#Made4Math August 6

I admit it. I'm crafted out.

Two weeks from today I'll be reporting back to school (for two days of inservice) before the kids come on the 22nd... at this point I'm starting to think of more concrete things that I want/need to get done before school starts.

I started with revamping my first-day google form (that I linked to here). I thought it would be fun to add some pages to it so that it would take the kids to different questions depending on what class they were in. After doing this I discovered that I didn't really have different questions to ask, but I went ahead and changed some wording. Like, instead of "List the teachers you've had at Anderson" for the precalc kids, I put "List your 8th grade teacher" for the freshmen. I know. Probably a huge waste of time... but it gave me some practice with the pages option!  My new survey is here.

I found out on Wednesday (thanks to @mseiler) that my Integrated Algebra 1 (which isn't Integrated... it's just the name for our General class because they didn't want to call it General) is going to be 7th period. Seriously?  I think the general classes should all be held in the morning (before the kids have really woken up!) and definitely not 7th period. Oh well. This just reinforces my ideas to use Warm Ups, INBs, foldables, and exit slips. I want to keep these guys as busy as possible so I don't have to hear the constant whining about how hot it is in my classroom at 1:30 pm everyday.

Things on my to-do list:
1. Polish up my class syllabi.
2. Do a layout of what order to do Honors Alg 1... should I leave in the Chapter 2 basics?  @druinok (I think) mentioned a post on Math Tales From the Spring discussing what to start the year with.  I have trouble teaching adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative numbers with my Honors Algebra 1 kids. Maybe I'll do a 2-day boot camp and throw in fractions.  (Though I like to do a "Fun Fraction Friday" review with them every week too.)
3.  Get the even answers to summer precalc work on their Schoology page.
4.  Check with @approx_normal to see what she does with her SWHHW no-homework page.
5. Find things to do the first couple of days at school that don't involve the INB. I'd rather wait until after the first weekend to make sure kids have time to get a composition notebook.

A few things to take note of:

• If you're a middle school teacher, check out Julie Reulbach's blog. She posted a survey as well as a Middle School Sunday Funday idea
• If you're a high school teacher, please fill out Lisa Henry's survey.
• Megan Hayes-Golding is rocking the INB. Her newest post deals with what to do with homework... and that pesky LHP problem.
• Sam Shah put together a welcome site for new math teacher tweeters/bloggers. If this describes you or you're considering tweeting/blogging, please check it out.

Olympic stuff:

• Just watched a guy do a hammer throw on the Olympics after spinning around a bunch. Wonder what his angular and linear velocity were?!  Might have to find a clip for precalc; here's one from the 2004 Olympics.
• A (non-math) teacher friend just posted this link on fb about how many feet Usain Bolt would've beaten previous 100-m Olympic gold medalists by. I'm thinking that I'll need to re-do my 400-m world record times activity that I use in Precalc for linear regression. What a great update!

Sorry this isn't really #Made4Math-y (if you don't count my revamped gform).   I'm all over the place tonight. Must sleep.