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         At the start of October I signed up to participate in #MTBoS as a way to connect with more math educators and learn about different strategies/activities that could help me as a first year math teacher. I'm not exactly sure what I did wrong, but I signed up to get the weekly challenges emailed to me and added their wordpress blog to my Feedly account and for some reason I never got any updates!      8 weeks later... I noticed that a few of the bloggers that I follow have jumped on the #MTBoS wagon and are blogging about week 7! At first I felt mad because I felt like I've missed out on so much and I didn't understand how come the information didn't get through. Then I felt embarrassed because I was so busy with everything that comes as a first year teacher that I never remembered that I could just go back to the original website to check instead of expecting everything to always get sent correctly.   ...

This post is for all of you that have a SMART Board or other brand of Interactive Whiteboard in your classroom. Did you know that you can use a " Koosh Ball " to activate your board and, thus, create a kinesthetic learning opportunity for your students?   Before I graduated with my B.Ed I spent a lot of time substitute teaching in a Kindergarten class near our home. As part of their morning calendar time, students reviewed months/days/years by activating review prompts on their SMART Board with a "Koosh Ball".   These rubbery balls are the perfect sensory tools if you have students that need "fidget toys" but they also work perfect for this activity because they activate the SMART Board but are so soft that you won't damage it by throwing them at the screen!   I got used to this activity while substitute teaching and then promptly forgot about it because I didn't think my Grade 7-10 students would want anything to do with it. Then, however, I came ...

     On Monday of this week our first round of report cards went home and officially kicked-off Parent-Teacher Interview week. Being that we are a K-12 school, our K-7 teachers scheduled and organized their own meetings which ran throughout the week. In the 8-12 end, our school secretary scheduled our meetings for us which were primarily held on Thursday after school and Friday during school-hours (there were no classes on Friday).      Thursday marked a full day of teaching from 8:50-3:30 and then straight into interviews beginning at 4. By the time I had straightened up my room and ran to the bathroom, parents were already walking down the hall (talk about a busy day)! Our interviews are scheduled in 10 minute blocks and with the exception of a 20 minute break, I was scheduled from 4pm to 8pm! I'm proud to say that for approximately 95% of my interviews I was on-time and didn't have to be concerned about running over time. Near the end of my sch...

Dear Parents/Guardians,      As I sit here, reflecting on my first parent-teacher experience, I want to share the following thoughts that have been infiltrating my mind more and more. First, I would like to thank you for sharing your children with us: - for allowing teachers to have the opportunity to be a part of their lives... - for allowing us to witness their personality and appreciate their quirks... - for allowing us to be there on the good, bad, and out-right crazy days... - for allowing us to be a part of their development (academically, emotionally,   etc)... - for allowing us to be there as they experience new things... - for allowing us to be the ones that are there when you can't be...      Secondly, I would like to say that there nothing that teachers want more than for your child to be successful (in all areas of their lives, not just in our subject-area). Everything that we do, day-in and day-out, is to assist us in making sure...

     When I was student teaching, I had my students complete assessments of me as a teacher. This was not something I was required to do but it was a big learning opportunity for me so I continued doing it throughout my last year of my Education Degree. I actually got the idea from Larry Ferlazzo's blog ( here is his most-recent example ).      When student teaching, my evaluation questions were centered around the statements/categories that were included in my evaluation checklists from my university. Now that I am out of school and have my own classroom I am not sure if I want these questions to remain the same, or if I want to change them....      Here are some questions that I am thinking of asking: - If you could describe Mrs. T's to someone taking a class with her next semester, what would you say? - Are Mrs. T's classroom expectations fair? Why or why not? - My favourite thing / least-favourite thing about Mrs. T's class...

     Today our Semester 1 Report Cards went home with students and I could breathe a sigh of relief. The past two weeks have been emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting as I've attempted to survive my first report card experience as a first year teacher. To be honest, I don't feel like there was any one aspect that was genuinely hard (although they were time consuming). The most difficult part, for me, was making sure I actually did everything that was required of me.           I felt like there was a lot of aspects that I simply wasn't aware of, so I would think I was completed... only to find out I was still missing details or tasks. I feel like it would have been a lot more simple if I had a comprehensive checklist to work through. Unfortunately, our Provincial Report Cards are new so even our most-experienced teachers were still going through this for the first time. In the interest of helping othe...

     This past month has been a weird one for me as it has been the first month in almost two years where I haven't been blogging regularly. They say that if something is important to you, you will find a way to make time for it.... My viewpoint towards my blog has not changed. In fact, my time away from my blog made me realize how much it truly meant to me. So much has been happening in my teaching-life over the past few weeks and there has been several times where I have wanted to share it with all of you.      Unfortunately, I seriously could not find the time. The past few weeks marked my first report card season as a new teacher. I felt prepared... I had taken classes in university on assessment and evaluation, I have been student teaching during report card prep, I've sat in on parent-teacher interviews .... but I was not prepared.      The last two weeks have been physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting and I've...

     We are currently discussing the circulatory system in Gr 8 science as we near the end of our Cells & Systems unit. Today my students had an opportunity to learn some interesting facts about this system through some activities: The Box of Mystery When students arrived, I had a large Rubbermaid storage bin on the table. After taking a few guess about what was inside, we blindly pulled items from the box until each student had an item (they were all containers of various shapes and sizes). Without giving any insight, I asked students to find somewhere in the school to fill their container with water, return to class, and dump their water into the storage bin. The result? Approximately 6 quarts of liquid, which I then explained was the average amount of blood in a human body! They were pretty surprised! The Big & The Small Students then got to compare two different widths: a hose with a width of approximately 3cm, and a human hair (stuck between two pieces o...

*Unfortunately, I do not have a reflection for Week 8 as I was on a hiatus/break haha.      November is upon us and reality is beginning to hit home. Number one, report cards are due in 10 days.... Number two, my first parent-teacher interviews are in 15 days... Number three, there are only 34 teaching days left until Christmas! Seriously, was it not just the first day of school last week?!? I guess the only thing to do is take a deep breathe and take one day at a time. In the mean time, here are some things that I think went well this week: 1 ) My Grade 8's Passed 1,000 Views On Their Blog!! - When I first introduced our blogging project this year I feel like many of   my students were skeptical... maybe even unenthusiastic. It was new to   them and I think they assumed it would be a lot of writing. - Fast forward two months and we now start each science class by looking   at our map of viewers, see who our audience is, answer blog questions...

Today I was playing around with the Siri application on my iPhone and I discovered that it can solve math problems! Not only does it solve the math problem, but it also visually represents the answer in different ways!   I have a few students who have difficulty with realizing that numbers can be shown different ways. For example, the fraction 4/5 can also be written as: - 0.8 (decimal) - 80% (percent) - 8/10 (equivalent fraction)   It could also be represented using a: - number line - 100-grid paper - pie chart - cubes or other manipulatives   After experimenting with Siri for a bit, I am pretty excited to show this to my students! Here are some screenshots of results I got that would align with our current Grade 8 unit on percentages.   Different ways to represent 13/18   What are different ways to show 73% What is 9% of 60? 

 If you haven't encountered a " Currently " post before, it is just a fun post at the beginning of each month that serves as a way to share what is  Currently  going on in your life! You can link up and share your own " Currently " post by visiting the wonderful  Farley  over at  Oh' Boy 4th Grade .         November is here and that means that it is almost time for my first parent-teacher experience as a teacher! I feel like this month will fly by with all of the new things that I have to learn, all of the things to prepare for, and all of the excited/nervous feelings I'm having. Wish me luck!

     This week I read a post by George Courso titled, " Open Phone Exams " in which he started off with the following comparison:      " If I was to ask a question of an educator and they didn’t know       the answer, the tendency would be to google it, or for some, to       send out a tweet and ask the question.  If they find the answer,       they would be considered  resourceful .       If I was to ask a student a question on an exam, and they did those       same things, they would be considered a  cheater . "      This immediately got me thinking. Why? Check out the disclaimer I have on my classroom website and course outline for my 3 math classes, as per divisional policy:      " P lease note, calculator tools on mobile devices (iPod, cell phone,   ...