First Day of School Jitters begin early

Okay so I had my first dream last night about the first day of school. What is up with that. School doesn't start for 6 more weeks and I am already dreaming about the first day. I go through this every year. You would think that after 14 years of teaching I wouldn't get the first day jitters but I do. Maybe it is time to take some vacation from school work and let myself just relax for a few days.

Writing in the Math class

The more I think about how I will use this blog in my math classroom the more my mind wanders around the idea of getting my students to do more writing about the math we are doing in class. I know however from previous attempts at getting students to write in math that it is a challenge. I wonder if the uniqueness of using a blog would help with overcoming that challenge. I hate to have to resort to the "it is part of your grade" or "you will get extra points" lines of fire. I want my students to come to the realization, that writing about and discussing the math and our thinking leads them to better understanding and better grades.

Over the next few weeks before school starts I am going to work on gathering ideas for discussions that are math related to try out at the beginning of the year. I am thinking about starting with a class discussion about how we can use technology in our math class and ask the students for their input.

Why Blog in a math classroom?

So many people think that writing is for all subjects but math. After all math is all about numbers and procedures with those numbers, yet writing about what we are learning helps us to cement the ideas into our heads. When our students write about the math they are learning, they are increasing their vocabulary usage, they are summarizing what they have been learning and they are able to find ways that the math they are learning can be used in the real world. A question that I am asked so often in middle school "When will I ever use this in real life?" Hopefully the use of this blog tool will allow us as a class to discover the answers to that question.