Snow Day #10

Yes #10.
Yes it's only Feb. 4th.
Yes I would love to work on my wedding anniversary of June 13th.
NOT!!!!!!

Ah well, might as well enjoy wearing sweat pants and sipping my coffee and this view :)

We have been working on Systems of Equations in regular 8th grade math and I think it's finally starting to all click. My students had most of the ideas, but it wasn't all coming together to form the larger picture I wanted. We still have some work to do when we get back to school to make sure everything is wonderfully clear in their minds! More on that later...

For now, I want to tell you about something happening on my couch in about 3 hours. I will have lots of lovely students logged into a Cover It Live chat discussing systems of equations. SQUEAL!!!!! I have never before utilized the technology available to teachers like I am doing this year. Most of my students and parents are signed up in a cell in one of my classroom Celly groups. I have become a new believer in Celly over the last two days!

On Sunday evening, after school had been cancelled for Monday, I sent a missing assignment email to each parent about what specific things their students needed to work on. Yes, I was making them work on math during their snow day. Snow day #10 mind you. They've had plenty of time to sled by now!! Also, these were not new assignments. These were overdue/missing/late assignments. No guilt!! :) Anyway, I reminded parents in this email that Celly was a great option if their students needed help. Since then... Celly explosion! I have been answering questions left and right while I sit on my couch and watch three entire seasons of Downton Abbey and Mike and Molly :)

Yesterday there were lots of great questions being asked and I decided "Hey, why not have a chat event?!" So this morning I sent out a Celly message to all parents and students saying that I would be hosting a Cover It Live event from 2-3pm today. I have already received multiple responses saying students will be in attendance! YIPPEE!!!! Now, let me not get ahead of myself. Lets hope they actually show up and it's actually a glorious time of math discussion. Even if it's not, I'm pushing myself to try new things!

Now, please don't hear me wrong throughout this post,
I am not tooting my own horn!

I want to encourage your to try something new this year! Utilize more technology than you have in the past! Trash or scrap something that isn't working. For me, that was Piazza with my regular students. My Pre-AP still love the heck out of Piazza but not my regular kiddos this year. That's okay. We're going a different direction. I'm trying Celly and Cover It Live. Maybe this will be their cup of tea.

If I can do it, you can do it!!

Let's embrace this new technological world and make the most out of it! Without it, I wouldn't be preparing for a fun math chat on this cold and snowy snow day. Get out there and change the world - you can do it!!

UPDATE:
My Cover It Live session was a great success!! I had a great discussion with seven students, and my cover it live meter said I had a few additional "viewers" which I'm guessing are students that were just following along and didn't want to say much - fine by me! I'm leaving our conversation online for students to continue to view. In case you want to see, it's here. I also received some awesome parent feedback. Here are two:

Caleb is so excited about this help in your tutorial session!  Thank you very much for setting this up for your students!!!! You are awesome:)

Omg....best teacher ever!!

Take heart teachers, our good work gets noticed. There are parents out there saying the same things about YOU!!!! :) What you do matters!!