One Month Into the School Year (already!)

School has officially been in session for four weeks as of today.  I can't believe it has been that long already!  This year has started off to a pretty decent start.  We've had a ton of new stuff thrown at us this year, but the teachers in my school are doing their very best to keep up with it all.  In addition to new requirements from our district AND implementing Common Core along with our state standards this year, I also have added a new class to my roster.  I am now teaching Geometry in addition to 8th Grade math and Algebra 1.

Geometry...so far I am LOVING it.  When you teach geometry to 8th graders you get to spend time with some SUPER brainiac kids with BIG personalities.  We laugh way too much, but it's all in good fun - and they are still learning!   This year I am trying something new with my classes for notes, and so far Geometry has gotten to do some neat notes.  I have taken the whole "interactive notebook" idea and merged it with my old style of notes and have created the Math Folder.  My students take notes in a variety of ways now.  Sometimes its just good-old-fashioned notes, other times we glue in foldables, and sometimes I let them glue in guided notes with lots of blanks and space for practice.  It seems to be working really well so far, so I'm going to keep it up.  Here are some examples of things I have done with my Geometry students so far.

This was a great way to review angle relationships from last year.  I originally saw the idea here.

I made these glue-in pages to help my students learn about patterns - especially the tricky vocab!  I haven't used these pages yet, but they are up for next Tuesday.

I'm really enjoying this year with all of my classes - I hope it stays this great!