Foussinating

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Posted by KFouss on November 02, 2009

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Just giving this a shot before trying to add it to my class blogs. . .

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Mid-year Feedback

We made it through first semester! When my school district announced in late July that we would be going back full-time, I gave it 3 weeks before we would be at home working somewhat remotely. Yet we made it through. Classes are (a little) smaller, students are doing a (mostly) great job of wearing masks, and teachers are working extra hard to accommodate students who chose to work from home for the semester (and are virtually joining our classes) and those who have been quarantined either due to a positive test or a close contact. I'd consider that a success, but I also like to hear from my students. So during our last week of classes (Dec 14 - 18) I emailed out a Mid-year feedback survey with three questions: I have a total of 85 students and received 33 responses. The only identifying information I asked on the form was what class they were taking. All 33 were from my Precalculus classes (I have 8 Algebra 2 students, none of which filled out the survey.) This is what I'll

Two Years Later

Blogging has obviously taken a back seat for the last couple of years. As I sit here less than two weeks away from heading back to school for my 27th year in the classroom, a lot has changed for me since I last posted. Two years ago, one of the math teachers at my school announced that they were changing schools. It actually doesn't happen that often in my building; typically people stay until they retire, but this was a move for a coaching position. It made sense. What made this such a big impact for me was that this teacher was teaching AP Stats. I don't know what it's like in other buildings, but stats is a course that people didn't really want to teach. Give me Algebra 2? Precalc? No problem. But stats is a whole different monster. And so the course was back up for grabs, and no one was really jumping at it. One of our assistant principals (formerly a math teacher) approached me and encouraged me to take it on. He thought I'd be good at it and enjoy it. I w

Common Core Mathematical Practices

I spent two days last week at a conference led by our county ESC entitled Focusing on the Mathematical Practices of the Common Core Grades 9 - 12. Honestly, a lot of the reason I try to go to different seminars is just to get out of the building and shake up my schedule a bit. It's hard to prepare for 2 days of a substitute, but changing the routine is sometimes worth it. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed my two days. Instead of focusing on what's going where in our classes, we talked a lot about how to focus our instruction. There are 8 standards for Mathematical Practice that I feel like I know inside and out. 1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Perseverance was a big issue that we talked about. If you have students who will keep trying when they feel like they don't know how to do a problem, then I salute you. Most of mine won't. I get so tired of seeing blanks after kids have "done" their homework... or big ?s. (Know what I

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