Go to a conference

I knew coming back this year to teaching that I was going to be making lots of changes and covering new material. I also knew that I wanted some kind of conference early in the year to give that very inspiring feeling to what I was doing. Since I am mostly teaching math this year, I began to search for math conferences nationwide. I started to narrow down the possibilities by dates and location. I would have loved to go to Vegas for a conference, but it takes a whole day just to travel there and I wanted something as close as possible. The Northwest Math Conference was being held in Portland early in October. The information page even included a "convince your principal why you should go" page that you just had to forward (It worked!). And it meant I could go see my aunt and uncle as well, which is a huge bonus.

The conference was great, and it certainly gave me that oomph I wanted early in the year to focus my goals for the year. The two biggest take aways from that conference are both giving student feedback, which is an area that I know I am weak in and would like to address. The first was a clean and clear formula for giving a pre and post test that is used for teacher in put, but also for student reflection. The other is creating a math profile. Students take a quiz every two weeks and track their progress themselves. Each question covers one area of math. for example, the first question is always on place value, the second is always multiplication and division, question three is always about expression, etc. Students and teachers can then see the areas of math that are strong points and areas for improvement. It's been great for creating small instructional groups.

Math profile