Working on the body language of collaboration. These pairs have got it.
Oh, and Red/Green Cards are back!

Before tests, I like to have the kids warm up by trying to spell "test" with their bodies. T's are easy, these are some of the better E's and S's I've seen so far.

Wedgies in precal and the legend of congruence in geometry. 
Got some sleep last night, and working through my "how to read your test scores" lesson with the kids. Lots of resistance. They also told on me to the principal, who sat through my 2nd period rendition and totally backed me up! Lots of parent emails coming in, but I'm dealing.
The kids, at least in a couple of classes, are starting to get it, too. They're asking really good questions, and you can see in their faces when they start getting over the shock of "Mr. Jon thinks 85% is good" and start realizing "I know how to get 100%". Hopefully that will start permeating through the ranks soon.
​Actually, hopefully they'll stop thinking about those f*cking percentages altogether... One can dream.

No pics today, super tired. Spent all weekend grading tests from 4 classes with the new system. Had a real high on Saturday when I finished the grading, like it felt right, or at least right-er. Then Sunday had to enter everything, and got really depressed with how much work it takes. Definitely need a more efficient way to do it, so I can enter it in 1 place and have the students see it AND keep track of historical scores. Then got to school today and it's totally a flood of kids freaking out. One student discussed with me for 30 minutes after school; bottom line came down to this: "It should be easier for me to get above 95% in your class." I respectfully disagreed.

Spent short Friday classes getting Precal ready for Unit Circle cutouts, courtesy of Shireen Dadmehr via Meg Craig.

Geometry students were having some trouble with rotations + Noticed the grid on the floor this morning = last minute lesson plan!

First test ever at LAS! These kids are so scared, it's like they're trauma victims. Gave them some nice warm-up stretches and lots of encouragement.

See what this badass did? Cut out a shape on her own to help with transformations on the test! Yeah!

Had to break out the Cornwell video to chill out and get ready for congruent triangles. Students are never as into this as I am... I still almost cry every time I watch it.

Geometry students working together to figure out transformations on the plane.

First big summative calls for the bigass rubric! The printer sucks, and the colored paper is A4 while the white paper is letter-sized. Didn't feel like re-doing this whole thing, so it's a little boring...

Don't know how I feel about this... They asked for it, so I'm giving students a voice? 20% of them didn't do their work this week, including the loudest voices for change.