Teaching Mrs. Ryan

      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...

  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 ...

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...

     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...

Yes, I'm talking about the beginning of the 4th 9 weeks.  A time that every teacher and student treasure!  They aren't quite done, but they know it is coming faster than ever.  My first teaching position for a solid year, and it's almost done.  What I wanted to touch on today is something I'm hearing from a lot of the veteran teachers... "Get as much done as you can by the end of the 3rd 9 weeks, they won't learn much the 4th 9 weeks because of all the activities that go on." WHAT!?  You mean I have to basically babysit for 9 weeks?  I think NOT! I happen to have a really awesome tech teacher on campus that is always giving me really cool ideas to try and a faculty who always shares cool new things that they find, so I'm hitting this up with a plan in mind! 1.  I'm going to throw in so many cool projects and tech activities that everyday will be an adventure in math.  Yes... I know.. I should have been doing this ALL year.. I was getting my ...

Well I knew it was bound to happen at some point.  I know that every teacher experiences it.  How to overcome it, will be the biggest victory I've had so far in my career as a teacher.  The roadblock I'm talking about is when you teach a concept, reteach that concept, and teach it again.. and the students still don't get it. What then? Right now, my roadblock is equations.  Equations!  My FAVORITE part of math.  I love all the cute jokes about finding x.  But for real.. I LOVE finding x.  My students.... not so much.  But we are getting there! I tried teaching about equations "the old fashioned way".  I followed the textbook, I taught them how to solve using concrete manipulatives.. (and they looked at me like I was crazy).  On the last quiz we took, I had 1 student pass, and 2 that didn't get a single problem right.  We went through EVERY problem together, and then I had them correct their work, and write about their mis...

I just wanted to throw out a quick updated post about Voki.  I had a few days before school let out for the holidays to try Voki out with my students.  I made a cute little Voki to introduce the lesson: Terribly Cute isn't it! My plan was to have my students make their own Voki and talk me through a math problem.  I wanted to try something simple at first and then we will work on building what I can do with it later.  * I found it MUCH simpler to purchase Voki for my classroom.  I believe it was $30 for a year. * The one downfall I found was that students could only have 1 Voki each.  So they couldn't make several... bummer. The students LOVED creating their own Voki.  The crazier the better.  I had one student make a politically charged word problem with his Voki.  It made me laugh and I loved seeing their creativity come out. It really is hard as a math teacher to come up with different ways for students to use those critica...

After 1/2 a week in the classroom I have pretty good reviews to report about Live Binders .  For those that didn't read my last post about the conference I just attended, I'll give a brief synopsis.  I learned a lot of cool free and some not so free technology apps and programs to use in the classroom.  My goal was to integrate all of these different types of programs into my lesson plans here and there to spice up life a little bit.  One of the programs I introduced this week is Live Binders.  LB is essentially a virtual 3 ring binder that you can add notes, documents, and websites to.  I wanted to introduce this tool to my students to give them a way to organize their notes, and encourage them to discover new resources for class.    Even better; LB has a free app for the iPad.  Here is a little video from their site: Here is what I've learned so far: Some students took to this program like a duck to water.  They were ...

     It has been a busy time since I last posted about my NCTM conference.  Since then I've gotten my students hooked on Mathletics and we have successfully added Mathletics to our curriculum arsenal.  Currently I am using Mathletics as a warm-up for students in the classroom, but we are also using activities and lesson plans to get students engaged in learning in a whole new way.   Just after getting Mathletics on board in school, I headed to another conference.  This time I went to a Differentiating Instruction conference held by SDE .        Honestly, I wasn't really excited about this conference.  (1) During my graduate program and even during undergraduate studies, that is all you are taught.  You are taught to differentiate instruction and how it needs to happen, ways it needs to happen, and why it needs to happen.  DI, DI, DI... do it is what that needed to stand for.  (2) My collea...

Since my NCTM conference, I've been working with the people at Mathletics to get a new fun app into my students' hands, and in exchange, I get a great tool for myself.  For those that aren't in the know, Mathletics , is a very cool way to get your students involved in math by answering curriculum related questions in which they earn points.  Students can also compete answering questions with other students from around the world for points.  These points can be used to buy cool things for their avatars such as new hair and clothes, or they can be saved up for certificates and leader board recognition.  This is how I am using Mathletics in my classroom: 1) Each Sunday I look over the weekly lessons and assign activities for students to complete each day; I also give them an alternate textbook assignment they have the option of choosing just in case their are problems with internet connections. 2) Each day in class, students play their Mathletics App to warm-up i...

Let me start by saying this was my VERY first NCTM conference.  I was blown away.  There was so much to do that I couldn't do everything that I wanted to!  There just wasn't enough time.  There were great seminars to go to on topics that I found very interesting, TONS of vendors showing new math tools, and yes I even spent money for my classroom.  Here is a highlight of what I did: Scott Flansburg:    This guy was absolutely amazing and a great way to start off the conference.  He was nicknamed the Human Calculator by Regis Philbin back when he did Good Morning with Regis and Kathie Lee.  At any rate, what makes this guy special is that he can do insane math calculations in his head in record speed.  As a matter of fact, he is a Guiness Book of World Records place holder because he is so fast.  What really engaged me in this seminar was not only did it blow me away to watch him beat a calculator, but his passion for kids and math....

       As I embark on my last month of school there are so many things going on.  I am looking at making a move, working, looking for work, and I've made my final decision on my research proposal.  Initially when I started this program, I knew that I wanted my research to focus on creativity in the classroom.  I changed from that to how lack of creativity produces apathy in students, and completely jumped to my current topic dealing with mathematics and intervention on a Tier 3 level.      I am in the midst of writing a research proposal that focuses on the effects of the position I now hold in a rural East Texas school.  I was brought in as an outside contractor to provide math intervention services for students identified as "struggling" as well as additional intervention for special education students in the 3rd and 4th grade.   My participants come to me for 45 minute increments in a small group settin...

Well I must admit I thought we were rocking along in math class, and then I get to test day.  I realize two things: 1)  The kids don't know the material like I thought they did. 2) Since so many of them don't get it, I know the problem is me. So today I am spending time trying to find a million ways to teach my kids about positive and negative integers and about greatest common factor and least common multiple (this for my 6th graders) so that we can retest on Wednesday.  I feel bad for the kids that completely aced my test, but I'm more worried about the ones that failed dramatically.  20%, 30%, and yes I even had a 0%. It is official.  Come Monday I will be off track on the lesson plan the teacher has left for me to teach.  It is also official that my teacher will be coming back November 16th, and I need to ensure when she comes back in it was like she never left.  There is a lot of pressure for a long term substitute.  It is much more d...

I have to admit, that this past week has been the most exhausting and exhilarating week I've had since I was in the Navy.  I began my student teaching journey this week as a long term substitute teacher.  I am teaching Math to middle school students who are in the 6th and 7th grade, and boy am I learning a lot! My students have been in school for 2 weeks now, this upcoming week will be their 3rd.  I am the 3rd teacher they have had, and the one they have had for the longest.  The school I'm teaching at uses C Scope for their curriculum, so my students do not have text books.  This is something new for me, and I feel like I'm starting to overcome this challenge.   In all of my classes, my students seem to be lagging behind, so I've been giving remedial instruction this week to make up for the lack of a more structured instruction process.  I have a lot of material to cover, and not much time to cover it in.  Each class is with me for 1 hour a day...

It has been a while since I posted and I must admit that had more to do with me being so uncertain about my teaching future.  My desire to teach was of course there, but it looked like the opportunity was going to not be.  Much to my delight, and due ALL to God, I will be teaching starting Monday.  I am going to be a long term substitute for a local school.  What that means for me is that I will get paid a bit more than a regular sub, and I will be teaching the same students for around 3 months.  I am praying that an opportunity presents itself for me to continue as I took a HUGE leap of faith and quit my steady full-time income to do this.  I want to sneak a special thank you in here for all the staff at ETBU who worked hard praying and keeping their ears open for me. With  that being said, this week has been a whirlwind of activity!  I am learning about a program called C Scope that the school uses for planning, and I'm getting my thoughts in ...