#MTBoS12days - Semester Reflection: Start, Stop, Continue

Time to reflect on the last semester.

What to Start...
I want to start being more consistent with an opening activity when the kids walk in the room.  I want that activity to set the pace for the rest of the period by getting the students thinking.  Some days I have a warm-up for them to start, on other days I have procedural directions.  I really like the idea that many of my twitter math peeps use of a different activity every day, but consistency on what is done each day of the week.

I'm going start a new homework checking procedure using a stamp page.  I'm in the process of designing it now, but I got the idea from a friend in the district, Leah Cramer, who has used this in the past.  The students keep up with the page which has a stamp for each homework assignment.  On the back there is a place for reflection after each lesson which the students keep up with as lessons are completed.  The idea is for them to use the reflection part to help study for the unit test.  The stamp sheet is then turned in on test day and the homework is recorded in the grade book.

I'd also like to start, in some form or fashion, spiraling my material.  I'm hoping that I can incorporate that some into my warm-ups.

What to Stop...
I'm going to stop having my kids turn in their homework electronically through our Google Classroom.  Although I love some aspects of this, the kids hate it.  In a perfect world where all kids turned their homework in on time, it would be great.  I've found it incredible difficult to keep up with all those kids who turn theirs in late.   I'm found that I would have to go back through the assignments multiple times to catch all those late kids.  We also had some difficulty with images not showing up or documents being blank.  I may give it a try again in the future, but if I do, I will do it at the very start of the year and have a day of training on how to do it and some better procedure for those kids that turn it in late.

What to Continue...
I'm going to continue using Google Forms and Flubaroo for warm-ups and Quizalize for quick in class assessments.  I've seen some posts on Quizziz too, so I'd like to try that and compare to Quizalize.

I'm going to continue using our Google Classroom to post notes and assignments for students who forget or miss class.

I'm going to continue giving my kids ways to self check as they are working in class.  In the fall semester I used some great partner activities as well as my solving scramble, which I use a lot now.  It has really freed me from the dreaded question "Did I do this right?" and allowed me to keep moving around the room.