Ms. Z : 2015

I was so inspired by Ilana Horn's (@tchmathculture) guest post by her own teenager, Faking Excellence: The Art of Milking Mediocrity For All it's Worth, that I have to tell you how. The writing is my favorite kind of prose:

Success after Chaos

Geometry, INB, Math Practices, MathTwitterBlogoSphere, Triangle Congruence

Amy zimmer

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It is important for Newbies, Oldbies, and Inbetweenbies to look for resilience in ourselves. How do we handle a dismal result from a well-planned lesson? Blame and negative talk to ourselves are not useful or productive. So acknowledge it didn't

Story Time in Mathland

advanced algebra, Algebra 2, Desmos, functions, polynomial functions, precalculus, rational expressions

Amy zimmer

7 Comments

My husband teaches Multi-Media studies at the Santa Rosa Junior College. He started as a K-8 music teacher, including band, chorus, classroom music, and drama. He did musicals with all the grades. What does this have to do with Math,

Riffing, Because That's What We Do

#MTBoSblaugust, Humor, precalculus

Amy zimmer

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Dear MTBoS, I stole and embellished, and added (hopefully). And I caught your sense of humor. Meg at Insert Clever Math Pun Here so inspired this post. I could not figure out why with her post on Polynomial Functions she had

The Best Recipe I Can Give

#MTBoSblaugust, Food, MathTwitterBlogoSphere

Amy zimmer

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Dear Math Bloggers, This one is for you. You have given me so much, I have been racking my brain trying to figure out what worthy goodness I could share with you. Well, nearly every morning, I treat myself and

Thanks to John Mahlstedt @jdmahlstedt, I am motivated to blog about one of the first activities we do in Geometry, school-wide. (Not sure if article came from Danielle Buckman or Jessica Balli, both amazing teachers I am privileged to call colleagues).

We all share and read this article with our students: The Myth of I am Bad at Math, from the Atlantic Magazine. We all teach/share it our own way.

(One teacher, whose baby boy was due in two weeks, came in the first two days of school, just because she thought the lesson was so important, she didn't want to trust it to a substitute teacher!)

Here is my approach:

The exit ticket for the day was to agree or disagree with the statement,

"Math ability is mostly genetic."

After the students wrote their reflection, I gave them time to move to an AGREE and DISAGREE side of the room and explain their thinking.

I sent the article home with each student and gave them the following assignment:

Read the article and highlight 3 new vocabulary words (if you know them all, highlight three interesting words), determine and write the definition from the context, write down 2 big ideas in your own words, and 1 question you have.

The next day, we discussed the vocabulary, then we broke up into groups of 4 and practiced active listening using "Collaborative Conversation Notes" I learned about at an EduImpact Conference held at our county office of education (SCOE.org) (here is an article about how to use the template). I had the students summarize one or two big ideas they could agree on in the center. Our group conversation after was touching. All of the students moved to the DISAGREE side. Here is one group's change of heart, "We disagree because if you understand it well, you do good, but if you don't, you have to try harder and get better."

This year, I will ask the students to come up with some "myth" statements. When I have enough, I will give each group one to rewrite as a "growth mindset" statement perhaps taking something from what they learned reading the article. I wrote in Blogaugust #1 that I was inspired by Sarah Hagan and her post on a growth mindset bulletin board that she made from inspiration from @druinok http://statteacher.blogspot.com/. So this is how I will approach crafting the statements to create the bulletin board of Growth Mindset statements.

Moving from I can't to ...yet.

Got Me Some VNPS

First Day, Food, Good Ideas, VNPS

Amy zimmer

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Student size whiteboards. Check. Now we need verticalness, and my DH is outta town. Not that I mind swinging a drill, it is just going through the shower board and not sure what to do if it shatters. (Also, who

Day 2 #MTBoSblaugust

#MTBoSblaugust, #tmc15, Good Ideas

Amy zimmer

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So two things are running around my head today. First, is all the growth mindset stuff inspired by Jo Boaler from Stanford and Carol Dweck who wrote the book Mindset. I love it! I love the message. Productive struggle makes

Joining #MTBoSblaugust Day 1

#MTBoSblaugust, Good Ideas, MathTwitterBlogoSphere

Amy zimmer

4 Comments

Got a new Chromebook (Thanks Tech Guy and District) and I am having fun keeping track of all my Mathy Friends from TMC15 and those I have followed for a while now. I love sayings and being inspired and inspirational.

Addedum, I Challenged Myself to Present--AKA If I can do it, so can you!

Algebra 2, Good Ideas, precalculus, Trigonometry

Amy zimmer

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BTW: If you like Make and Takes, or need an awesome activity for Pre-Calc/Trig, I presented this "My Favorite," (#TMC15) a foldable for finding the formula for the Sum of Angles for Sine and Cosine that SHOWS why cos (x +

It's About Community

#tmc15, Community, First Day, Lesson Planning, MathTwitterBlogoSphere, Professional Development

Amy zimmer

2 Comments

#tmc15 Experiencing Community Truly I don't know where to start this post. Partly an ode FOR all the MTBoSers, partly that experience where you just process and download. I did wrtite this all on paper

I Have A Blog And I Am Not Afraid To Use It

Amy zimmer

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Ideas floating around my head these days: Estimation: GIVEN a shower puff that is intact, how would you estimate its length unravelled? GIVEN a plum, who can do the best job peeling it? How would you determine "best job," in

Attending to Precision, Excel, Number Sense, Sticky Problems, and Rolling Thoughts

Area under a curve, goemetry, Math Practices, number sense, precalculus

Amy zimmer

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Let's talk about what we did do shall we, not what we didn't, at least at first. Attending to Precision and Excel: I did get my Precalculus students in the computer lab to have them run a spreadsheet for estimated

7 out of 8 Ain't Bad

Amy zimmer

2 Comments

Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP's) in one problem that is! I had so much fun interacting with the students on this one PreCalculus question that I tweaked my neck! Here it is...Solve this baby over [0, 2pi) That's it, that

Being Inspired

Success after Chaos

Story Time in Mathland

Riffing, Because That's What We Do

The Best Recipe I Can Give

Got Me Some VNPS

Day 2 #MTBoSblaugust

Joining #MTBoSblaugust Day 1

Addedum, I Challenged Myself to Present--AKA If I can do it, so can you!

It's About Community

I Have A Blog And I Am Not Afraid To Use It

Attending to Precision, Excel, Number Sense, Sticky Problems, and Rolling Thoughts

7 out of 8 Ain't Bad

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