While I love using the Cameo for t-shirts, I've also found some fun uses for the classroom too.

I put vinyl numbers on my baby trash cans which act as table numbers for seating charts




What other ways could I use this in the classroom?

Staff Idea:

Exchange birth dates and favorite cakes. You make/bake/buy their favorite cake and bring it on their birthday. Summer birthdays add 6 months and celebrate their half birthdays! Pass out the cakes and only those who want to participate return it.

File:



Student Idea:

Birthday (and half birthday) brag bracelets!

File:

I spent more time- willingly- this summer doing school stuff than all previous summers combined.

I was so proud of myself.

New ideas, doing routine stuff ahead of time, and even blogging about it.

The first week we set up binders and notebooks and Google Classroom and Delta Math etc. Mostly the same routine from year to year.

The first few days went so crappy.

Not anything the students would notice. But I did stuff in a stupid order. Messed up both my printers. Left my hard drive at home. Forgot things until the last minute. Copied the same paper three times because the first time I accidentally hole punched it and the second time I did it upside down.

Even the third time cut the edges off.

I just felt...chaotic in my brain. I'm also not good at getting into a normal sleep pattern so my energy levels were crashing throughout the day. I spilled food on myself twice that week. Wore red lipstick but forgot to bring it with me so after lunch I was missing the inside lipstick with just a ring around the outside. lol

The day I felt fat and ugly and couldn't get my hair to do anything, three kids commented in Google Classroom that they liked my outfit, makeup, etc.

I got positive parent feedback and positive feedback from another colleague.

I gave hugs and fist bumps and high fives. I kept them engaged from bell to bell.

I tried new things. Got routine things done.

The moral of this post is that you can have 10 years of experience, prepare a whole summer, and still have things go wrong.

But your systems are still in place. The routines still work. You are still teaching.

And it will be okay.

We encourage mistakes in our learners for better learning, let's also encourage them in our teaching for better teaching.

When things go wrong or get chaotic, that is my newest idea for a system, form, structure change, etc.

The more things I fix, the smoother things go. But I can't fix things until I notice they're broken. So when mistakes happen, and they will (on a daily basis), add it to your list of things to improve.

You are okay.

And the mistakes will make you better.

Melissa asked my if I would be willing to share my cheer stuff which was great timing considering I had nothing to blog about today!

Let me preface this by saying we are not a hardcore competitive squad. We only cheer for basketball and 11 is the most cheerleaders I've ever had. But also that doesn't mean that I don't have forms and a handbook! lol

Cheerleading Expectations



Cheerleading Contract



I do tryouts after volleyball ends because a lot of my cheerleaders do both. Again, small school. I ask the school nurse to help me with tryouts because she is a former cheerleader and former coach. Surprisingly enough, I am a former basketball player.

I give the girls a rubric on the first day and a copy of the expectations. We teacher them 4-5 sideline cheers and two floor cheers. The second day they perform the floor cheers in groups. Then we call them in one by one to do their individual sideline cheers. They also have to do a cartwheel, herkie, spread eagle, and toe touch.

We both agree on a score and then I rank them from highest scores to lowest.

Here is the rubric:



I also make practice schedules for each month so that everyone knows when we have games and practices.

Our first practice we pick out bags, socks, shoes, bows, and warm-ups. I make a price sheet and the girls fill out their sizes and then I order.

I make a cheerleading bible for each girl with all the rules and cheers in it. My school has a binding machine so I print them front to back on card stock and bind it.

Cheerleading Bible (all cheers listed)

Over the last year or so I had heard about Delta Math on Twitter but didn't really think I had a use for it. Also, to be honest, I thought it sounded boring.

At the end of last school year, my principal shared concerns that students were not doing well on standardized testing because they lose their pre-algebra skills over time. His solution was to put the lower freshman into a Pre-Algebra class. I strongly objected since that would be going backward and I have never taught Pre-Algebra let alone have any materials for it.

I started asking questions about Delta Math on Twitter. When I started choosing sessions for TMC, I saw that Zach Korsyk, the Delta Math creator, was presenting. I went to his session and saw how simple it was to use. Some lessons have interactive tutorials that are better than activities I’ve been doing. Quadrilateral properties and combining like terms both blew my mind.

Zach also explained that students don't have the same problems so they can't copy. It's a very clean and simple UI and works intuitively the way you think it would. You can assign penalties so students have to work more problems or you can just specify the amount of questions they need to get correct. There are 1000s of questions for topics ranging from middle school math through precalc and stats. It even explains how to get the correct answer after they miss it. And it's FREE. And he's a full time teacher. And he answers technical support almost immediately on Twitter.

I was sold.

Today ended our first week of school and I administered our EOC exams (I always do it on the first Friday so I can spend that day planning the first 'real' week #hack) and when they finished, they did their first Delta Math assignment.  For the most part students were working quietly. I got one "This is so cool" and the only question they had was how to type in exponents (^).

I specified that they had to get 5 questions right from 5 different topics: combining like terms, solving 3-step linear equations, plotting points, converting standard to scientific notation, and vice versa. I don't plan to normally give them time in class to do it but I wanted to the first time to make sure we didn't have any problems. I titled the assignment Week #1 and assigned the same assignment to Algebra I through Trig courses.

Afterward I went and talked to my principal (former math teacher) about it and he was very supportive. I needed to talk through logistics with someone but I really only came away with him saying he thought it could even be the same amount of points as a regular quiz in class because it was still assessing their learning and not just a completion grade.

So here's my idea:

• First couple weeks will be pre-algebra and middle school skills
• Then I will start to lag skills from their current course in addition to pre-algebra skills
• Pre-algebra skills stay all year
• Current skills lag and randomly reappear
• Ideally I'd like them to spend about 15 minutes a week on this
• Although you can use it on your phone, I don't have 100% home internet access so I want them to be reasonably able to complete at school when they get done early in other classes