menus, text boxes, etc. Use the Touch as a handheld data collection device that automatically populates a spreadsheet with your data.
• Conduct Assessments with online Polls
• Using Poll Everywhere students can access polls online and vote for the correct answer. Poll everywhere is FREE for up to 30 users per poll. Additional users can be added at a fee.  Using Assessment Apps like qWhiz, ResponseWare, Teachers Pick, iResponse that work like traditional clickers.
• Probability and Percentages
• Install the free app "iChoose", which has coin toss, dice, cards and other options for random outcomes.  Students play for a fixed time and tally their results. They then calculate the percentage of each outcome using the iPod calculator and compare their results with the whole class data, to show after many trials experimental data approaches theoretical probability.

This was assembled from several online sources.  I was curious to try a couple of them with my class, starting with the online poll.  It seemed easy enough, but unless you had 30 iTouches, it was going to be cumbersome handing the device around so everyone could be polled.  One thing I was able to do is get a group of ten students together and have them use the voice recorder to build a story.  It started out slow but when we played the story back they all got excited to hear their voices.  Of course, they wanted to do it again, and again.  Some of the stories were quite creative, it reminded me of  Mad Libs when I was a little tike. 

In the end, if a classroom has a chance to get a device in the hands of each student then by all means make it happen.  ESPECIALLY if they come in conjunction with a netbook.  The possibilities of increasing a students organizational skills with a netbook and a portable device would be huge....assuming of course they have been given strict expectations about what they are for and how they are to use them.

I very much appreciate the chance to play around with the IPOD Touch, and I will certainly miss the little bugger!!

Cheerio

The All Important "What did I learn" Post

Before I get started I'd like to say that our professor this quarter was one in a million.....no a billion!  She waxed poetic about what life will be like for us in the classroom, she gave motivational speeches with passion, and she used playing cards in class.  Now, to me, this is a world class educator with nary a selfish bone in her body.  Most importantly though she held her ground against one of the largest cohorts that has come through the system in a long while...and even got us to be quiet a couple of times.

So what did I learn this quarter? 

Well, the most important thing I learned with math is to stick with it.  For me, teaching it was the tough part.  I spent two weeks teaching math to my 6th grade class and they felt more confused after my teaching than before.  Here we are at the end of the quarter and I've been banned from ever teaching math again in that classroom.....wait, that was just what I thought was going to happen.  The truth is I talked to the kids about some of the things I was learning in our college math class, such as Miras, and the awesome website gapminder.com.  They realized I actually know what I'm talking about, and sure enough they began to listen.  With the gapminder discussion we were able to pull some data from one of the graphs and the students were able to come up with their own thoughts about what the numbers meant.  It was a treat watching them use their life experience to wonder what might be going on around the world.

On that note (cool things), we learned a plethora of neat tools that will help us in the classroom:

• Gapminder and Miras have already been mentioned
• The Data and Story Library
• This awesome website is used in conjunction with another piece of graphing software we were introduced to called Fathom.  It is pricey, but the students get to use a virtual manipulative concerning shapes of all sizes and forms.
• Tangrams!!  These little buggers cause a good size headache one afternoon as I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to make a square out of a bunch of other shapes.  It was like in Apollo 13 when Ed Harris said "I suggest you gentleman invent a way to put a square peg in a round hole": 

To make it worse we then were asked to make a dinosaur out of the shapes.  Yes, based on the trouble we 37 adults had putting it together, I think it is fair to say middle school students will have just as much of a challenge. 
• Tinker Plots:  More headaches waiting to happen, but this time virtually.
• wolframalpha.com:  I told several teachers about this math information site and all had the same reaction, "I don't want the kids getting the answers".  It is a great check up for them, and quite a learning tool if you can make sure they understand that the numbers are just answers, but ideas.

We did read a bunch of articles to help us think about how students see math in our classrooms and like the psychologist I will never become, I was intrigued most by an article we read late in the quarter dealing with how students see mathematics.  One option was that students feel they must be "obedient" to math as the rules are not to be tampered with.  You could make the case 10 + 10 is always 20 in our realistic world.  But you sure can confuse a computer programmer with that speak as they are used to base 2.  The main idea I took from the piece is that students who fell obedient to math are almost certain to steer clear of it after they graduate.  These could be students with phenomenal math brains who are stuck thinking math has reached its limits.  They know all the rules by heart now so what is going to be exciting about a career in math?  This idea made sense and basically yields us as teachers to prepare ourselves to show our students that math is dynamic and can be used to solve a lot of the worlds problems.

Now if it could only solve the problem of my grades and West-E Test scores.  Oh yeah, I get to do that!

Thanks for the great quarter.

Wolframalpha said what?

What did I learn today?  The real question is what DIDN'T I learn today.......actually no, let's stick with the original question.

1)  Do you ever feel like you want your grade school students to organize data for you and then organize it again....and then present it for you?  Well you are in luck because there is something called Tinker Plots that allows students to take data sets from almost everything in the world (We studied size, weight, color, etc, of cats).  You can plot it out on graphs in any way you see fit.  Classroom wise this provides a visual for organizing data on a graph.  Pros:  It is awesome.  Cons:  It costs $$.   Booooooo!

2)  Geometry riddles.  Our teacher simply handed us a piece of paper and said go.  It reminded me of a time when I was in 4th grade and our teacher handed out a sheet with 20 items on it with the instructions "Please read through all of them before you begin".  Of course I didn't read through them all because some of the items on the list were pretty fun...like jump up and down while you say the alphabet, or create a collage out of 5 magazine pics.  It felt like a really creative use of time.  Then I got to #20 which said "This was a test to see if you read all 20 before you began.  Please sit quietly and watch the show".  Let's just say it left a mark in my memory.
     Anyhoo, this geometry piece of paper listed out about 7 characteristics of a shape.  Our job was to go through each one of them and figure out what shape it was referring to.  In the time before technology this was a method of getting the kids to understand how to work with information about different shapes.
      It brought up the question of whether a teacher would drop something like this on the students BEFORE or AFTER he/she taught the lesson.  I would push for before as the activity would give you a great idea about what the kids already know about geometry AND it would get them thinking about it.  As long as the teacher followed it up immediately with the answers to the riddle the engaged student would be ready and waiting for the main idea behind the riddle.  The disengaged student usually becomes engaged when the answers are being given.

3)  Wolframalpha.com!!  I'm amazed I hadn't heard of this thing before as it is like wikipedia for math.  You type in a math equation and it spits out algorithms, graphs, formulas, and more helping you understand what math lies behind the problem.  Chemistry?  Heck yes.  Type in H20 and you get all the information you ever wanted to know.  Cool site....and it is free!!

4)  An article we read brought up the question of what "personality of math" do we want our students to have.  It broke the groups into three parts, creative, obedient, and social.  I was intrigued at the claim that "obedient" math personalities (ones who see math as a set of rules that must be followed at all times) tend to understand math but rarely pursue further education in math.  It makes sense as they see no further to go once they understand all the rules.  I really enjoyed the social personality because it hinged on one of my core believes that students learn best when they are teaching the subject themselves.  If they have to talk through a topic with others then they are learning it.  By the nature of being social, they have to be creative in how they get their message across.  Therefore a combination of a socially creative math personality is where I think I would push my students to go once I fit myself into a classroom!

5)  Constant rate of change:  No matter what you use to measure one item.  The proportion will always be the same.  You are measuring the same thing so whether you use fingernails, spoons, or chipmunks to measure an item, the rate of change (slope of the line) will always measure up to be the same.

Cheerio

Can't seem to finish that bite?

This blog is written for anyone that needs to calm down and chill. You realize you have bitten off more than you are comfortable chewing, but you need to finish the bite because it tastes so good. The muscles around your jaw are beginning to tire, just like when you accidentally took too much Raisin Bran as a kid, and you need support to get through your bite. Well ladies and gentleman, today is your lucky day as you will read about ways to chill without even leaving the compass of your own house. Let's Blog!!

5 Things you can do to chill!!

Click Here for today's soundtrack

1) Vicci Martinez - A Seattle native who's songs scream "Chill out man!!"  She plays bars and pubs across the state all year long, has opened for musicians such as Sting, and is pretty darn chill herself!

http://www.viccimartinez.com/

2)  Drive to Portland - IFC launched this new series recently about a little city south of here where "young people go to retire".  Hilarious!

 

3)  Get Smart!  The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit educational organization created by Salman Khan. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the Academy supplies a free online collection of over 2,000 videos on mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and economics. (Wikipedia).  Anything you have ever wanted to know about anything...maybe even how to manage your time and priorities better...hmmmmmm.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

4)  Speaking of Probability - We've all heard of "Let's Make a Deal", but did we know that behind door # 4 was math?  Heck no...but after seeing this I've seen the light, will always choose to swap.....AND realize my brain is not focused on chewing the bite, helping my muscles feel better.  It is called the Monty Hall Problem...named after the host of the aforementioned TV Show.



5)  A Quick way to calm your brain is Ice Cream....specifically Safeway Select French Salted Caramel Ice Cream.  The stuff has over 230 calories per serving but it delivers a taste explosion like nothing you have ever had in your mouth...plus it'll cool your muscles as you continue to work on your bite.



BONUS - Write a Blog.  When you find yourself feeling overwhelmed because your bite was more cumbersome that you first thought, write down your thoughts SOMEWHERE.  Whether it be on the Internet, on your home computer, in a notebook, of your dearest diary.  Get the ideas clouding your brain out of there and throw in some Vicci Martinex, Colbie Callait, or even some of the new Metallica songs (they totally sold out). 

Funny for the day:

"Tell me" said the tourist to the local yokel. "Will this path take me to the main road?"

"No sir!", replied the man. "You'll have to go by yourself!" 

Cheerio

I'm touching my ITouch, and I like it!

We've been using the Apple ITouch for the past month with students in our classes as well as at home trying to see how we could make its brand of technology useful in the classroom.  Originally I had kept my focus limited to just that, in the classroom.  I was looking at math apps, science apps, even spelling apps while thinking linearly about how I would have students play them in the classroom.  Over the past month I've been introduced to Google Earth on the ITouch, a NASA app that lets you follow space missions, and a game titled "The Oregon Trail".  I've started thinking about how the class as a whole could benefit from having just one of these things around.  If I end up in a 5th grade classroom discussing U.S. History then Oregon trail becomes part of my unit plan., if I even mention the planets, the moon, or any other astronomy topic then the NASA app has something to offer.

The fact that this device has inspired so many people to write so many programs (apps) that there is pretty much something for everyone at this point.  I know I am still just breaking the ice with what teachers can do with technology and I am glad that my school has decided to use these devices. 

Literacy Blog Analysis Continued

Part of my Literacy class is to spend some time getting to know the reading and writing capabilities of a 4^th grader.  I have been able to sit with my 4^th grade student now for three 30 minute sessions where I have been able to gather a fair amount of data on this topic.  The following is my analysis thus far:

What have I learned about my buddy’s needs?

In the first meeting we focused on writing, spelling, and words.  He showed he was average for a 4^th grader in his capability to spell and read words based on the “Spelling Inventory” but his writing samples proved he misspelled about 15% of the words on the page.  His penmanship was lacking in the traditional sense.  I noticed his writing was “hurried but artsy”.  With this in mind I ask that my student’s first need, SLOW DOWN, come on down!!  He gets so focused on the idea in his head that he seems to want to get it on paper very fast.  His penmanship suffers and so does his spelling.

What have I learned about his interests?

Designing cars, eating pizza, and talking about being creative top the list for my student.  In fact, when I needed a new writing sample from him I asked him to write me a paragraph about what he will be like when he is older he wrote down many details of how he will design cars with his neighbor.  In terms of books, he doesn’t have much interest in reading itself as writing and being creative seem to cause his face to light up with more energy.  I brought in “The Little Prince” for him to read and he said he liked the story, but his energy wasn’t matching his words.  My student, in a nutshell, is interested in the creative idea that is meandering through his mind at that particular point in time.

What have I learned about his capabilities?

Reading – He read two passages averaging about 58 CWPM, WAY below the 4^th grade average for fluent reading.  This was consistent across the board with his out loud reading to me over the three sessions.

Comprehension – When inferring information he was superb at remembering the context of the story.  When it came to specific items from the story he did need to look back on a couple of them but he showed he did understand the passages.

Spelling – His Spelling Inventory Error Guide showed him as average when it came to focusing on spelling.  In his writing samples his pen got ahead of his brain as his spelling slipped to about 15 of every 100 words incorrect.

Writing – Beyond the penmanship, he always seems to have an idea in his head.  Convention wise he knows punctuation, but could use some help using examples to back up his ideas.  For example…he talked in detail about how creative he was in his original writing sample “All about me” but didn’t back up the claim with any evidence.  “My 9 page story about the talking dog was a great way for me to show my creativity” would have helped me as a teacher understand more of what he meant.

What am I thinking now about his lesson plan?

He will write up a story of his choice making sure to use 25 words that I provide him.

Learning Objectives:

1. To speed up his reading
2. To slow down his writing (or find  away to get him to immediately read over his work for grammatical errors)
3. To better his spelling and understand misspelled words can change the meaning of his creativity for others.
4. Use examples as evidence for his ideas
5. Get him to read books about car design.

Materials to be used:

1.      Paper and pencil

2.      List of 25 common misspelled 4^th grade words

The Royal Tangrams

Our professor hit us with these awesome puzzle manipulatives today called "tangrams".  There are seven pieces to each one and they fit together to make a myriad of shapes.  They are great if you were blessed with spatial awareness.  If not, they will cause migraines.  We were asked to make a picture of a giraffe using the seven pieces and most of us eventually figured it out.  Then she threw this awesome nugget of information at us by saying "now make it twice as large".  The math behind it says if you double the height and width of an object you are squaring its area.  Therefore for every one piece of tangram used to make the original giraffe you would need FOUR pieces to match the identical area of the double sized giraffe.  It was a wicked game, in fact that should be the soundtrack for the rest of this blog.

What else did I learn today you ask? 

A Fathom:  Not just a unit of measurement equal to 6 feet, or 1.83 meters.....or the lead track to the Little Mermaid Soundtrack, it is the name of software used to graph data in the math world!!  It is expensive as heck, but if you want to teach data in an organized and thoughtful fashion then please check it out:

http://www.chartwellyorke.com/fathom.html

The Data and Story Library:  http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/DASL/

This place has a plethora of statistical data for you and yours. We were showed a chart that showed the amount of calories in approx 100 hot dogs tested.  Next to this info was a list of how much sodium was in that same hotdog.  Once again, I have given up hot dogs, but I have gained some new respect for those people we honor by giving them jobs finding out how much sodium and calories are in hot dogs.

How this will help me elucidate my students in the classroom?

With Gapminder, the Tangrams, DASL, and fathom, my students will have statistical data pouring out of their ears.  They will be able to read data, decipher data, and come to conclusions about data.  That is what all of this leads to, and I love it.

Questions?

Why is it all the good things in life cost a lot of money?

I'll have more thoughts on this as I put it into use over the next couple of weeks.

Good stuff today.

Taking a bath in math

Math Thoughts Week 5

What did I learn (this week)?
From my placement classroom I learned that multiplying decimals is harder to understand these days.  I remember the moment in 5th grade when my teacher told me, "Student, if I give you a tenth of a tenth of a piece of Little Caesar's pizza...would you want it?"  "Heck yeah" I said.  Then he gave me a bit the size of my thumb and the class laughed.  I looked the teacher directly in the eye and said "Now you listen here.  You WILL divide this piece by .01 and you WILL give me 1 WHOLE piece of pizza!!"  He smiled back at me, took the piece from off my desk and ate it himself.  To this day I'm waiting for my piece of pizza....but I remember the math!!
My point?  I taught this lesson last week to my class and they had a LOT of trouble with it.  This doesn't sit well with me because I'm not sure if it is the way I'm teaching it or if it is just something that takes some time.  Half the class has it, the other half is confused even more than when I started.  The good news is they are all asking questions, and THAT is something I can work with!

What questions do I have?
We are creating a lesson plan involving probability that will be interlaced with science.  What's wrong with me?  (At this point I really don't have any pending questions).

Implications for the classroom?
For me if I can find a way to mix this interdisciplinary lesson together and make it a success, the implication will be a huge confidence boost for my abilities in the classroom.  My nerves fray thinking about mixing an English/Art class.....yikes.  But Math and Science I think I can get a handle on.

Kathy Goertzen

A Quick shout out to a former colleague of mine at KOMO 4.  I interned at the station back in 1997, one year prior to Kathy hearing she had a benign brain tumor that has taken over her life.  She goes in for surgery number six tomorrow morning:(   Thoughts and prayers go out to her and her family.  This is someone who did find happiness and is an example to me of someone to measure yourself up to. 

Godspeed Mrs. Goertzen!!

Mira Mira on the Wall...

...what is the data you can recall?  It seems that writing a blog for fun is easier said than done as school projects and thoughts are becoming the norm these days.  The good news is my math class is really starting to blow my mind with some of the things in which we are being introduced. 

Thing #1:  www.gapminder.org   NOTE .ORG not .COM

This website allows you to graph out a rather random amount of data collected over the past 10 - 100 years.  Want to know the correlation between number of cups of coffee drunk per person vs. the economic output for any country?  This is the place.  Want to know if the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a lollipop changes depending on the country you are in?  This might not be the place, but you never know with Gapminder!!  With the amount of data collected and organized on this website one has to wonder what the relevance of the data means.  The data sets lead to multiple questions, which lead to multiple hypotheses, which lead to more cups of coffee.  Bottom line - it is a start to getting information in front of students. 

Thing #2:  The old fashioned mira!!

If you are like me, you LOVE beach volleyball, AND you had never heard of a mira before.  Our professor dropped one of these in front of me in class last week and I felt like I was at the police station again looking through a two way mirror (the good side).  It was a red tinted flat piece of plastic that resembled one of the flat winged fighter planes from Starwars.  The wings held up the body of the tinted plastic and allowed for a reflection back and line of sight through.  Meaning if you had a circle on a piece of paper you could line up the reflection back with the circle still seen through the plastic and you would have yourself the line of symmetry.  It was awesome!  I immediately went and bought myself one so I could go home and show my wife my face is symmetrical, just like her favorite actor Denzel Washington!

So how can I use these in the classroom? 
Fair question.  Gapminder has so many possibilities of data that I would introduce the site to my class and ask them to come up with data and some thoughts about what the numbers mean.  It would lead to some great class dialogue and then maybe even further to a small research project.  As for the mira, any lesson on congruency would be horribly hampered without one. 

Since it has been a while since we've had a funny for the day, here you go:

How is duck tape like the force?

It has a dark side, a light side, and it binds the universe together!

Final Analysis of 4th Grade Student

The following is my final thoughts on my 4th grader.  Thanks to all who commented on my ideas.  They were all greatly appreciated.

I was lucky enough to have three little birdies chirping over my shoulder the past couple of days.  I felt like Uncle Remus whistling with the butterflies as he walked down the dirt path – carefree and ready for life. 

Then, like Uncle Remus, I realized I live in American society and the boundary lines for what we can and cannot do have already been drawn.  Meaning Uncle Remus was an African American living in the south and I am a student teacher who wants to think outside the box.  Luckily the little birdies were there to steer me towards an idea that came from….our textbook….yuck!  That idea is something called the “Optimal Learning Model” designed by Reggie Routman, a self proclaimed master of the reading arts.  This model takes Vygotsky’s ideas and puts them to work in 4 main parts:  Teacher modeling, guided practice, independent practice, and finally application of the strategy.  The big question is how I could fit this sumptuous model into my lesson plan.  Here’s how:

The teacher brings in a 10 word list of his own and with ideas from the students creates a quick 2 paragraph creative story using each of the words on the list.  Once the draft is complete the teacher rereads the story out loud looking for any choppy sentence flow as well as grammatical errors. 

To transition into guided practice, the teacher will hand out the 25 word list to the students.  He will take the top two words on the list and as a class they will come up with multiple ideas that can be progressed into a story.  Since “Carrot” and “Group” were two words my student misspelled consistently they can be used as an example here.  The teacher could say “What about a group of bunnies hopping along when they come upon a batch of carrots?”  The teacher would reread the sentence with the students so they understand the process of what they are about to do.

The transfer of responsibility would occur at this point when the teacher says “Game on!” and the students continue the process on their own.  The teacher walks around watching the progression of the creative ideas being written onto papers across the room, as well as answering any questions that might be asked.

The application of the strategy would come when they revise their drafts.

That would be an example of the Optimal Learning Model :(

Now that I have incorporated Ms. Routman into my lesson, I want to “redump” my thoughts about my student’s writing based on the eclectic samples I have been able to research.  I believed in his creativity because his original writing sample told me multiple times he was creative and loved art.  His story about talking dogs expressed his ability to write out his thoughts of a scene as it unfolds.  It felt like I was reading a screen play, “I told them I would put them back in their cage if they weren’t quiet.  I fell asleep.  When I woke up the birds only chirped…”  He was great at telling the reader what was happening at every moment in time.  At one point in the story he opened up by writing “Evan wanted to fly like the birds”.  It was the first, and only, time his creativity entered the realm of emotions going on inside his characters head.  He needed a LOT more of this to capture the reader’s attention.  I might be reading too much into this but it makes sense that for a student who is writing a scene involving continuously moving action, his brain might get a little ahead of itself.  He is always thinking of what is going to happen next and this distracts his brain from focusing on the conventions of the writing (spelling, structure, punctuation) that was going on the paper now.  This idea makes me feel better about forcing him to fit 25 correctly spelled words into a sentence.  I would make sure at least 10 of the words are adjectives that might push him to describe more of what is in the scene, as opposed to just what is going on in the scene. 

Looking forward, if I were the teacher for this student, I would add a lot of creative writing to the curriculum as the practice of writing will help him connect his ideas with examples.  I would also bring computer lab into the writing process because of the spell check feature of MS Word.  The more he types the more he’ll see corrections that need to be made.  Practice makes perfect and the more he is encourages to read and write, the more comfortable he’ll feel about showing off his work in front of others.  Being proud of his work would be the ultimate goal in any work we would do in the classroom for this student. 

Cheerio

All About Me (Literacy Blog)

I apologize folks again for my jump into school thoughts and ideas.  My Literacy class requires a brain dump of thoughts about an assignment and that is what you will read if you wish to continue.  And BTW, if you are a Steelers fan....booooo!!

My thoughts about my 4th grade student and his writing sample:

The first thing I notice about my student’s writing is the penmanship.  It isn’t perfect, in fact many teachers might say he needs a lot of work on it, but it is easily legible and very artsy.  You feel like you are reading graffiti on a New York wall.  There isn’t much on paper but you know there is a lot that is being said.  The title of his sample is “All About Me”, a prompt the 4^th grade class worked on to get the kids to write some ideas down about themselves.  The main points I picked up on from his writing is that:

1)      He is tremendously creative

2)      He loves art and is a good drawer

3)      He gets nervous when others look at his drawings

4)      Other teachers will tell you how good he is!

He begins and ends his sample with the line “Talk to (3^rd grade teacher) about me” and “You better talk to (3^rd grade teacher)”.  His entire writing sample is surrounded by a defense mechanism installed in case the reader doesn’t believe him.  We are told the 3^rd grade teacher will back up the story.  He wrote that he gets nervous when people see his drawings, but that “it doesn’t bother me”.  I’m not so sure he believes that quite yet.

His ideas and content are limited, but adequate for a sample about 150 words long.  He was able to hit the four main points above without any examples.  Therefore I shall not focus much on this trait.  Organization wise it is tough not to notice he writes on his page as if he is writing a poem.  Five stanzas, four to five lines each make up the page.  Each paragraph focuses on one of the main points, with the last one offering a summary.  His motivation for this writing sample seems to come from his love for art.  I look at some of his other writing and it all is neatly organized on the page.  The penmanship is legible, although uncontrolled.  His organized chaos is easy on the eyes as it seems to all have a place on the page. 

His voice does seem sincere, but his claims have nothing to back them up.  I want to know what he is working on, what his interests are, what his reason is for enjoying the drawing.  His writing isn’t compelling as it does not allow a distinct perspective on the topic. 

His word choice is limited to the basic words of “drawing, creative, and art”.  He misspells words here and there, such as “stuf” and “grops”.  The pattern of missing double consonants and leaving out a vowel in a long vowel sound is consistent throughout his writing.  This might be an area I could focus on during the lesson plan as he seems to fit in the middle to late within-word pattern level (Templeton and Morris, 1999).  I have not been able to see other writing samples in depth so I am not able to see if these spelling miscues are consistent across the board. 

***UPDATE***
He arrived for school during the third week and I was able to gain a plethora of information from him in a 30 minute period of time, including several writing samples.  My first glance proved that he is a chronic misspeller.  The piece I had from him last last wasn't only a prompt, but a final draft that had already been revised several times.  The fact that he still misspelled two words in this one shows that his writing style is quite a bit hurried.  I described it as artsy earlier and I'll stick to that, but I do want to add hurried to that definition.  He writes like he is in a hurry.  To test this idea I had him write a paragraph for me about something he wants to do when he grows up.  He SLOWLY wrote "I want to dizine cars".  I noticed this was in cursive so I asked him to write another sentence normally, here he QUICKLY wrote "My naber helps a lot whith that".  I think I'm onto something here.  It seems obvious that if he slows down his writing he might be able to improve his handwriting and possible give himself a chance to think through more of the word conventions.  On a first draft of a short story about a dog, he misspelled about 15% of the words on the 10 pages of text.  I will have to enter this into the lesson plan.

His ability to read words placed him well into the 6th grade level.  I brought the book "The Little Prince" for him to read as it started with a young artist trying to make a point with his drawing.  He read three pages in about 8 minutes and answered all the comprehension questions sufficiently enough to prove he understood what he had read.

I want to dump a little more of my mind on the short story about the talking animals.  He expressed some incredible creativity in his writing about a flock of birds coming to life, talking to other animals, while incorporating a magic bottle into the story.  Unfortunately a lot of his sentences were choppy and riddled with grammar issues.  I went back to check his "Error Guide Spelling Inventory" he performed two weeks prior and confirmed that he fell in the "Late Word Within" pattern which means he is "approaching fluency".  Maybe, but when he writes his brain goes into creative mode and forgets the grammar part.  This will be very much added to my lesson plan.   ***End Update***



 His language is basic.  His writing looks artsy but his words leave you standing in a gray field with no landscape around you.  In other words, they leave little to the imagination, which seems backwards for someone who loves to draw and be creative.  His sentence fluency is choppy as about half of the sentences begin with “I”.  It is tough for the reader to get into a flow.  I am torn wondering if he found any motivation for this prompt assignment or if he found so much that he didn’t know how to write it all down on paper. 

If I could attempt to pull this all together I would state that he seems to be motivated to write about himself in some way shape or form.  I would want to ask more questions concerning his abilities in drawing and creativity.  “In what ways are you creative?”  I want to expand upon his ideas about himself that he began to discuss in this writing sample.  Maybe, just maybe, we can get him to burst open and express all of his thoughts about himself.  Even if he doesn’t though, I can just get the answers from the 3^rd grade teacher!!

Lesson Plan Rough Draft

When it comes time to write up an official lesson plan for my student I will want to get more information from him in terms of writing samples as well as more face time.  ***Update***  I did get time with him on Tuesday of this past week and was able to gather enough information to update the below lesson plan to account for his "hurried artsy" writing. 

Objective:

• Students will be able to write out main ideas onto paper
• Students will explain the main ideas using an example to illustrate the story
• Students will be able to write a compelling story for the reader.
• Student will be able to learn to read over his finished writing to check for grammar errors

EALR’s used:

• 1.1  Student pre-writes to generate ideas and plan writing.
• 3.1 Student develops ideas and organizes writing

Materials Used:

            Notebook with a page for ideas, a page for examples, and a page for why it is important to the student the idea be in the piece.

§         Paper

§         Pencil

• A list of 25 fourth grade level words

What the Teacher Will Do (Instructional Responsibilities):

            The teacher will start by informing the students that they will be writing a short story.  The teacher will hand out a list of 25 fourth grade level words that are commonly misspelled (although the students won't know that).  The story will be confirmed to two written pages and must incorporate all 25 words in a creative fashion.  The creative nature of the assignment will lead to several unique ideas formulated from the same 25 word list.  The goal for our student will be to slow him down in his writing and allow him to see the words written correctly on his paper.
     The teacher will then ask the students to reread their stories to check specifically for grammar issues and flow of story. 

Assessment:

The teacher will assess the student’s ability to write outlines of their storyline looking specifically for a well organized sentence with correct spelling and grammar.  The teacher will also assess the student’s ability to write down examples that back up the ideas written on the page, again looking for spelling miscues.  

IPod Touch in the classroom?

Heck yes!!

Depending on your view of technology; I've either been very lucky or very distracted over the past three weeks due to the fact that I have been given the opportunity to use Apple's IPod Touch.  The goal is to find ways to use the interface with students in the classroom.  Things such as voice recording software, interactive applications that help with math, spelling, grammar, even geography.  There is even a kids version of the World Series of Poker!!  Talk about learning your probabilities.
I was given an assignment this week to think about a couple students I currently work with and come up with some realistic ways that this IPod Touch could help them with their studies through differentiated learning.  Believe it or not, I did the assignment!  Now I just have to put it into words,  But before I do that, I think we need a soundtrack.  Click below to get in the blogging mood (it takes about 8 seconds to get going)

Applications!!!  Also knows as "apps" to us young hipsters.  Anyone can write code for an app and request it be placed on the sacred "App Store".  Some apps are Free, some are a buck, some even go for $2.  Either way, there is pretty much an app for everything now adays.  So what about a student in 6th grade that is WAY behind on his or her math basics?  "Kids Math Fun" is coming the the rescue.  This simple application is nothing more than a colorful, creative way for students to practice repetitive math problems.  It is quick and allows for multiple choice answers such as 4 + 9 or 8 *7.  Pit two kids next to each other and make it a competition and you have yourself a fun and exciting way for students to "play" their way to understanding basic math.  I tried this with a student in my class that is having difficulty with simple mistakes (adding and subtracting) and I watched as he tried to beat his time over and over again for about 20 minutes.  When he finally got 25 correct in less than 2 minutes the smile was almost ear to ear!!

On the other side of the coin is the student who is excelling and needs a resource to gain further information.  Ladies and gentleman, bring down "wikipanion".  To all you nay-sayers about the wiki world and how the information is not vetted properly....."booo"!!  It is an incredibly efficient way to find information that the student can verify through different sources.  At the very least it gets the ball rolling.  I introduced this app to one such student in our classroom and they:  1)  Loved having something to work on as they finished the assignment earlier than the rest of the class.  and 2)  fully understood how they could use this to gather information for both their science and social studies projects.  Time well spent!  A valuable lesson to teach to our up and coming American cultured children.  Next?  Greed is good!!

Finally for a student that was creative beyond his years, I showed him an app called "Storykit".  It as an app run by http://www.childrenslibrary.org/ and puts books into kids hands without having to physically head to the library...and it is free!!  On top of this, it allows you to interact with the book.  You can create new pages, edit the pages that are already there.  Draw pics.  Rewrite stories.  Its like the actor who has always wanted to direct getting the chance to do just that.  I'll admit it takes  LONG time to get used to the functionality and even when you gain experience it can still be cumbersome.  But limitations there are not!  Students can create entire projects using this app that can either be presented to the class, or the entire world via the internet!

Bottom line, I'm just scratching the surface with what this thing can do in the classroom.  As the quarter moves along I'll get to play with more advanced stuff and maybe even make a movie on the darn thing!!  "More than Words" on the little screen?  Pretty......Pretty Good!

Cheerio

MOG #2...Seahawk Style

The Oregon Ducks just lost the National Championship game.....clearly they didn't read the book about winning by the aforementioned Seahawks!!! Some local artists transformed a current rap song into a sweet melody all about...you guessed it, our beloved team from Seattle!! Unfortunately I can't figure out how to upload the audio file to this here blog so in the mean time, click the video below to hear a song from a previous Seahawk team that rode the Blue Wave deep into the playoffs back in 1985! Ladies and gentleman...let's math Blog!!

 

Today our class learned some strategies to help middle schoolers learn some basic math functions. Two in particular stuck out. One is that there is no such thing as subtraction, as all you are really doing is adding the opposite of a number. 5 - 6? Clearly you are just adding a negative 6! Kind of like when you see the $114 check show up in front of you while at the local Buca de Beppos, you can now look up at all the free loaders in your family and say calmly, "Well, we're adding the opposite of money from our future dearest family. Now who wants to go get a job?" The other thing was that the famous pedagogical teaching method of FOIL is waaaaaaay too overrated by the educational community. Technically it makes sense, and gives kids a precise process for working out the distributive property of multiplication, so why don't we just teach the distributive property of multiplication? Ask 100 students what the distributive property is and you might get 2 that can tell you. Ask the same 100 kids what FOIL is and there is a good chance 100 will say "It's that thing you do to numbers in math!" Simply teaching ideas that make sense.

1) Teach subtraction is actually addition

2) FOIL is for campers stew, The Distributive Property of Multiplication is for math stars!!

It is tough to go through a 4 hour class without having any questions but today's class was quite solid in how clear the information was conveyed. So my mind shifts to what more can be done in the classroom. We ran through a quick exercises that helped explain that a number such as 325 is actually 3 100's , 2 10's and 5 ones. For the math geeks out there, we explained the number system of base 10. It seems this is a great way of beginning to explain the base 10 system, and how other systems use different bases (such as computer programming in base 2). If someone understands base 10, they'll understand base 5, and so forth. This understanding would help sooooooooo much in allowing the brain to figure out simple algebraic equations. What would be some reasons we don't add this to the curriculum of our elementary schools?


How would I use this in the classroom you ask? Heck if I know...but it would be cool if my students understood the importance of 10 in our number system in that it makes quick calculations much easier. I mean hugely easier. Like $100 level Who Wants to Be a Millionaire easy!!


MOG #2 out.....with a funny for the day, Chicago Bears Style!

Did you hear the new penalty for speeding in Illinois?

On the first offense they give you Bears tickets, and on the second offense, they make you use them.

OR

Mommy Bear and Daddy Bear were in divorce court. The judge looked down and asked the Baby Bear, “So Baby Bear, do you want to live with Daddy Bear?” “Oh, no,” Baby Bear replied, “I don’t want to live with Daddy Bear. He beat me.” “Well then, you should live with Mommy Bear,” answered the judge. “On, no, I don’t want to live with Mommy Bear. She beat me.” “Well then, Baby Bear, who do you want to live with?” Baby Bear said, “I want to live with the Chicago Bears. They don’t beat anybody!”

Cheerio