Shameless advertisement...

Hey everyone!

I am using my blog as a shameless advertisement space. We have bicycle issues at our house. We have lost 4 bicycles from our yard to theft and one bicycle from a neighbor's driveway to theft. Poor Caleb...he can't keep a bike he likes because people steal them from our yard. It's pretty pathetic. Anyway, we have discovered a way to keep the bikes safe, although it's not fun or convenient for any of us. So here's the deal:

We have 2 really nice bikes that we've been able to keep safe. The chopper was a Christmas gift for Caleb about 3 years ago...it's a great bike and he does like it, but it's more for pleasure riding than the kind of rough riding that our active 9 year old wants to do. It's rarely been ridden...maybe 10 times in 3 years. The Schwinn Falcon is a really nice 20" bike that was kindly "traded" for one we had earlier (the thief left this one when he/she took the last one that was stolen). We saw the Schwinn in Target the other day...exactly like the one we have and it was selling for $100. We'd like to sell them both for $125. Please look at the pictures and leave a comment if you're interested. We are willing to negotiate.

The beautiful Stingray

The nice "traded" Falcon

Pools, Castles, and sunny days

We are really busy here, trying hard to enjoy the last couple of weeks of summer! We've been to the pool a lot. I'll try to get pictures of the kids at the pool and post if I can. Then yesterday we ended up spending the day at home and Caleb got motivated to complete a 3-D puzzle that has been sitting in his room for about a year. I do have some pictures of that...he worked on it all day it's beautiful!

Burnin' up the road

Hey everybody!  I'm sorry I've been AWOL for so long...things are really hopping in the Madden house.  I know you remember I took a class at Winthrop.  Well, I've finished that class (not without lots of swearing at the computer and griping about an online portfolio that will remain unnamed!)  The last week of my class C spent the week with his grandfather, while S went with my mom to visit my grandmother.  We (Greg and I) went to pick up C on July 3 and stayed for the July 4 fireworks there.  We were home for about 5 days when C and I went to Anderson to meet S (who had been dropped off with my dad on her way back up from my grandmother's) and get fabric for a rocking chair I want to have recovered.  We came back from Anderson on Saturday evening because I had computer at church on Sunday, then loaded up the car with me and both kids and drove to Atlanta to visit my bestie from college, Alisa.

Alisa has two children, C and D, and her two and my two are THOROUGHLY enjoying playing together, while I'm thoroughly enjoying hanging out with Alisa and Paul.  We miss Greg, though!

When we get back home I will be finishing up laundry and getting C ready to go to his first ever week long camp.  He's excited and I'm excited for him!  He goes Sunday and while he's gone I am going to try (AGAIN) to get my stuff moved from RRMS to STMS.  It's taking me a lot longer than I hoped but it's so hot in my room at RRMS that I don't feel like I can spend hours up there.

Anyway, I wanted to give you a quick update.  Maybe I can post some pictures of us all soon! Hope everyone around is having a great summer!

Oh well...

I know several of you have read the blog, but I guess no one has any ideas...that's ok. I have come up with some other ideas and I'm very excited about them. I am going to complete one lesson on tessellations and one on theoretical and experimental data. It should be good.

So how many of you know what a tessellation is? I didn't either until I started teaching 7th grade. A tessellation is a pattern created by a polygon which flips, inverts or slides so that the shape can cover the entire plane with no overlapping or gaps. Confusing? It was to me too. Some examples of tesselations that you are familiar with (but may not know it) are floor or wall tiles, a brick wall, etc. There is an artist who creates art from tessellations. You may be familiar with his work. I've posted a couple of the more famous examples of Escher's work for you to look at. I bet you'll say "OH! I didn't realize this was a tessellation!"

Suggestions please...

In this class I'm taking the big project is to choose a children's book and read it to the class then develop two math lessons based on the book. I have chosen The Napping House as my book and now I'm trying to figure out what lessons to teach.

The lessons I teach have to be practical for my classroom...one of my standards has to do with sequencing which is a perfect lesson to teach from this book. The other lesson is the one giving me trouble...I'm having a hard time coming up with what to teach.

If there are any of you who:

1) know the book or have it and only have to read it,

2) can open the link for the SC Mathematics Standards and find the 7th grade standards (listed below), and

http://ed.sc.gov/agency/offices/cso/standards/math/documents/2007MathematicsStandards.doc

3) are very creative and willing to share ideas,

then please feel free to leave a comment under this post. I'll see if I can post some of what I actually do with the lessons soon. Let me warn you that the SC Mathematics Standards document is very long. The 7th grade standards start on page 54 of the document...you can just scroll down to there.

Thanks!

Yahoo!

I'm taking this math class at Winthrop! It's really cool...we are doing some very hands on math activities every day and I LOVE it! I can't wait to teach my students some of the things we've learned in this class.

One of the coolest things we've learned is called chisombop. Are any of you familiar with this? I didn't know it was called chisombop...I just thought it was a 9s multiplication tables trick. It's when you number your fingers and thumbs from left to right...1-10. Then you fold down the finger that corresponds with the number you're multiplying by 9. The number of fingers up to the left of the folded finger is the tens and the number to the right of the folded finger is the ones.

Example:

In this picture, Sarah's fingers will be numbered 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, from her left pinky all the way to her right pinky.

In this picture, Sarah's #3 finger is folded under. The multiplication problem would be 9x3. Look at the number of fingers unfolded to the left of her #3 and count them. You should see two. Now look at the number of fingers unfolded to the right of her #3 and count them. You should see seven. The fingers to the left of the #3 represent the tens and the fingers to the right of the #3 represent the ones, thus the solution to the multiplication problem 9x3 is 27.

This works with all the 9s multiples up to 10! How cool is that?

There's another one that I learned that's even cooler, but it's way more complicated and will take another post.

Thanks Dr. Mink!

Better understanding...

When I posted yesterday about the mapping we had been doing in our district several things had slipped my mind. I said that I would find out more about it all before I got upset so I emailed my friend who is the Instructional Coach at RRMS and she refreshed my memory for me.

During the process, one of the things we did, or at least tried to do, was to determine if each indicator really fit with the standard under which it was written. Then we tried to develop a sequence for teaching these concepts. These were all brought to a meeting at the district office where teachers from each school met with the coordinator for their area. These representatives have come up with a sequence for teaching concepts in classrooms. I hope all this makes sense the way I'm saying it.

I had a good explanation of this from our IC and administrator back when we were doing this and all that info. just completely left my mind when I heard about this yesterday. Sorry for misleading anyone about that!

All this is to say that we work hard, but we often screw up (or at least I do). I try to be more careful about running my mouth before I know what I'm talking about, but often...VERY OFTEN I eat shoe for breakfast! :)