Liebster Award!

It's been a while since I've been up here (sorry poor bloggy!). School has been so crazy lately - especially the past two weeks. You can tell that it is spring time...the kiddos are definitely being testy!! This is our last week before a very much needed Spring Break!

After such a trying week, I was super excited to hear that I had been nominated for a Liebster Award by Heather over at Smack Dab in the Middle! The Liebster Award is given to up and coming bloggers that have less than two hundred followers. Thanks so much for the nomination!

Now for my part...Questions and Answers

1. What grade do you teach? What grades have you taught? How long have you been teaching?

I currently teach 8th grade at my former middle school. I've taught 7th and 8th race since I started teaching. This is my fifth year teaching!

2. What book do you read to your class each year without fail?

I teach 8th grade math and science, so I totally feel bad for saying I don't read them any books. Does reading out of my interactive notebook count?

3. If you weren't a teacher, what would you be doing?

Probably learning how to cook. Or making purchasing and hoarding school supplies a profession!

4. What's one thing you're just dying to buy for your classroom?

This questions is perfect since I was just thinking about this today! I'm dying to buy a french press for my classroom. Since giving up soda, I've been relying on coffee for caffeine and am now addicted!!

5. What's your non-teaching guilty pleasure?

Celebrity gossip/news! But this comes in handy when I play QuizUp on my iPad! Haha!

6. Favorite book that is not teaching related?

Oh this is a difficult one since everything I read is teaching related. I would have to say the third book of the Fifty Shades Trilogy. Now before you think I'm weird, I just love the love story between Christian and Anastasia and am a sucker for happy endings!

7. What's one thing on your bucket list?

Learning how to play a stringed instruments! Either a violin or a cello!

8. Favorite restaurant?

Any restaurant that has Asian food and SUSHI!

9. Who would play you in a movie about your life?

Has to be Sandra Oh! I love her on Grey's!

10. What's one thing you could eat everyday?

Avocado!! Yum!!

11. What inspired you to begin blogging?

My favorite thing about being a teacher is being able to learn and share with other teachers. Whether it is best practices in the classroom or just sharing a good story with on another. When I started to discover teacher blogs over the summer (researching interactive notebooks), I instantly became hooked! Everyone in the blog community are so helpful and it's good to know that other teachers from around the US and in other countries go through similar ordeals.


11 Random Facts about Me:

1. When I was in college, I changed my major 3 times (all in education).
2. When I first went to college, I was a Music Education major.
3. My parents own a martial arts gym, and I grew up learning it. 
4. I have this weird thing about microwaves. I can't stop the microwave on an odd number. Always has to be an even number!
5. I have a HUGE obsession with school supplies. I have an addiction and my friends love making fun of me about it!
6. I own every single The Sims game, stuff pack, and expansion pack since Sims 1. Love the game - unfortunately, summer is the only time I get to play!
7. I'm a workaholic. I am constantly working on some kind of school work, whether it's researching online, re-analyzing common core standards, finding new resources, or creating new things. My mind is constantly on work!
8. I hate cleaning at home but LOVE cleaning my desk area in my classroom. For some reason, rearranging my desk supplies gives me excitement.
9. Speaking of excitement, if I'm feeling unmotivated to grade papers or plan, I always go out to the store and buy a pack of new markers or pens (see, I do have an addiction!) There is something about a new pack of markers or pens to get you going!
10. I am an apple gal! All electronics that I own are all apple products! I finally saved enough to purchase a MacBook Pro a couple of years ago. I'll never go back to anything else!
11. I love anything polka dots and chevron!

Phew! Now that you know a little about me, here are my nominations for the Liebster Award! Check them out - they're awesome!!

Math Made Gr8

Square Root of Negative One Teach Math

Algebrainiac

MathyCathy

Middle School Math Mania

Here are the rules -

1. Link back to my blog as the one who nominated you.
2. Nominate five blogs who have less than two hundred followers.
3. Answer the questions posted above.
4. Share eleven random facts about yourself.
5. Contact your nominees to let them know they have been nominated!

I look forward to seeing your responses! Happy Sunday Everyone!!

Data Trackers!

Short and sweet post!

It has taken me some time, but I have finally put together my data trackers for 8th grade common core math standards! I am excited because 1) I have started to use these in my own classroom and my students love seeing their growth on a daily/weekly basis and 2) this is the first big product that I have put for sale in my store. Hope you check it out and enjoy! I have Math I and Math II trackers coming soon! I am also planning to work on 6th and 7th grade maths in the near future! :-) Check it out at my store!

Mini Milestone!

I am excited to announce that I have hit a mini milestone down at teacherspayteachers! To celebrate, all items in my store are 10% off. Sale will last until Thursday! Go check out some cool stuff!! :-)

TPT Store

So this is the new year...

Not quite, but I love Death Cab for Cutie and always think of this song around New Years. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! This Christmas break has been a very restful one. In fact, this is the first time I haven't worked on school work in forever. This shall change as it gets closer to school time.

Anywho, I wanted to post a couple things. One thing I wanted to mention were new years resolutions. The past couple years, I didn't make any but I decided to this year. To name a few...

• Cut back on working on school work at home.
• Work out more (I definitely have to stick to this since our school is going to start the biggest loser competition)
• Eat better.
• Blog more.
• Post more products on my TPT store.
• Get a better handle on Math I, Math II, and Science in terms of grading, planning, finding resources, etc...
• Be more organized!

I figured if I had a handful of resolutions, I'm more likely to accomplish at least one, right? I guess we shall see!

Speaking of new products, I recently posted a new product in my TPT store on inequalities. Included in the download are interactive notebook foldables for both one and two step inequalities, word problem templates, examples, and pictures. Here are some pics of my notebook:

Possible Christmas gift?

I've been thinking about purchasing a color laser printer for myself for Christmas. I've been researching online, but there are so many to choose from! Anyone reading this have or have used a color laser printer? If so, what do you recommend? Thanks and HAPPY HOLIDAYS! :-)

Math + M&M's = Happy Students

At the beginning of the school year, (after school had already started AND my team teacher and I had already planned for Geometry), we were informed that our county was going to make the switch from Geometry to Math II effective immediately. Imagine my face when they break this news to us. I spent all. summer. long. prepping for Geometry. WHOMP WHOMP. Needless to say, my team teacher and I have been scrambling to gather as many resources and lesson plan as much as we can just to keep up.

Anywho, fast forward to today and even though it's still tough to get ahead, I think we're in a better place. Right now, we're on exponentials. I found this awesome math lab that models growth and decay and involves CANDY. My students really loved this lab so I thought I'd share some pictures and a link to the lab. Of course, I'm sure they loved the lab because they got the eat the M&M's afterwards, but despite this, they were so engaged and loved seeing them get so excited about math! Is there anyone out there teaching Math II? If so, I'd love some input as to where you get your resources from! Happy Thanksgiving!

NCCTM Conference

This past Thursday and Friday, I was given the opportunity to attend the NCCTM Conference in Greensboro. It was such a great experience! I learned so much within the two days by attending classes that I was interested in.

The most beneficial classes that I attended were the common assessment and analyzing data, how to common core-ize materials, and how to incorporate tasks in classrooms. I also attended two classes on interactive notebooking and stations, but I pretty much knew what was presented. Still great presentations though.

With EVAAS scores (last year's EOG scores) coming in last week and they being as low as they've ever been statewide, it pretty much lit a fire under me. I've experienced so many emotions within a couple days from being upset, to pissed off, to motivated. So having the opportunity to attend the common assessment and analyzing data class really came at a good time. We've always been told to do a common assessment with your team teacher and look at the problems to see what the common missed question was. But we were really not shown how to do it. The ladies at the conference really helped me understand what to do, especially with the data aspect of it.

I loved the common core-rize session because my county does not have the funds to purchase anything! Everything we find, it's from somewhere online or samples we find on the internet. So being taught how to 1) turn textbook questions into common core questions, 2) how to make questions more rigorous and 3) how to incorporate the 8 mathematical practices was a WIN WIN! It is definitely going to take some time for me to get into the hang of changes a lot of things (there is NOT enough time in the day!), but I know it has to get down for the benefit of my kids.

I'm hoping to implement everything that I've learned from this experience and hope to report back good things that are going on in my classroom. And hopefully with this year's test data, my kids can blow that growth out of the water!