Goals for 2013-2014

I have many, many goals for this year, so I suppose I will start with my SMART goals (although don't judge because they aren't in SMART goal format yet...)

1. I am going to do more co-teaching and planning with the gifted teacher to try and get more project based learning into my advanced math class. The first unit we will be doing is Football Math this fall. Students will create a fantasy football team and have to calculate points and do other activities each week based on their players and what we are learning in class. The points are kind of similar to normal fantasy football leagues (so many points for touchdown, yards rushing etc, but they are all based on fractions of points, meaning students will have to perform operations with fractions...and no I'm not allowing them to use calculators! Each of the other activities they do for that week will be related to football and something we have either covered during that week or during a previous week and will serve as a review. More to come on this as we get closer to the NFL season, but overall I am very excited about this unit!

2. The vocabulary section of my interactive notebook was really....well....lacking last year. I did a few things with it at the beginning of the year but then it pretty much died off after we got into the year. This summer I did some research on vocabulary and found some cool vocab strategies on other's blogs and pinterest so my second SMART goal will be to develop the vocabulary section in the interactive notebook this year. This vocab will not only be mathematical vocab, but also testing vocab so that students know what they are supposed to do when they see certain words on the OAA.

Other goals I want to accomplish this year include:

• Using more technology in the classroom (QR codes, Remind101, Edmodo, Socrative, etc.)
• Develop more problem-solving strategies for my students so that they can excel on short andswer and extend response questions. 
• Teach kids how to get "one more point" on homework, quizzes, and tests. I had 12 kids that failed the state test last year and of those 12, 9 failed by 3 points or less, so I am going to stress, and stress, and stress the importance of trying to find one more point on any extended response or short answer because every point counts!!