First post!

With only 11 days until I officially return to school, I figured that if I don't start posting now I never will. I decided last school year that I wanted to start a blog to share my ideas and (hopefully!) get some feedback and new ideas. I've been regularly following some other math teacher's blogs and am inspired by their creativity all of the time, so I hope to give some back.

I found out my schedule for this school year on Monday when I went to school to do an algebra 1 EOC review session (before the students retake the test on Thursday). I am teaching 3 sections of geometry honors, trigonometry, and 2 sections of intensive math (for the students who need to retake the A1 EOC). I am super excited by this schedule! Two of my favorite classes to teach are geometry honors and trig (I also love teaching algebra 2).

Even though I've spent a good amount of time over the last month working on getting things ready for school, I feel like I am quickly running out of time and am not ready for school to start yet (incidentally, I have spent more time planning this summer than any other summer). My 4 page to-do list isn't getting things crossed off quickly enough for my liking.

For all three of my classes I plan on using interactive notebooks. I have gotten almost two chapters per class of foldables/notes made and am in the process of putting together a sample notebook to show the students what to expect out of their notes the first week of school. Last year I used foldables and graphic organizers often, but this year I want it to be something that is done with every lesson. From my experience last year it seems that the students are much more engaged and take more ownership of their notes if they are cutting, pasting, and coloring/highlighting their notes. It also makes me take a different approach to how I teach each topic because I have to organize and chunk all of the information in a cohesive way when I make each foldable.

I hope to post some pictures of my geometry notebook tomorrow.