Month: August 2007

The Comprehensive Math Assessment Resource

By Dan Meyer • August 31, 2007 • 261 Comments

Due to time constraints in my corner of the world (school started a week ago) I’m gonna have to shelve my typically softspoken online persona and get straight to it. If you’d like to see assessment amount to more than a meaningless exercise in classroom control, if you’d like to see cheating drop and confidence rise, if you’d like to see a higher correlation between the grade you feel a student deserves and the grade on that student’s transcript …

… take something from this page.

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Second Day

By Dan Meyer • August 28, 2007 • 2 Comments

On the up side, economies of scale have kicked in pretty fast teaching three sections of Algebra versus two. Energy seems an even trade — 50% more classes depletes me an extra 50% — but it costs me nothing to run my slidedecks again or to print out an extra 25 handouts. That’s nice.
On the down side, the fact that I’m here at this dumb coffee shop and have been every day so far, makes me feel like I violated the terms of a contract I made with myself last year.
Even farther down the side, I can’t seem to plan an hour to save my life. Which is to say, I’ve underplanned every day this week, which would be inexcusable if not for the fact that …
… I’m staying a day or two ahead of myself this year (big assist from slides I made last year). I just click past the next day’s opener, pick up with the next notes, and no one’s the wiser except you, me, and the Internet here.

Huge Class Posters on the Cheap!

By Dan Meyer • August 27, 2007 • 20 Comments

So I had this huge bare patch on the wall.

Problem is: it’s such a sappy, feel-good market for teacher posters. Anyone else feel me on that?

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First Day

By Dan Meyer • August 27, 2007 • 7 Comments

Jumping back into 100% teaching for the first time in over a year (I was 80% last year) after a summer of desk work is fatiguing. No idea how my dear old dads does it after thirtysomething years. My voice is beat. I’m beat.
I realize we’re all on best behavior right now but we seem to have positive chemistry — me and each of my five classes. I can work with that.
Got a kid in sixth who’s taller than me. Something like six foot ten. Freaking me out.
I spaced on the order of my classes and handed a Geometry activity out to an Algebra class. Really dumb. Saved myself but things were looking awkward for a second.
Back at this dumb coffee shop planning dumb lessons. I hate to let anyone tell me “I told you so” but it’s possible I won’t be reusing as much content as I thought I would. Remains to be seen.

Just what I needed.

By Dan Meyer • August 27, 2007 • 1 Comment

Tony Lucchese shakes me by the shoulders in what couldn’t possibly be a direct response to the doom and gloom of last night, but which had the same effect, regardless. Thanks, man. I’m ready.

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