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The Math Hatter: March 2014
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Sunday, March 30, 2014. Flipped Classroom (the first 10 minutes of class). I am really experimenting with the first 10 minutes of class lately. It is my 10 minutes of whole group time. On Mondays, we play "the White Board Game" for state test review and to keep something consistent. Any other day is up for grabs. One of my favorite activities to open class with is My Favorite No. If you have never seen the video on Teaching Channel, you should watch it. Pretty cool stuff. ( Here. Last week with the 7th g...
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The Math Hatter: We're Going on a Square Hunt: Simplifying Radicals
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Friday, February 6, 2015. We're Going on a Square Hunt: Simplifying Radicals. The class spent a week exploring the Pythagorean Theorem. After creating a need with the students to handle square roots, on Friay we went over how to simplify them. This topic has always been a bit dry and never quite landed with the students. I have always talked about trying to find perfect squares and use those to break down the number. So as the class entered today I played this video. We're going on a square hunt. My mini...
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The Math Hatter: May 2014
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Tuesday, May 6, 2014. MCTM Day 2 (the final sessions). Saturday morning was the third act of the trilogy. The climax of the action was my own session, mostly because I was so nervous about it. I have presented on numerous topics to my own school before, but never at a conference of this magnitude. Session 1: Bag of Math Tricks. Session 2: My Session "Teach Like a Flippin' Pirate". Session 3: Student Engagement in a Flipped Classroom. It was probably the fact that I has just finished, but this session did...
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The Math Hatter: Something funny and kind of scary happened....
http://cjsieling.blogspot.com/2015/01/something-funny-and-kind-of-scary.html
Thursday, January 29, 2015. Something funny and kind of scary happened. So after no sub signed up for my gig, I told the secretary that we only needed someone for periods 3-9 because I would be there for the first two periods because of math league. She said okay, I ran my math league meet, created some activities and headed home. So when I get to school on Tuesday, and interesting thing happened. I immediately had 3 students run up to me and say "We had no teacher Mr. Sieling! Math Tales from the Spring.
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The Math Hatter: August 2014
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Sunday, August 24, 2014. First Week in a 1:1 Junior High Math Classroom. I have the pleasure of teaching in a 1:1 classroom this year. So my usual first week activities were not going to quite cut it this year. So I incorporated some activities and ideas, with some new 1:1 training into my first week this year. I liked how it turned out and will use a similar set up next year. Monday - Day 1. What else should I know about you. How much do you like math 1-5. Tuesday - Day 2. We focused on how the brain cr...
cjsieling.blogspot.com
The Math Hatter: Standards-Based Grading, Levels, & Percentages
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Friday, February 28, 2014. Standards-Based Grading, Levels, and Percentages. Grading is always a tricky subject to discuss. I have developed my grading system over the last 4 years shifting from points based, to standards based. I really like how I grade and feel that it reflects exactly what a grade should, student learning. There are no "assignments, quizzes, daily points, or tests", listed. I. Where I get in trouble from Ken O'Connor is that each learning target in the gradebook has a percentage to sh...
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The Math Hatter: Class Debates in Math Continued...
http://cjsieling.blogspot.com/2014/11/class-debates-in-math-continued.html
Wednesday, November 5, 2014. Class Debates in Math Continued. So yesterday we had a debate about math totally go off the rails. Students kept arguing without really basing anything on logic or facts or even good common sense. It sometimes sounded like a 24 hour news network where people yell "I' m right because I feel I am right! And then someone else yells "No, I'm Right, because I'M LOUDER! Only 1 section had this, but still I couldn't stop thinking about how badly this went. Is awesome of course.
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The Math Hatter: October 2014
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Wednesday, October 22, 2014. Estimation 180 and Statistics. I am late to the party here, but the website estimation180.com is amazing. I have just this year finally started using it during class. For those not familiar with the site, math teacher Andrew Stadal created some great problems and hooks that require students to use estimation and reasoning skills. Some very important skills that are getting lost in the standards driven era of school. 1) How many almonds in the 1/4 cup? 2 What number is too low?
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The Math Hatter: Conceptual vs Skills (The Pendulum Ever Swings)
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Wednesday, February 4, 2015. Conceptual vs Skills (The Pendulum Ever Swings). I found that although the students lacked a couple skills here and there, they could really think through problems. They were great at math reasoning and understanding the big concepts. It was pretty funny and convincing of the need for conceptual understanding. I thought to myself that there is no way my students would do this terrible at the problem. National average is that 25% of students see the problem for what it...60, i...
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The Math Hatter: November 2014
http://cjsieling.blogspot.com/2014_11_01_archive.html
Sunday, November 16, 2014. Parallel and Perpendicular Slope. I have always struggled getting students to really understand how to use slope to create parallel and perpendicular lines. I have tried many things and many different activities over the years. Now on the third day I wanted them to put this new found knowledge to use. So I created the following DESMOS graphing challenge. For them. (feel free to use and change for your use). A few student got off to a slow start because they did not understand w...
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