You teach ONLINE?
When I tell others that I teach middle school math online, the first thing they say is, “How does that work?”, followed by an endless amount of other questions.
It seems like most people who I have come across do not know about online schools, so I will come back and update this if we change our plans throughout the year. Maybe it will give a better picture of how some people teach online. To be honest, I didn’t know that there were online schools for middle school students until I looked into it and found a job, and I have taught for 6 going on 7 years!
Organized the Office
I spent tons of time organizing my office! I needed to take a break from constantly being at my computer.
It is still a work in progress, but I am happy to have a place that I can work once school starts back up. In the midst of my back to school fever, I went a little crazy decorating my office. Early this week, I started putting up posters that I used to have in my classroom. I got inspired by my fiance’s office that has pictures and posters.
The fun has only just begun… I am sure I will make plenty of changes as the year goes on. After all, I will be spending a lot of time in there. I will be teaching from 8:30-3:00 with a break for lunch and another break throughout the day. Technically, this will be more hours teaching than last year. However, I will not have as many videos and lessons to create (hopefully). I will have trouble resisting the urge to make new videos and resources, so expect some new videos from me to show up on my vimeo profile. Plus, I did promise to make a back to school video to send to my students, so I need to follow through on that.
Back to School!
Our first meeting is the 11th, so even before we have students, there is work to do. Luckily, I got a lot done at the end of the school year to prepare for this year. Of course I still have things to do, but it isn’t as overwhelming as it could have been. I am the most concerned about our new structure of classes: how it will end up working out, and what it will be like when I am the main teacher for 7th grade. I am happy that I will be teaching 7th grade Pre-Algebra, which is a class that I taught last year.
I am so excited to see everyone again and am looking forward to working with some new people this year!
A little about our class structure plan:
- Classes will be Monday-Thursday
- Friday will be open office
- Each class period will last 1 hour and 30 minutes.
- 45 minutes will be a large group
- Led by me and assisted by the other 7th grade math teacher (there are two of them, but they will rotate) for the first class of the day only. The rest of the day, they will be teaching their own class. Ideally, we would like to have the students take a ticket out the door so that we can decide if they are free to go or if they need to stay for the remediation class.
- 30 minutes will be a smaller group
- The other 7th grade math teacher will be teaching a remediation class on the same topic that I taught that day during the 30 minutes directly after the 45 minute class. They will take turns, so each of them will teach twice a week. I will help them for the first 15 minutes, but for the second 15 minutes, I will have a break, tutor, or set up for the next class.
- There will be up to 6 classes a day
Bought a Headset & Printed Products
I bought a printer and a headset. I have yet to try the headset, but am looking forward to it! I did charge it.
I printed some products (even though I can’t use the hard copy because I teach online) just to make sure everything was how I intended it. I organized the products in two binders: one for stations, and one for other products. I haven’t done all the products yet, but I am sure I will eventually. Maybe I can use them someday in the classroom, or use them as a portfolio of my work. I used my label maker to label the binders. I can’t wait to start cutting out and laminating some station activities!
TpT Sale Spike
Next came the TpT sale. I was in shock on the 4th (mainly because I had almost forgotten about the sale and had taken a few days away from technology), and especially the 5th… look at that crazy spike! The crazy part is that most of those sales were late in the day on the 5th. My spike motivated me to buy some clip art from a TpT seller to spread the love. Thank you TpT for hosting an amazing sale!
Got Creative
I created some new products on Tuesday and Wednesday:
- Dividing a Fraction by a Fraction (7.RP.1)
- Recipe Ratios (7.RP.1)
- Ratios and Proportional Relationships Middle School Math Stations #2 (7.RP.1, 7.RP.2)
Then, I added an easy version to my product, Building Squares: Icebreaker Puzzle (for the first week of school).
Was Inspired
I listened to most of Edmodocon on the 6th and was thoroughly entertained. We are trying to decide if we will use edmodo next year. We did not use it last year, but I used it the year before.
Today I realized that the TpT Math Back to School eBook for Grades 6-12 is out.
