Our First Week of Learning Together!

It's hard to believe I experienced my 35th First Day of School.  This picture makes me laugh because I still carry my lunch box the same as I did when I started kindergarten!  Our first day of the 2018-2019 school year, brought so much joy and happiness to my heart.  Getting to know a new group of learners, as well as their families began at our Meet the Teacher night, the Wednesday before school started! I loved hearing how excited families are about being in our class this year. I truly believe it takes all of us working together to achieve growth and success! 

We  spent our first week building our classroom learning environment, where all learners can be successful!  Throughout the week, the noise level increased, as did the smiles and laughter, which spoke volumes to my teacher heart.  Our kids are feeling safe and will be more willing to embrace the struggle and learn the why behind our math.  

This week's learning including creating our class treatment agreement, building a collaborative learning environment, embracing a  growth mindset and diving into our digital resources!  It was definitely a packed week of learning and excitement. 

As part of our first week together, we spent time creating our class treatment agreement.  It was eye opening and honestly, heart breaking to hear what some learners have experienced in their years of being at school.  Above is a copy of the template each learner received, along with our steps to creating our class treatment agreements.  

             

   

Adding his table groups ideas for how
students should treat Ms. Pauley 

Sharing their ideas and summarizing their table groups
treatment agreements

Because our district is 1:1, and chromebook rollout occured during our first week together, I thought it would be fun to take our class treatment agreement digital!  Using Mentimeter, I created polls for each of our guiding questions and guess what....The learners of room 103 loved it!  As they each voted, or put money/points into each category they thought was important the screen changed.  They loved watching the "real" time voting.  Hearing, "Can we do this again?" once again reminded me of why they are "my kids" for the 2018-2019 school year!  

Building a Collaborative Learning Environment

I strongly believe in the power of working together and building each other up!  Our Huskies truly encouraged each other when it came to problem solving, as well as sharing during our warm-ups and class activities .  

 

If you are wanting to build this type of learning environment, I'd strongly suggest implementing WODB warm ups...they are amazing!  There are no wrong answers, since each learner gets to justify why they chose the answer.  Learners were amazed by the different ideas and reasons to why their classmates chose various patterns.  

Embracing a Growth Mindset

Here is a link to the activities we used:  Week of Inspirational Math by Jo Boahler

In 7th grade math, we spent our week learning about growth mindset and the impact it has on our learning, especially as we implement a new curriculum this year. 

I loved hearing our learners share their thinking and be accepting of others' different views on the same problems.  It was eye opening from the teacher's perspective to see how learners' visualized various problems. 

I can already tell, I have a group of innovative thinkers, who are going to thrive this year, as we embark on our journey together!

Diving into Our Digital Resources

This year we are implementing Illustrative Math.  This is a huge learning curve for both our learners, as well as us teachers!  I'm grateful to have such a wonderful department who collaborates and encourages each other as we begin this journey.  Our sixth graders were the first group of learners to embark on their digital learning journey.  We introduced them to Desmos and Geogebra, which they loved!  As I explained during our class, we all learn differently and this year we're adding another tool to our tool belt.  Because of the excitement and enthusiasm on Day 1, I can only think our learners will grow not only in their digital skills but also their problem solving skills.  It's going to be an exciting year!  

Along with learning came abit of fun as well...photo booth props make everything better :) 

Photo Booth Fun in Math 

I'd say this was definitely one of the best first weeks of learning....Here's to a year of many learning opportunities and success for the learners of Room 103!

Kicking off 2017

On Tuesday, January 3, the faculty and staff headed back to work at NRMS.  It was hard to believe our winter break had come to an end and it was ready to hit the road running, as second semester is always filled with test prep, end of year activities and this year, we add in completing our 100 hours of professional learning for our STEM certification, as well as packing up our classrooms to move into our new building.  Needless to say, it's going to be jammed packed with activity!

We were broken up into our Falcon Way houses.  It was a nice change to sit with those we don't usually interact with during the day.  Our first focus of our time together was to reflect on the past semester of Falcon Way and Reboot our Mindset as we begin the second semester.

Individually we filled out a quick questionnaire about ourselves.

• What did you do or enjoy the most over Christmas break?
• What are your favorite hobbies?
• What are your pet peeves?
• What is one goal you'd like to accomplish during your lifetime?
• Describe yourself using three words.

Papers were mixed together and shared amongst the group members.  We then had to guess who are paper belonged to!  Great way to get us adults talking to each other, but even a better model of what we can do with our learners to build community within our classrooms :)

As members of Courage house, we came together to focus on the celebrations of Falcon Way and areas of improvement.  I loved how if we had a concern, we had to have a solution!  To share our celebrations with others in the room, we used the web-based program, Mentimeter.  Given a code, we we were able to list 3 words or phrases that summarized our celebrations.  Below is the wordle that was created by our staff.

Each group was given 2 pieces of chart paper:  Concerns --> Suggestions & Brilliant Ideas.  I of course encourage our group to focus on the Brilliant Ideas, as this would continue the positive energy.  As a house, we loved the PJ fundraiser hosted by Mrs. Cherry's (@feliciacherry) Falcon Way members and the #wheelchairchallenge, hosted by Mrs. Peltier's (@mrspeltierNRMS) Falcon Way members.

Moving onto our Concerns --> Suggestions provided a consistent theme of time and knowing our students amongst our House.  Collaboration began and solutions are ready to be implemented when we meet on Monday!  I must say I was quite proud of my fellow housemates as they came up with an idea to mix up their classes, allowing for groups to work together on a common goal.  As a staff we participated in a gallery walk, looking at each other's ideas.  The ideas shared on the posters will be taken into consideration as we move forward with the implementation of Falcon Way!

What I hope that others will take away from this part of our time together are the various instructional strategies we participated in as students, rather than teachers.  All provided awesome ways to model being solution seekers, rather than problem finders!

We then moved into how to reconnect with our learners after a 2 week break.  Greeting students at the door, asking how break went and most of all making them feel apart of the learning community.  This activity reiterated to me the post I wrote about my goals for 2017 and being a positive teacher for ALL of the NRMS stakeholders.

Our ELA teachers shared with us the best reading strategies for all content areas.  Led by Kylie Norrel (@knorrell7) & Katherine Harvell (@mrs_harvell), we were given an article Model Behavior: The Mathematics of Juggling  We were guided through the processes of reading and analyzing text, as our learners do in their ELA classes.

The one comment that resonated with me, as a math teacher, was when other ELA teachers mentioned that the only reading that happens in math classes is with word problems.  This made me cringe knowing there are so many articles out there that pertain to math in the real world (just like the article we worked with today!).  I couldn't help but smile towards my teaching partner because of the learning that was about to happen in Room 27 over the next 3 days.  It was time to bust the myth of only reading word problems in math!

Our time together culminated with a focus on STEM.  All of the math and science teachers were recognized for the time and energy they have put forth in working towards our certification.  Our challenge was to build the tallest tower given 60" of tape and a file folder.  The energy sparked during this activity was phenomenal.

What did you take away from your first day back?