MTBoS Challenge 3, One Good Thing

I've been working hard putting all my class materials on my web page this year and I don't really know if people are using them yet. Today I handed a packet of papers to a student who missed last class and he said he didn't need it, he'd already printed it out from the website and he understood what we'd done. Yay for systems that work!

Common Core Standards list

I am using Standards Based Grading this year, I've taken the list of standards we are using and compared it with the CCSS. I also cross referenced it with the traditional pathway in Appendix A of the standards. Seems to me we've got most things covered, although I think our emphasis will be evolving over time to include more modeling and less skill work.

Algebra 1 Standards List

Looking for other blogs

I would like to follow more blogs about Standards Based Grading and Common Core in Algebra 1.  If anybody reading this is blogging about that, please leave me a comment (or get in touch with me in some way that work for you) so I can follow you.  Thanks :-)

MTBoS prompt 1

This fall, the Math Twitter Blogosphere is having another challenge to help bring bloggers together.  I'm writing on the prompt about a good open ended problem.  I use this one as a warm up.  The challenge is to connect 9 dots with 4 straight lines without lifting up your pencil and with out retracing

I don't give them the answer, someone has to get it.  Sometimes this takes until later in the lesson and I just wait.  There is always someone who wants to get it bad enough to keep at it.  Here's the answer

This problem requires you to think outside the box, literally and figuratively.  I like to try to get them to realize that the fun of math is in the ah-ha moment, not just repeating what I say, and I think this problem is good for that.

CK-12 Guest Blog

CK-12 asked me to write a guest post on their blog, please click here if you'd like to read it.