Meet the Teacher Night

I love Meet the Teacher nights. It’s second most important day to the first day of school. It’s the first time you will meet your students and parents. Their first impression of you will set the stage for the year. It’s important that leave a good impression on our parents.  the best impressions possible.

Here’s how to setup for s successful Meet the Teacher and Back to School Night!

Disclaimer: This is what worked for me. The key is making sure you are prepared.

Step 1. Make sure your room is organized and neat. It doesn’t have to be 100% completed with your decor, but it should be organized and neat. 

Step 2: Create stations around your room. This will help parents to move around without waiting to meet you.  

Step 3: Keep conversations short and simple: greet them, express your excitement, and remind them to visit each station. 

Step 4: Have a small scavenger hunt to get to know the room better and ensure they visit each station.

Step 4: SMILE...Make sure you seem eager and excited. All parents and students should leave with excitement for the new school year. 

Being Intentional

I’ve always believed in being intentional in everything I do. Everything should and do have a purpose. When you have to get your curriculum completed in a certain amount of time, make every moment count. 

As an educator it is important we are being intentional in every lesson, activity, and assessment in your classroom. Stop giving students busy work, group projects, or videos to watch with no purpose. 

In our opening meeting our principal told us that our Superintendent didn’t want to see any Getting to Know You Bingo on Day 1. Perfect, because we don’t have time for all the “fudge” activities. 

I found this awesome activity on Pinterest called Figure Me Out. What a purposeful activity, I thought. Student solve math problems for them to get to know you. I recreated the activity to help me formatively assess students on an 8th level. 

This is my Figure Me Out and Getting to Know Your Teacher Activity. 

For their first day homework assignment, each student will create one for them and provide an answer key (being intentional). The homework will force them to think critically about what problems to create to come up with their needed solution. 

I’ll share some of their work soon...

What are some of your favorite intentional activities to begin the school year? 

Jenga, Any One?

I want to create a classroom environment that students want to come to each day. I want them to feel the magic as they enter into the classroom and excitement for what activities they will do during their time with me. So definitely incorporating games into my classroom is a must!

Today, I went into our Dollar Tree and found these cute mini Jenga games. I was so excited and began brainstorming ways I could add them to my classroom. Of course, Pinterest gave me tons of ideas.

I created my first set of Math Jenga blocks for students to review Order of Operations. I found an order of operations worksheet and wrote the problem in black on one side of the block and the answer on the opposite side. (There are many versions to create).

Last week Michael's had these photo organizers on sale and look...a set can fit into one! The organizer will be used for my Math Workshop games and task cards.

Other ideas to use Jenga in the classroom...

1. Vocabulary

2. Reviews

3. Math Talk

4. Just for Fun

Writing In Math

RAFTs in math can be used to motivate and inspire students to write about what they are learning. When I taught 9th grade, students completed RAFTS on Relations and Functions. I found a cute activity already created (and I don't know where I found it) that provided students to be creative with their knowledge on Unit 1. Here are a few examples.





For some of my students this assignment was a bit challenging since it was the very first time we did it. But I think integrating it more into the curriculum, students will get the hang of it. For their first time, I thought they did a great job.
This year I will definitely integrate RAFTS into the curriculum. I may spice the Roles, Audience, Format, and Topic! And students will use KIDBLOG to create their RAFT.
Background on RAFTs
The more often students write, the more proficient they become as writers. RAFT is a writing strategy that helps students understand their role as a writer and how to effectively communicate their ideas and mission clearly so that the reader can easily understand everything written. Additionally, RAFT helps students focus on the audience they will address, the varied formats for writing, and the topic they'll be writing about. By using this strategy, teachers encourage students to write creatively, to consider a topic from multiple perspectives, and to gain the ability to write for different audiences. In the book, Strategic Writing, Deborah Dean explains that writing for differing purposes and audiences may require using different genres, different information, and different strategies. Developing a sense of audience and purpose in writing, in all communication, is an important part of growth as a writer.
RAFT assignments encourage students to uncover their own voices and formats for presenting their ideas about content information they are studying. Students learn to respond to writing prompts that require them to think about various perspectives:
Role of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A movie star? The President? A plant?
Audience: To whom are you writing? A senator? Yourself? A company?
Format: In what format are you writing? A diary entry? A newspaper? A love letter?
Topic: What are you writing about?
http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/using-raft-writing-strategy-30625.html

Digital Tools for the Math Classroom

As I prepare to go back into the classroom, I started reminiscing on all the digital tools that I implemented in my classroom before. I share a few on my original blog: Fun Integrating Technology. 

It's been three years since I was in the classroom and we all know, technology changes quickly. So here I am discovering old and new digital tools to make my classroom innovative.

Since this post is B.C. (Before Classroom), I will give a description of how I plan to use it in the classroom. During the year, I will revisit this post and make any updates and changes. If you have used any of these tools, please leave a comment on how you have implemented them into your math classroom.

Formative Assessments

Socrative: A cloud-based student response system. Socrative allows teachers to create simple assessments that students can access via any digital device.  I will be using Socrative as a tool to give students quick formative assessments.

Kahoot: I will use Kahoot as a game to engage students and assess their learning. Kahoot  is a video trivia game to assess students' level of understanding. Reading, I found another digital tool called Quizizz. I will investigate Quizizz. It looks to be very similar to Khaoot.

Using Nearpod in 2012

Nearpod: An interactive presentation and assessment tool. Teachers create a multimedia presentation and then share with students. The teacher is able to control what the students view. Students are able to engage in the presentation through quizzes, surveys, polls and writing. I used it while teaching high school several years ago. 
I also experienced teachers I worked with the last couple of years used Nearpod. I am very excited to use this tool in my Teacher Directed groups. (Yes, I will be doing Guided Math and a little Blended Learning).






Google Forms with Flubaroo is also a great tool to use for  quick assessments and to gather data from students.

Digital Tutors

To provide students with videos to access content and or instructional modeling, I will be suing Virtual Nerd and Khan Academy . I used both of these while in the classroom and still think they are great tools. While researching other tools to use, I discovered YouTube has some video content that may be used in the classroom also. These will also work to assist students with homework.

Fun games that I will use to engage students and assess their learning will be Kahoot ( A video trivia game to assess students' level of understanding.) Reading, I found another digital tool called Quizizz. I will investigate Quizizz, but for right now, I will be using Kahoot!

I just found this one out today: Scholastic Study Jams. Study Jams is a teaching tool that helps introduce or reinforce math topics through fun interactive activities. I have never used this one before, but will be using it this year.

Blogging/Collaboration Tools

This year will also implement literacy into the classroom. Students will blog to write and express their mathematical ideas. I am going to try using KidBlog for this. I used it before and liked that I was able to be in control of monitoring what students post.


Padlet is a great collaborative tool to implement into your classroom. Students can create an online post-it board that can be shared with any student or teacher.

I will also be incorporating Google Docs as a tool to collaborate.

Answer Garden is a new minimalistic collaboration tool. Ask a question and grow your answers.


ifaketext is probably one of my favorite tools to use. You can use this tool to allow students to create a conversation to explain a topic, vocabulary, or how to solve a problem.

And I dare not forget to mention using Twitter or creating GIFS and memes to have student explain their understanding.


Here are a few practice digital tools for students:

Ten Marks - This is Ten Marks last year....
IXL 
iPractice Math

I am so excited to create ways to integrate technology into the classroom. I am working on STEAM and PBLs, so these tools are not creation tools. I will do another post on digital tools for project creation.

Be sure to subscribe to The Unicorn Educator and follow the glitter trail. Hope this post has sprinkle a little magical dust to help you create magic in your classroom.