Nothing like jumping in the pool with cement shoes on!

cc licensed flickr photo shared by contraquien

Well September is over and October begins.  With a new month begins new challenges.  3 to be precise.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Hollywood Poodle

Ready Fire Aim


Elluminate with Pennsylvania
On Monday the ever popular 4 fours will playout again in my classroom.

Four4s

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This time we are going to talk to Stacey Clark's Grade 8 Room.  We will get together in my first period and connect through an Eluminate Vroom.

Thankfully it is not blocked by the school division (skype, slideshare, blogger are:( )
The students will listen to the story of the 4 fours and then work out solutions on our linked smartboards.  Hey you just have to try and let the kids have fun.



Sister class in Australia

cc licensed flickr photo shared by vtveen

I have known Russel Montgomery for a few years on twitter, and K12online.  What he did the other night was mindblowing.  He commented on 50 blogs and got my students totally stoked about commenting on blogs.  The day after the comments were posted my students started commenting like sharks around a chum bucket.  That night I received 60 comments.  I pointed out this act of community learning to them the next day and they stepped up again and commented over 90 times that night.  Russell started something in this years students that hasn't stopped yet.

We got to talking and decided to pair up our classes.  He now has access to all of my blogs and I have access to his blog portal.  My students will cross post to his site and his will cross post to mine.  Due to the lovely 13 hour time difference (they already know what is happening tomorrow!) synchronous meetings might not be possible.  But through the power of posting, commenting, and video we should give this a go.

Cross hemispherical collaboration has been a dream of mine for many years.  His students are going into term 4 and almost at the end of Grade 8.  Mine are at the beginning of the journey.  We will be able to help each other.  His are veteran bloggers with a knowledge of most of the math we have not yet learned.  Mine will be able to help his new students out next year after their "Christmas Summer Break".

This is going to be a great experience.



Doing math the Dan Meyer way.
If you missed the presentation the other day please watch it here.



Dan is one of the few math teachers in the world who gets it.  He knows how to make kids figure out answers and ask better questions.

Dan walks a fine line between using a textbook and tweeking images to get kids thinking.  Once they start thinking mathematically they understand the knowledge more.  As I start into this second unit of rate, ration and proportion I will attempt to do what Dan does in his class.

WWDMD (what would Dan Meyer do) is my new mantra and will say it at least one day a week. Use image and video to stimulate questions in students and push them to learn math.


It is going to be a busy week but at least cross country wraps up!! That will gime me more time to fill up with other stuff.  Now what else is on my bucket list!