I found the Global Math Department about a year ago. I don't even remember how I happened upon it, but I remember a sense of awe that math teachers from all over could conduct meetings and share ideas online. I guess I never even thought about doing that, but I am sure glad that someone did!
I don't get to participate very often just because most every minute of my day is taken up with planning for school and keeping up with my family! When I do get to participate or watch an archived presentation I always come away with some great ideas.
The last one I watched was on Interactive Math Notebooks and it completely changed the way I thought about teaching. I was so intrigued by the idea that I spent all summer researching ideas for how to set them up and how to implement them in my math classes.
If you aren't familiar with interactive notebooks they are composition books that students turn into their own textbooks by creating foldables to organize notes and taking time to reflect on their math connections. My students love to use their colored pencils and highlighters to color code examples and create notes that are fun to review.
I'm not an expert yet, by any means, and some of my students certainly haven't fully grasped the concept of how they can fully utilize them, but we are learning as we go and I keep finding great things to add to them. Check out Mrs. Hester's Classroom blog where she shares tons of foldable ideas. She's my go to resource for new notebook entries! There are also tons of ideas on Pinterest.
I am hoping to keep these notebooks going and to streamline the process so that I can give my students the opportunity to have a great resource at their fingertips. Maybe I will even document the process here and share some of my students' work :)
