Mrs. Newell's Math: Personal

Showing posts with label Personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personal. Show all posts

New School Year Goals

Monday, August 1, 2016
This month, I am participating in the #MTBoSBlaugust challenge. You can find a list of participants when you Click Here. My goal is to blog every day this month!


Here are several of my goals this school year:

1. Encourage others to try something new. 
There are two Geometry teachers on my team that will not incorporate technology, activities, or foldables into their teaching. I really want to encourage them this year to step outside of their comfort zone and be able to successfully implement some new strategies. I am currently trying to come up with good ways to help make this happen.


2. Blog at lease once a week.
I want to blog at least once a week. I found that blogging allows me to reflect on what went well, what sucked, or what needs improvement.  Countless ideas and activities were born in the middle of writing a blog post.  I'm still relatively new to blogging (started in January) but I hope to be able to go back and search for previous lessons and see what did/did not work.


3. Ask more questions.
I want to ask more questions. I know I ask a lot of questions after a lesson, but I feel like I don't ask enough questions during a lesson. I'm going to print a list of questions to put on my desk to help remind me.


4. Attend more extra-curricular activities.
Students notice whenever a teacher attends extra-curricular activities. Anytime a student sees me at an extra-curricular activity, their faces light up and they get so excited! When students see you at their games or events, they start to realize that you care. This helps promote a positive school culture and a positive classroom environment. I do not understand why some teachers complain about having to attend "one" campus service event a year. I find it exciting and fun to be able to interact with past, current, and future students in a different school setting.


5. Be able to balance home, work, and school life. 
I am definitely an overachiever. I always put too much on my plate and this year, I decided to go back to school to get my masters.  I am nervous to see how going back to school will play out when I am back at work. I hope to find a schedule that allows me to balance my work, home, and school life efficiently without getting too stressed out.


6. Keep up with my half marathon training plan. 
I started running in February and I completed my first half marathon in April. I finished with a time of 2 hrs and 17 mins, which is not bad since it my first race ever. I signed up for the Houston Chevron Half Marathon in January and my goal is to run it in under 2 hours! I start my training plan this week and I need to motivate myself to stick with it to achieve my goals. "She believed she could so she did."

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Start, Continue, Stop

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Start:

  • Using Pickers  (I want students to glue them down in their INB)
  • Using Desmos 
  • Google Classroom (may be hard without being 1:1 but I think I can do it)
  • NearPod Lessons
  • Project Based Learning units
  • Asking more questions
  • Calling parents (why do I have such a phobia of this? Weird, right?)
  • Being nicer
  • Attending more extra-curricular activities

Continue:

  • Interactive Notebooks
  • Socrative 
  • Sharing lessons and resources with other teachers
  • Cold Calling on students 
  • Holding students accountable
  • Color-Coding my notes
  • Vertical Whiteboarding
  • Flexible Grouping

Stop:

  • Making excuses for students
  • Drinking so much caffeine
  • Being sarcastic 
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#MTBoS30: 30 School Things that Make My Heart Smile

Wednesday, May 11, 2016
I am stealing this prompt from 3 other awesome bloggers!

30 school things that make my heart smile:
1. Old students that come visit me
2. Random students that stop me in the hallways just to say "Hey Mrs. Newell!"
3. New Paper Mate flair pens
4. My pretty classroom decorations
5. Being the class sponsor of 2017
6. Working with my best friend/soul sister
7. When I hear old students tell me they still have their Interactive Notebooks from last year
8. Students that bring a pencil to class every day
9. The awesome librarians at my school that print and laminate my activities and posters in color
10. Compliments from students (even though I heard I am not the best at saying thank you)
11. Being the special education and english language learner teacher for geometry
12. When students bring me a diet drink or Starbucks
13. An awesome math administrator that is always 100% supportive
14. Having the best co-teacher at my school
15. When I create a new "font-pair" (I have a severe font addiction)
16. Students who tell me that they hated math until geometry
17. Students who grow with math confidence in my class throughout the year (many try Pre-AP Algebra 2 after my class :))
18. When students say they missed me when I'm gone and to never be absent again
19. Students that love to sit behind my desk to help me with my lesson
20. Old students that come to my tutorials for another math class
21. Every single one of my classes this year
22. When students help other classmates and become one of the many "leaders" in my class
23. Students that tell me that they will never forget me
24. When I hear students say "Mrs. Newell, you never just give us the answer!"
25. Students that end up loving to color-code their notes
26. Students that keep up with their notebook all school year long
27. My loud and organized classroom
28. Students that tell me they appreciate all of my hard work
29. My dark classroom with my 2 lamps
30. Absolutely loving my job every single day (even on the bad days)

This was way too easy to write and I could have added at least 20 more onto this list :)
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#MTBoS30: Best News Ever!

Thursday, May 5, 2016
Sooo...... I learned that I am going to be teaching a section of basic special education geometry classes today! I have wanted to teach this class since before school started and I am so excited about this new journey in my teaching career!





Any  awesome math special education blogs that I should know about? :)



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