My First Post

I have been wanting to start a blog for a while now.  Honestly, the thing that has been holding me back the most has been coming up with a name for the blog.  So many people have creative and/or catchy names that I really felt pressure to come up with something good.  As you can see, that did not happen.  Now that I am writing this post I realize that I am also going to feel pressure about my writing skills.  Just a forewarning, I will have too many commas and many run on sentences.  It is time for me to get past all of that and start getting all of the thoughts I have out of my head.  I am taking the advice of the MTBoS website and will be writing for myself and not worry about others that may choose to read this.  The time to start this blog is now.

I am currently reading The Classroom Chef.  There are a few things that I am realizing as I read this book.

1. I am connecting with the right people on Twitter.  I have only been on Twitter since February (thank you Josh), and I am familiar with most of the people that are mentioned in the book.  
2. These are my people.  The ideas they share are not new to me.  They are things that I have been trying to do in my teaching since my first year.  That does mean that I am there.  It is extremely helpful to have someone organize these thoughts, share their journey, and give structure to planning a lesson so that I can relook at what I have done and figure out how to get students curious and make learning more meaningful.

There are two quotes in the book that really made me stop.  The first one is actually in a footnote:
     "'Teaching' is often confused with 'helping students learn content.' Each can exist separately."
The other is:
     "The opposite of bored isn't entertained; it's curious."

Links I want to remember from the book:  

Verizon Math:

• promotes good discussion on place value.  
• use at the beginning of the year when working on decimals
• importance of labels - could refer to this when working with unit rates and determining with label

Barbie Bungie:

Here is the link to the lesson now with desmos graphing and creating a best fit line.

Music in the Classroom:

Helpful tips from Matt Vaudrey's Site

Google folder of music