My 300th Blog Post: #MTBoS and Reflection

This is my 2nd blog post in the #MTBoS2020 blogging initiative that I started so people could read and blog on the 20th of each month.  Find more info and blogs here.

I am presenting a webinar on March 17th on the Global Math Department.  I am sharing about my journey teaching with whiteboards.  I am on school vacation this week and at our vacation house all by myself...shhhh.  It has been a wonderful retreat.  I have all the time to just do whatever.  So, I could focus on getting the webinar ready.  In the process of this, I wanted to get pictures off my blog and I also wanted to remember dates I needed to remember.  It was a journey reading back over my thoughts, ideas, and lessons. 

I have 299 posts which means....this is my 300th post!  Very cool.
My first post was on 3/11/13 which is my husband's birthday.
The title of my first post is "Diving into the Mathblogosphere".
I have been blogging for seven years :)
My #1 viewed post is "Spoons: Rational Expression Style".  It has 11,439 views.  It is funny because the link has been broken to the actual lesson so I have people emailing me to share it. It is a fun reminder to get those emails.
In my 3/2013 post, my title was "The Biggest Thing I have had to learn as a teacher is...."  I had to open the blog to see what my 2013 teacher self thought.  The answer was "flexible".  I would still say it is to be flexible.  Also, be prepared for the day, the lessons, and the kids, but also be ready because anything can change on a dime.
In 8/2013, I made my first 2 ft x 2 ft whiteboards for kids to work on as a team.  I hadn't made them vertical yet, but it was the start of my journey. 

It's been fun to see what technology I used in class and on the blog.  I had a Picassa slideshow up on my blog but it says Picassa is retired.  I outlasted her!

It was fun looking over projects and activities that I have done.  I am still doing some and have decided not to repeat some.

3/13 Quadratic Candy Lab Catapult - still doing it, handing it out on Monday in Alg 1.
3/13 Stained Glass Window - gasp, with pencil and paper - graphing lines - not still doing it
3/13 Disney project - Alg 1 plans a trip to disney, money, graphs, I loved it but stopped doing it, no time with all the curriculum
9/13 Barbie Bungee - I read a lot about if and finally did it that September and I still do it
10/13 Cup stacking - did it, don't still do it
11/13 Angry Birds project - yes, I still do it. When I did it back then, the kids graphed on paper.  Now, they use Desmos of course :)
2/14 My spoons game - still do it.  I laminated them back then and they are still holding up
3/15 Mystery bags - I bought cheap toys and put some into brown paper bags, weighed everything to create systems of equations.  It was fun, but way too much work and the weights would slightly off making it really messy to solve.  Not still doing.
3/15 Conics Rice Krispy cutting - oooh, wow, what was I thinking!  That was hot, sticky, messy, a lot of work.  I think I made 75 rice krispy conics for us to cut - oh, yes, that was messy too.  Not doing this anymore
5/15 Estimation station - this was a lot of fun. It was a different type of math class that I had done Estimation 180s all year long, so we set up our own station at lunch and one of them was how many rubber bands to make the watermelon blow up.  Yep, another messy crazy but fun idea that I don't do anymore.
6/15 Paint Parabolas - idea from Alex Overwijk - You can take the back side of wrapping paper that has the grid on it, tilt it as you roll a marble that has been smooshed in paint.  It was form a parabola, add some points, come up with an equation.  More messy, not repeated
12/15 Logarithm clothesline - easy, just index cards - I stopped for time, but I should bring it back
2/16 Two Truths and a Lie - about Quadratic equations and graphs.  I didn't do it the past two years but I want to this year.
4/16 a Breakout for my Alg 2 class.  I bought all the locks and boxes.  I made up an elaborate breakout for them to review for the final exam.  Neither group was successful because I made it too complicated and it was too much work for me to repeat.
2016 - My first TMC - Twitter Math Camp - I wrote 10 blogs posts about that alone.
1/17 Alg 2 Midterm review ebook with Adobe Spark.  I had 55 students and made 55 different problems, one for each student. They did it, checked with me, and then recorded their voice using Adobe Spark to explain the problem.  It is awesome.  I haven't done it again because we aren't allowed to use that program anymore.  I still have that year's ebook and share it with my current classes.
1/12/17 One of my favorite activities.  I knowAlex Overwijk from NCTM Boston and TMC and he is also the World Record Holder for drawing circles.  My class was obsessed with drawing circles on the board, so I arranged to Skype with Alex. It was so cute to watch them huddled around the computer, asking him questions.  I haven't repeated because I haven't had a class like that with circles???
2/18 Binder Clip Zipline which became Egg Zipline but I didn't repeat this year - time again, and a lot of set up for not a lot of pay out
5/18 Desmos projects - I am doing that soon and Desmos is having their first ever art contest.  I will encourage my students to submit.
11/18 Dance Dance Transversal.  Yep, fun and I still do it.

I feel like I could do a whole summer camp of those ideas!

Thanks for going through my last 7 years of blogging and teaching with me.

(I'm too tired to edit, so #pushsend) 

Here's to my 300th post!