Math Madness Monday

I'm linking up with Diana for Math Madness Monday!

At my school, we are very data driven. We give common assessments every 4 1/2 weeks and benchmark assessments every nine weeks. After our entire school finishes their common assessments, we analyze their data and input their scores into a spreadsheet where we have set goals for them based off of their EVAAS scores. We then make new goals for the next assessment. This gives us an idea of how much our students have grown (or not) since the last assessments and based off of this, allows us to create re-teaching plans to make sure we hit on standards that our students scored the weakest on.

One thing I like to do is have my kids analyze their classes data. How do I do this? I print out the top 5-7 most missed problems from their assessments and break the kids up into groups. I assign each group a problem and give each group their problem's most picked answer by their peers. They then have to work through the problem together and come up to the class to present. We do this after every assessment. I love this activity because my kids are working together, I'm maximizing classroom time by focusing on standards that the kids missed the most on, and the kids love teaching their peers! :-)

I finally got a chance to type up a reflection sheet so I didn't have to keep writing the same questions on the board for the kids to answer. Soooo...

Here is a freebie for you! I hope that someone finds this useful in their own classroom. In addition to the reflection sheet I use, I have also included a "problem of the day" template with it. You can download it here!

Thanks so much for stopping by! :-)

Currently February

I'm linking up with Farley for this month's currently linky. Wow, I haven't done this since LAST YEAR!

Listening: to absolutely nothing. I love it. J is still sleeping and Kramer is outside running around. Feel nice to have nothing going on right now.

Loving: Even though it's Sunday aka Laundry day, it's still the weekend. I was out of town all day yesterday, so it feels nice to know I have at least one day to relax and lay around.

Thinking: I've been so busy at school with everything going on, I've gotten so behind on posting new products in my store. I have so many ideas and I have started new products but never seem to have time to finish them. And my poor blog....thank goodness for linky parties!

Wanting: Since our curriculum facilitator left, all of the department chairs at our school pretty much were given her responsibilities while we find a replacement. It's been so stressful to take care of administrative duties on top of having to prepare weekly lessons and teach. I've been keeping up with everything our principal expects us to do, but I do need a mental health day before I get burnt out.

Needing: One of my best friend's from college found out her fiance needed emergency surgery. We need all of the prayers and good vibes we can get. Me and my other best friend from college drove out to Wilmington (about 2 hours away) to surprise her and give her support. We took her out to lunch yesterday and I'm glad that we were able to spend time with her, even if it was only for a little while.

Pageant Title: Miss Workaholic would be best fitting for me because I am ALWAYS working. Don't get me wrong - I love my job and I love helping others, and deep down inside, I kind of enjoy being a workaholic because it keeps me busy., Butttt I do enjoy my days where I don't have anything to do and can enjoy the silence. Everyone needs one of those days.

Happy Saturday! Five for Friday link up and a freebie!

I have so much to share, so let's get started! I'm linking up with doodlebugs for Five for Friday linky (even though I'm definitely a day late!)

Selfies before a staff meeting! Wednesday was our first staff meeting without our Curriculum Facilitator. 

Break for story time - We've had our CF at my school for about 3 years and within those years, she has really made an impact on our school. Our school is more data driven and motivated than ever because of her hard work. On days when teachers would be so stressed and feel overwhelmed, her sense of humor and personality would bring our spirits up. I know that even though she's in a different county now, we'll still continue to stay in contact even though I won't see her every day anymore!

OK, now that you know what happened, me and my fellow awesome science teacher Mrs. Carlos texted her our sad faces since she's not with us anymore. I'm sure there will be more of these sad face selfies to come!! :-)

My boys! <3 I love them! Johnathan was helping me with something and Kramer jumped on the couch and positioned himself like this without any help. It was too cute. I HAD to take a picture! The only thing missing from this picture are Kramer's nerd glasses! :-)

I decided to try a different seating arrangement for this nine weeks. Usually I have my tables sitting in groups, but I wanted something new. This arrangement reminds me of a college classroom. Two tables are pushed together so there are 4 students in each row. Because of this arrangement, I was also able to fit a table for my student intern. My student intern is AWESOME! This Monday will be her first time taking over one of my math classes every day, so I am pretty excited to see how well she adapts. I am excited for her future!

All the math teachers at my school will be given to go to a professional development class focused on math. It's 5 classes from now to the end of the year. I'm excited because I am always looks for new strategies and new ideas to implement in my math class, but then again I'm a little blah about it because I don't want to miss school days, especially around EOG time. Part of the requirements for the class is to read articles that are provided and be prepared to discuss at the class. I feel like I'm in college all over again! Since my kids were benchmark testing last week, I took the time to get ahead and read the article to prepare. The articles they provided are pretty interesting (I bet you could tell from that picture, I was overly excited). I'm looking forward to our first class!

Since it's been a while since I've blogged, I decided to make a freebie for all of you! Perfect for those of you who are teaching slope right now and the fact that the month of February is approaching! You can download this freebie by clicking HERE! Hope you enjoy and please feel free to share and leave feedback! :-)

TpT Sale!

If you haven't heard yet, teacherspayteachers is throwing a cybermonday sale this Monday and Tuesday!

Thanks to Teachers are Terrific for providing the banner! You can visit her here!

I am putting everything in my store 20% off! Type in TPTCYBER when you checkout and you will get a total of 28% off your total purchase! :-)

A whole month.

It's been a whole month since I last blogged! I miss it! I definitely need to make it a priority to blog at least once a week. Why have I been missing?

School has been really hectic lately! With field trips and benchmarks and report cards and then not even to mention all of the committees I'm on, I come home and I am exhausted! Teaching and my kiddos aren't even the reason why I'm so tired when I get home! I need a balance in my life or I think I'm going to go insane!

And to top it all of, I've been sick for over a month now. Around the end of September, I had the flu. Ever since then, I've had this cough that will not go away! And it gets worse when I talk - which is what I do for a living! It's so irritating for me to not be able to teach as enthusiastically as I would like because I start coughing non-stop. And recently, to add to the cough, I became congested again and developed a sinus infection. *sigh* Hopefully the meds they put me on will make all of this go away. Ain't nobody got time for that!

Anywho - even though my life is hectic right now, things have been going well. We just recently took a benchmark for the district and I had 81.6% of my kids grow based off of their EVAAS projection data. Now that our school has finished with these benchmarks, we have to make data walls and send a letter home, recommending students to stay for tutoring if they did not meet growth or meet their given goal. Once we get the logistics of the data wall planned out, I will make a post with what we came up with!

And lastly, I will leave everyone with this picture!

We had twin day for spirit week and our 8th grade hall decided to dress up as quadruplets! We all dressed up as nerds and the kids thought it was hilarious! We even had a short photo shoot during our planning. :)

Halloween Bash Blog Hop

Welcome to The Math Nerdette's blog! :)

I'm excited to be a part of The Teaching 2 Step's Blog Hop giveaway! From October 10th - October 15th, you can enter for a chance to win some amazing prizes! There is something for everyone! Enter to win! :) Check out the following pics to see what's up for grabs!

K-2 Giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Grades 2 - 5 Giveaway!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Secondary Giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I absolutely love this time of year...more specifically, the month of October! It's my birthday month (this upcoming Sunday) and I love the transition from summer to fall. I absolutely LOVE the cooler weather and boyfriend's favorite holiday is Halloween. Every year, we love staying in to watch movies and to hand out candy to the kiddos. Of course, we always end up sitting around and eating a lot of it. My favorite treat?

Twix! I am a sucker for a twix bar (or anything chocolate, let's be honest!) We are starting a biggest loser contest at my school next week, so it's bad that Halloween is just around the corner!

If you didn't get a chance, you should visit here to grab my FREEBIE and feel free to click the green star to follow my store! Included in the download are three bellringers that contain: comparing a graph and a table, analyzing two tables, and comparing and contrasting squares vs cubes. Before you go, be sure to follow me on bloglovin', FB, and Instagram for future math/secondary goodies and ideas!

Now follow below for the rest of our blog hop to enter to win these awesome goodies! :)

An InLinkz Link-up

October Currently

I'm linking up with Farley for October Currently!

Listening:
to J talk to our doggy, Kramer. He's so silly!

Loving:
THIS WEATHER!! I love it when it starts to cool down. Even though the way I dress is SO conflicted! I'll sport a scarf with flip flops any day! :)

Thinking:
I don't want the weekend to end! It's been a good break...spent wayyy too much time at work last week.

Wanting:
a long break. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE my kiddos this year and I love the staff at my school. But this year has been more stressful than my other years combined. It's all about the behind the scenes stuff we have to get done for our admin. Plus the extra responsibilities I have as dept chair. We have to do walkthroughs, feedback, data, make common assessments, make sure our dept is doing all of the above (track them down when they don't turn stuff in), and provide feedback for our depts lesson plans, assessments, and data. I'm also the PBIS/school data person, so I have to keep up with the school's data and behavior data and I'm a mentor, so I have to observe my mentee during my planning and meet with him to talk about ideas and improvements AND I have a student intern this year. Oh, and there's my stuff too (grading, lesson planning, etc). My energy is running on empty reallll fast. If only there was a way to 1)add more time to the day or 2) clone myself, all would be good!

Needing:
Because of everything mentioned in the wanting section, my blogging and tpt store have been neglected! I need to change this soon!

Trick or Treat:
I did, however, have time to make a little something for everyone. I have a freebie posted here. I am currently working on a bellringer packet that is common core aligned and I have a preview for you! Please download and enjoy and feel free to leave feedback! :)