Month: September 2006

Total 2 Posts

How Math Must Assess

[Update: check out the comprehensive resource.]

Over the weekend I wrote up a mini-thesis on my assessment methods, which, though standard operating procedure at my last school, are pretty foreign here. I gave it a deliberately confrontational title, “How Math Must Assess.” SOP here is to use whatever tests the manufacturer supplies and give them whenever the manufacturer arbitrarily decided to divide the textbook. I worry that this arbitrary approach to testing stirs up a lot of hatred for math. The implication I try to avoid, since it’s so cocky coming from a third-year teacher’s keyboard, is that I know how to do it better.

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The Sleep Cycle of Chickens

If the day had 28 hours, I’d spend the bonus four planning lessons.

I just now broke into a spontaneous grin, the first one of those I’ve had in days, spontaneous or otherwise, while planning an Algebra lesson on fractals. I use Apple’s Keynote software. It took six hours of my weekend to design Tuesday’s lecture, but a kid gasped in third period (seriously) when I lit up the path of the cue ball and I knew I’d do it all again.

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