MathsClass

Starting Algebra with Year 8, we spend a couple of lessons on various “algebraic techniques”. I’ve been trying to find some activities which provide a little more engagement. I created “The Land of Algerb“ to explain multiplying pronumerals.

In 2009, Year 9 got their DER netbooks and now they are in Year 10. This year’s Year 9 does not have their netbooks yet, and so this gives teachers a little time to get their heads around the inclusion of netbooks into the classroom. This year, I’m teaching a 5.2 pathway Year 10 class (and a Year 9 5.2 class).

For NSW DET teachers, I’m sure you know of TaLe, and hopefully have seen some of the resources for the DER that have been published there. One category of resources has been called Laptop Wraps (they are also available publicly).

I really appreciate having my own classroom for many reasons, but one is the ability to place student work (the fun stuff) around the classroom.

I just posted on my personal blog about how I use the web, looking at how the various technologies (RSS) and tools (Google Reader, Delicious, Twitter) fit together.

This is where I hope I’m headed in 2010.

Teacher’s all have their own way of keeping track of student attendance, and other aspects that are recorded in class. Here’s mine, it might give you some ideas.

Usually I would reflect here on the year past. To be completely honest, I couldn’t be bothered reflecting on 2009. If I were to write down my thoughts, it would pretty much read like the post from February of 2009: Looking to 2009. It was a tiring and quite often frustrating year.

Reading blogs and networking on Twitter seem an obvious part of being a teacher. Yet when I take in to school a shiny new resource that I’ve received through one of these means, I usually get asked “where did you find this?”. The person behind the question is often thinking that I spend copious hours sitting at home in front of a computer “web surfing” or trying endless combinations of search terms in Google.

Some chocolate discussion starters for looking at bar graphs: a series of chocolate bar graphs.

This week, my Year 8s have been looking at inequality signs, graphing inequalities and solving simple (one-step) inequalities. Today, after solving inequalities, we played a simple game. A simple, obvious game, that really doesn’t warrant a blog post.

Here are my nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards.

The end of term/year often brings lots of disruptions. So, as much as I like to keep teaching till the end, some days require something a little different. I like hands-on quasi-mathematical activities that allow every student to engage with and complete. And on Thursday, just before having one of those disrupted days, I found this…

Despite every Year 9 student having a laptop for a few weeks, the topics we’ve been covering haven’t lent themselves to full laptop lessons. To end the term, though, we’re reviewing graphs.

A lesson for Year 9 students with DER laptops, or anyone really.