New Year, New Team, New Kids (and the past ones too), and Awesome Ideas!

Tomorrow starts the beginning of my third year of teaching. No idea where the past two years have gone, but I do know that they have been such a memorable experience. Last night was our open house and I am still a high from meeting my new kids and seeing the past ones. I forget how cute they are when they start 7th grade :) Oh and there's the fact that some of last year's kids came in and played a game of basketball in my room after everything was over and once they got bored they played musical chairs to their fav...T Swift. LOVED IT!!!

(Side note: After feeling like all the first day of school good vibes were sucked right after me after our morning meeting discussing test scores-my kids passed, but less kids passed the 7th grade test than the 6th grade, which isn't good-I had a moment of awesomeness before open house started. I had a mom come in with her daughter saying her daughter talked about how much she missed me and my class all throughout summer. This made me want to cry because I grew really close to her last year and I will miss this student so very much this year! And then I had another kid who didn't do too well in 7th grade as a whole come up to me and ask if he could come into my room after school and get help. He is ineligible for football and he says that isn't fun-imagine that!- and that he wants to get back on track so his life is more fun and so he can play basketball. I told him absolutely, and he was actually really shocked. He kept thanking me, promising me he would come in and then came the hook line and sinker, not that he wasn't already welcome to come in haha...He told me my room was one of the only rooms he felt comfortable in and that my confidence in him made him believe he could actually be successful in school and in life. I teared up and was totally ok with him seeing that. I once again told him he was welcome any time and then he was on his way to meet his 8th grade teachers. Then I had an epiphany. No matter what test scores say, I'm doing things right. When kids come back in saying they feel comfortable in my room and that they trust me, I have met my personal goals as a teacher. My job is to not only teach kids math, but to help raise them as well. And even though there's not a little box on the district report card or our teacher evaluations for this part of the job, there is a little box that we can check off that we've done that (and I know every teacher reading this has), and that box is in our heart, which to me, is more rewarding and memorable than a test score.)

Ok, so that was a big side note...Anywho...I am so excited to have two new teachers on our team. I have to admit, the whole summer I was very hesitant about the whole situation...with two of my biggest mentors retiring, but now that we are getting into having team meetings I am sooooo pumped! The energy and fresh ideas that they have brought is so cool and what's even cooler is that the other returning teacher and I have both come up with new ideas just through conversing with the two newbies.

So new ideas....ready, GO...

1. Using Remind101- best thing ever in my opinion. All 4 of us are going to be using this text message reminder app for both students and teachers. I will be introducing it to the kids either day 1 or 2 and then the all the other 3 teachers will have to do is send out their numbers and text codes. If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about CHECK IT OUT. Seriously. Do it right now, it will change the way you teach!

2. ClassDojo- a teacher in our building told us about this really fun way to make sure students are doing what they need to be doing both academically and behaviorly. Each student has their own account and aviator and then teachers can reward students for good behavior and doing well in class. Students can also have points taken away from their aviator for bad behavior and not turning in homework, among other things. We are hoping that it will be a fun reward system for students that also incorporates technology. Plus the aviators are super cute!

3. Socrative- This is a student response system that not only allows students to submit multiple choice answers but short answer and extended responses. You can also do true/false questions and create quizzes for students to take. Haven't played around with this one too much, so more to come at a later date, but so far I really like what I see!

4. Edmodo- I really like the concept of this Facebook-esque resource. I would love to delve more into what all it can do, but I may start this once we get further into school. I love all this technology, but I really want to make sure I do/use the technology effectively. I don't want to have all these different resources and only use them occasionally. My goal is to find a few to really use all the time in my classroom and even more so, have every one on my team use the same ones so that students have consistency within all their classes.

These are the 4 that I am going to start with  (probably in this order as well) I really want to get remind101 set up ASAP and then figure out ClassDojo. Once the students and I are comfortable with these two then I may start to integrate more into my class and lessons, but until then I will start with these. I will let you know how things go. I have a feeling students are going to be able to catch on REALLY quickly, possibly even quicker than myself, but we shall see!

I'll catch you on the flip side tomorrow after day 1 has come to a close. Hopefully I am still on the same high as I am right now! :)