Teaching Mrs. Ryan

   The school district I am in has cumulative tests covering everything taught each six weeks.  The twist is, these tests are made by administrators and not teachers.  This really isn't a problem to me.  It is a learning tool for me and a teachable moment for my students on the importance of all material covered in class.       We as teachers can really get bogged down in the variables of a test like this.  By that I mean, oh the test question was worded funny or well they were only given one chance to show mastery on this, my students are _______ fill in the blanks, thoughts, and reasoning.  The one thing my school district did was have us put our scores up standard by standard right next to every other teacher in the district who had to teach the same thing we did.  My oh my did I fall short!  I say I fell short even though I had great reasoning as to why my scores looked the way they did... but upon further reflection ...

     The name of the game is engagement, but let us all be honest with each other; if you aren't targeted about your engagement, then it is just fluff.  I think I spend about 1/2 of my waking hours thinking of ways I could incorporate cross-curricular and real-world items into my lesson plans.  Shouldn't we all be though?  Well... maybe not spend 1/2 your waking hours thinking about it, but definitely incorporating cross-curricular and real-world items into your classroom.  I always tell my parents life is not a worksheet, but let's be honest... sometimes you ARE stuck with using them!  I like to break away as much as possible!  Sometimes though, those angelic (cough) students of mine could care less.  We know they don't!  They don't care how much of our own money we spent, how long we spent planning something just for them, the only thing they care about is whether it is fun, and not "boring".        I would l...

      Well, wouldn't you know it that I would go crazy shopping and planning and guess what?  I will once again be teaching 5th grade math!  You know what though, I am definitely okay with it.  I LOVE MATH.  One of the things I've also learned in my short 7 years of teaching is that it doesn't matter how many times you've taught a subject, every year is different.  There are new ideas, thoughts, activities, and a blend of what you know that works great mixed in.       This summer I clocked something like 40 hours of professional development.  It was my favorite kind too!  You know, where you get to pick what you learn about instead of the district mandates.  For years I have wanted to institute a Wonder Shelf in my classroom.  Have you heard of one of these?  It is essentially a place with mini-projects and activities for students to work on when they have mastered your current standard, or even if they ar...

    A day I thought would never come has happened... I am teaching something other than math!  For 7 years I have taught math to grade levels 2nd on up to 8th and I have absolutely loved every second it.  I will admit it with no problem.. I LOVE MATH!  I have learned one thing about "Life" though, it changes, and it is constantly changing.      I found myself at the end of this school year packing up a home we have lived in as a family since right before my youngest child was born, and moving 2 hours away.  Not a huge difference, but it seems it has been the summer of change for many I know.  My brother moved from his Texas home to Colorado, my Grandmother is moving from the home she loves into a suite she had built onto my Aunt's house as she is turning 90 tomorrow.  My 3rd child graduated high school, child number 2 is about to embark on a travel tour of America in an RV, and child number 1 went and got married!  And of cou...

Like thousands of other teachers, I was amazed, excited, and very grateful to a company I'd never heard of called Ripple.  Many already know that Ripple donated 29 million dollars to DonorsChoose.org and funded over 30,000 teachers!  What an amazing gift for students and teachers!  If you didn't hear about it, check out this broadcast! I know that everyone just wants to know the amazing items I got for my classroom.  Well, it was 1 item really, with some accessories.  I asked and received a 3d printer (This is a FlashForge 3D printer.  You can check it out HERE ) and the filament for my classroom due to the generous donations of family and Ripple!  I can't even begin to explain the excitement when I told my students.  They have been researching and telling me about all the cool projects we could do with a 3d printer, and I already have several plans up my sleeve!  One includes making catapults for a measuring and data collection pro...

  How many of you have tried digital break-outs, or any kind of break-out for that matter in your classroom?  If you haven't I promise you are missing out on a fun way to engage your students in their content while making those brains work on some serious critical thinking skills!     After spending $$ on my favorite website ( TeachersPayTeachers of course) on digital breakouts I decided I really needed to learn how to do this myself.  Especially when I couldn't find the exact item I'm wanting.  Let's face it... it's hard living in a Common Core World when I work in a TEKS environment!  Common Core and Texas Essential Knowlege and Skills (TEKS) are pretty different and most of what I tend to find is catered to Common Core.  Time for me to "BREAKOUT!"     I would like to tell you that I spent a large amount of time researching and putting together my first break-out but let me be honest with you... I didn't have that time ...

  By now all of you savvy educators are well aware of what Bloxels are, and I am super proud to be a Bloxels Ambassador.  In case you aren't familiar with Bloxels and how they can impact your classroom, let me introduce you to my favorite curriculum collaborator!   Yes!  You are reading the logo right... a program that lets you build your own video games.  This educator values the fact that it is hands on and technology!  Most of the graphics on my page today come from the Bloxels webpage, but some are my own.  Creations by imagination.   If you are not familiar with Bloxels or how it works I recommend visiting their website HERE .     The amazing Bloxels website contains a huge amount of information such as the Bloxels blog, how it works, where to buy it, and even educator lesson plans.  Let me tell you how my Bloxels journey began: One day I stumbled into a Barnes and Noble with my family and there was a ...

     It has been a busy busy time since my last post!  Summer was filled with lots of great PD, brainstorming for a more innovative year, and some continuing education.  I spent my summer working on my STEM Education Certification through Texas A & M University.  We dove right in with a course on student centered learning environments and project based learning.  This really catapulted what I was already doing within my district.  I am in my districts cohort for project based learning and flipped classroom, so taking this course helped me prepare for the cohort and my classroom as well.  I also went to CAMT (Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching) this summer with my fellow teachers in San Antonio, TX and really focused on hands-on mathematics. I also attended training for the newest Promethean boards and a great emerging software program called  Class Flow .  I will post about  Class Flow  sep...

     I got some great news today strolling through the faculty lounge.  I saw I had some items in my teacher box and found a letter from AEP the power company.  I'm sure the secretaries were wondering why I would get my power bill sent to school!  But.. I opened it to see an awesome letter notifying me that I had been chosen for a grant I applied for call the Teacher Vision Grant.  I'm sure for many teachers out there, it isn't that big of a deal, but for me WOO HOO!  Man I am thrilled! My grant is for $500 for STEM/STEAM use.  What I am doing is going to be so much fun for the kids.  I used the grant to purchase an iPad mini , a protective case, an iPod touch , and a View Master virtual reality viewer .  My students are going to be making Aurasma's to turn our stagnant word wall into an augmented reality word wall.  Students will be making videos explaining the mathematical words and even solving problems for each word....

   First let me start out this post by saying, this is somewhat of a rant, and somewhat of a timeline that I've been through to find new things, cool things, and in some cases I may have bitten off more than I can chew!    I've been blessed to work at schools with plenty of technology, but not all technology is created equal.  More recently my challenge is making the Chromebook compatible with all the STEM projects I want to do for my students.  Recently we embarked on a Zoo creation project.  Students have spent the last few weeks researching zoos, animals, and habitats.  My ultimate goal was have students create a habitat using SketchUp and put that 3D habitat into a playground using the software Playing Mondo .  It is a bit of an ambitious project, but the student will be able to do so much with the Playing Mondo (PM) software as time goes by that I knew I wanted to try everything I could.  Enter the dragon... or Chromebook in my ...

Teaching with a lot of tech is a huge goal I have for my Math/STEM classroom.  The importance isn't just to say I'm using technology, but to bring real 21st Century skills into the learning environment while I'm still ensuring growth in my content area by covering my state mandated standards.  It doesn't matter what your state standards are, technology in the classroom is a must. Currently I am working on training with Google.  They have a really great program for teachers to get free professional development, and when you are done, you can be a certified Google for Education expert.  If you are on Twitter, you check out Google for Education's page and follow it. A really cool thing I learned today: Icognito Windows for Chrome - Who knew that you could make what you are doing private on a public computer!?  I sure did not. Whether you consider yourself tech savvy or a beginner, these are really great tutorials to learn about Google tech in the classroo...

Our school was selected to participate in Google Expeditions.  How awesome for a small East Texas school to be visited by a tech giant and chosen to participate.  Let's be honest, if you google "Google Expeditions" you will see that they have been all over letting schools test out their new app, but they are all schools in big cities.  We were so lucky to have such an amazing district STEM coordinator that is always looking out for exciting STEM opportunities for our students.  During the expeditions, my students used View Master Virtual Reality viewers with cell phone devices.     I WAS BLOWN AWAY. I was excited, my kids wanted to do everything even though we only had a 20 minute window per class.  I knew I needed to check into this more. December:  I had visited the View Master website and of course checked out how I could get one of these off of Amazon .  And then I just let it drop back into the back of my brain as teachers tend ...

Every year when students are counting those days left of summer time fun, teachers are going back early.  We have to get our classrooms ready and of course training.  Tons and tons and tons of training.  In fact, I've started my training 3 weeks before students come back to school and MAN am I learning a lot!  We just got done with some fabulous STEM training done be Dacia Jones (@dacia92 if you twitter) from Durham, NC public schools.  I encourage you to check out her blog over at Discovery Education HERE   Like many STEM conferences we learned about cool projects we could try out with our students, but she also helped to facilitate and grow our little STEM program that for 5th graders is in its infancy.  She organized and helped us get lab coats, helped us with grant writing, gave us great resources and information, and did it with an energetic happy smile everyday regardless of the tech difficulties we sometimes hit (WIFI issues blah!)  That ...

Let me be honest.  I live for the summer.  I always knew teaching would be the perfect job for me because when I wasn't a teacher and spring hit... oh it was so hard to sit still in an office.  The last job I held before I taught was perfect for that!  I was able to turn off my fluorescent lights and open the blinds and let the natural light come in, and I would make excuses to visit clients so I could get out of my cubby and go!  Now, I just wait for that last school bell to ring and give my goodbyes for the year to my students and plan on a summer of organization, exercise, dieting, travel, crafting, sleeping in, and a new me.  Oh yeah, and I always intend to blog so much more. Reality is, I do a little bit of all of those things, and sometimes I even feel I've accomplished something, but partway into the summer...I get bored. There I said it!  The nerd in me gets bored and I start researching cool technology and thinking about all the new things I...

In addition to getting ready for a wild new year, it is always wise to take a look back and reflect on what you could have done better, what worked, and what didn't.  Of course you can't forget that when a new year of school arrives, there are always PLENTY of changes.  The one thing I've learned is that change is always taking place whether that is administration, teachers, students, or curriculum.  I can almost put a tick mark on everyone of those categories, but change doesn't mean bad things. This year I have a new curriculum and so far I'm having a love/hate relationship with it.  I love the differentiation, the technology inclusion, and the rigor.... I'm not loving the bugs within the program.  I feel that the textbook company should not have launched this platform if they weren't ready with the same features as the older platform, and if they weren't sure that they had all of their lessons in the correct spot!  Nothing is more frustrating than a...

I think we can all relate to that time when we finally can have some much needed rest to recharge our creative batteries.  Let's face it, teaching can drain you!  Beyond the politics, the standards, the classroom diversions, there is this need to be the most innovative teacher you can be.  I know I'm always looking for more creative ways to teach the same old boring lessons.  This week my goal is to post some of the cool things that happened in my class prior to Christmas break.  I'm going to review an app I used as a teaching aid, post some pictures about a project we did, take a walk through NearPod (which I'd like to use permanently in my classroom), and revisit Mathletics.  I'd also like to get some feedback on a project I'm working out in my head.  I want to do a project with Legos, statistics, data gathering, functions and modeling... an all in one project.  I have a couple of classes that I'd like to experiment with, just to see how they ...

It amazes me to know  we are rolling into our 4th week of school and already so much has been done!  I promise I will not complain about a school year flying by!  The first part of the year in math is always spent reviewing concepts from the previous year and adding a level of complexity to that.  For instance, my students who are reviewing decimal operations now have to work with those same operations, but they will need to round, deal with repeating numbers, or positive and negative signs with their work. One thing I've incorporated into my lessons this year is the use of Interactive Notebooks.  There are TONS of free resources on the web for doing this thanks to so many awesome educators.   I research all types of graphic organizers and foldables and incorporate them into my units so that my students are essentially creating their own study guides for quizzes and tests.  One of my new favorite finds is used to solve equations whether they are...

Everyone in my house is going about their normal business and I am preparing for the first day of school.  Don't be alarmed!  I've actually been preparing for this day all summer, now I'm running over everything in my head.  Things I hope I don't forget, things that I want to add, and things that I'm hoping will help my day be easier. This year I am incorporating new apps in my room.  First up for classroom management is Class Dojo: You can click on the Dojo icon to take you to their webpage, but in a nutshell it is a way for you to document student behavior that the students can view daily as well as the parents.  Students are rewarded with points for good behavior and negative behavior takes away points.  Students who reach a particular amount of points each nine weeks will have the chance to earn homework passes. Next up is Doceri:   Doceri is an app for my iPad that will allow me to link to my classroom computer, therefore linking me...

     I hope everyone has been enjoying their summer as much as I have.  Well aside from that silly surgery I had!  Right now I'm getting prepared to go back to work.  I only have a week and a half before teacher in-service begins and two and a half weeks before I'll be standing in my classroom in front of my students. Every teacher knows what this means; the classroom must be prepared, and the lesson plans must be ready to go!  This year I have added a new class to teach, so I can't rely on what worked great last year to supplement my new stuff, I am starting from scratch for this class.  I will be teaching 6th and 7th grade math, Pre-Algebra, and Algebra I.  I'm really excited about adding Algebra to my line up.  It was my FAVORITE class in high school.       This summer I have been revamping my lesson plans to include more activities and more student involvement.  I want them to discover and learn m...