Sparking Motivation Hodge Podge

Middle Schoolers are H-A-R-D to motivate. 

I feel like sometimes I have to stand on my head and do flips. 

Other times though, the simplest of things will get them working. 

Today I have a hodge podge of things to show that help my students stay focused! 

Sports 

They aren't ALL into sports, but they know I am, so some of them just humored me. 

We predicted Sunday's outcome. 

I did this last year too. 

Guess, we will find out tomorrow....  

(GO HAWKS!)

 Peer Tutoring 

The student on the right is tutoring on the right. 

She is UH-Mazing. Seriously... She "teaches" them and then says, "Do you understand?" 

Hello? She checks for understanding??!!!! 

Another student yesterday said, "Mrs. Hodges, Genesis could be your substitute" 

Yes, she could! 

 They love listening to music while they work. I am fine with it as long as they have headphones. (they can only do this during independent work time) 

 Math Apps on their Ipads

This is 5 Dice, a very challenging app. 

This is Door 24. They LOVE this one. 

Cooperative groups 

During Daily 3, one of the stations is Math with Someone. 

My students are really good at completing their work and using a lot of "Math Talk" 

My boys do it too! 

Coloring 

They loved this activity from Middle School Math Moments. 

This was one we completed when practicing exponents. 

Hope you enjoyed seeing what I use, a whole bag of tricks!! 

Now click on over to Joanne at Head Over Heels for Teaching and see other motivating ideas! 

We reached 100!!!!!

NOT 100 days of school, (not yet.) This is actually day 95. 

100 PAGES in our Math notebooks! 

When I said to my students, "Turn in your journals and number page 100", several class periods actually cheered! 

I love that they are excited about what we do in our notebooks!!!! 

page 1- 47 can be seen here

So, like always, here's my PHOTO look into our notebooks! 

Beware,  this post has LOTS of pictures!!! 

I start every unit off the same way. 

We have a pocket for incomplete work and a table of contents PER unit. 

It works wonderfully! 

Ratios flippable and left side activity.

This has been the best way for me to teach the metric system. I feel it is out of place this year, but that is beyond my control. My students did well with it and remember our mnemonic fairly easily. 

Kids Hate Decimals Unless Decimals Create Money! 

We also include a page for warm ups. We just add them as we do it. 

And egads! A blank page. Not sure what happened there. 

Should have been a vocabulary I am sure... 

Love this page! Love teaching these concepts! 

That factor tree I saw from Runde's Room! 

I also love teaching order of operations. 

not sure I love PEMDAS, but it does work. 

This year I used the foldable from Live. Love. Math for my left side. 

This activity is also from Live. Love. Math 

It is designed differently and this is not how I have done it in the past. I won't do it this way again  either, but it's a long story how this appeared in our notebook... 

GREAT activity though! Be sure to check it out! 

Properties and Left Side Activity 

Sometimes a foldable is created together as a class. 

I have since made these for printing next year. 

I did share about this here. The feedback was great and it became a product. 

This activity is available here. 

Both of these pages are from Gina Wilson at All things Algebra.

We have been told  that we need to use Cornell notes. This is an attempt. We only glue the top down so we can add multiple pages or write on the notebook paper underneath it. 

This is not my favorite way to do vocabulary, but it was part of Math Writing for my Daily 3. 

One of my most favorite lessons about quadrant planes and coordinate pairs. 

This year I had to include the Cornell notes style. Students did write a summary as well. Their teacher hasn't gotten around to that.  (hee hee) 

Learn about this lesson here or here. I got it from Math = Love. 

More Cornell Notes.... 

I am not a fan of so much paper on top of paper, so instead of using the Cornell Notes paper, We did our foldable on the right side and I had them draw in the questions and summary portion. 

I made these quick notes with a 4mula Fun template. 

Do you get her newsletter? You should, this was a freebie!!! 

Anyway, had my students do a Venn Diagram for their own notes and then write a summary. 

I am making Cornell Notes fit my class and how I like to teach. we're just mixing it up! 

Sorry that many of my "writing" samples are not complete, but my students have their complete. They have been writing fools. I do check these and they have been getting daily grades for these too. Math Writing is part of my Daily 3 and they have to meet these expectations. 

I gave my students a paper clip and they used their pencils to spin the spinner. Students had to give one fact to a partner about the angle that the spinner landed on. It was a review activity. 

Then they wrote a summary about angle types. 

 And here it is, our 100th page!!!! 

The book mark is from Live Love Math. 

My students have been using it along with her task cards for area with composite figures. 

QR Codes- SUPER Easy!

I wanted to share how easy it is to use QR Codes in your classroom. I have used them several times. I think I made a set a long time ago, but this past week, I needed something really quick for a unit test review and I thought, "How about QR Codes?" 

I couldn't remember exactly how to do it, so I looked up a tech blog I read, and viola', SUPER EASY!!! Thanks to iTeach 1:1, I found what I needed and made QR Codes, crazy quickly for our review! 

I made these codes literally, in about 7 minutes!!! 

Go to qrstuff.com. On the left side, click on Plain Text. Then you type your text in and it makes the code for you!!! 

Next, you click download code. It's a jpeg. I pasted mine into the above powerpoint. 

I printed them, cut them and glued them to the question. These are posted all around my room. 

Students went around and checked their answers. 

For these, I also wrote reminder notes for them to write so they could study for their test. 

It is crazy easy and if you haven't tried it, you should!  

I have a few more projects in mind for these too, hopefully I will get to them soon. 

Again, its the idea of "giving the kids the answers" so they can check their work and find out one, if they know the information and two, what mistakes did they make? 

Happy Monday, now go make some QR codes, QUICK!  

Duct Tape a Teacher

 Our PTSA (Parent/Teacher/Student Association) hosted a fundraiser this past week. 

Students and Teachers could pay to have their favorite, or least favorite teacher duct taped to a wall! 

All teachers were eligible. After a week, the field was narrowed down. 

I know there were 6 finalist. 

And then today, during advisory.... There were 2! 

Let the duct tape begin!!! 

Our Leadership teacher and Boys Athletic Director

He tried keeping his arms free, but to no avail. 

This is when they attempted to move the chairs. Even after 600 ft of duct tape, they were gonna fall. 

They were good sports though and it was fun! 

Be sure to link up with Joanne for some great motivation ideas!