Professional GoalI work to give students quality feedback on assessments to help them improve. However, I often spend too long writing the feedback and sometimes students do not receive the comments in a timely manner. Next year I will work on providing quick feedback on assessments and find other ways to provide more detailed feedback to students such as through class activities and check-ins.
Staying ConnectedI will continue to attend professional developments in areas I need to grow, host extracurricular activities, research and develop technologies for myself and other educators, as well as collaborate, listen, and share ideas both inside and outside the math department.
The Long TermSince I am very passionate about my job as an educator, freeing more time from grading equals more detailed, creative lessons for my students.
Advice for TeachersStrive to find a balance between quality feedback and timely feedback early in your teaching career.
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"Steven is very good at identifying the critical elements in a lesson or unit and creating activities that build on, expand, and deepen student understanding of them. I have been particularly impressed with his emphasis on academic vocabulary that focuses on words that take on different meanings in different contexts." - Wendy Lawson
I was happily surprised at how useful/beneficial it is for students to create their own descriptions and then map those descriptions to appropriate academic vocabulary.
Words that were used to describe graphs of polar graphs included: acorn, butt, apple-like, Miyazaki spirits, peach, heart, loop within a loop, oval, petal, petal with a loop, egg, lily pad, and spade. |
Sorting Dances
Visual illustration of the bubble sort algorithm used in computer science. Many of the other sorting algorithms have their own respective videos using different European folk dances.
Watch and Learn
Students are given the task of answering questions after watching a very short (around 30 seconds) clip that illustrates a particular math concept. After having two minutes of silence, students are to work with their elbow partner to come to a consensus on the questions. This particular video is from the YouTube channel ElicaTeam which includes other videos on conics as well as other interesting mathematical topics and visualizations.
Kuta Software
These worksheets are available for most high school math topics. They focus on skills practice and are an excellent source for supplementing prior knowledge and providing additional practice for struggling students.
www.kutasoftware.com/freeia2.html
www.kutasoftware.com/freeia2.html