What's In A Daily Agenda?

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Here is a picture of my white board from today:

Here's what's what on my white board:

1.) I list "office hours" for the week.  It's the time I set aside to give kids extra help outside the regular school day.  I know a lot of teachers that let students get help from them before school, after school, and even lunch.  Those teachers are so kind-hearted, but I can't help but think they are going to get a little burned out soon!  You have to take care of yourself and sometimes boundaries can help with that.  Therefore, I give students specific times that I can commit to giving them help.  I also thinks it helps them get better at planning and time management if they know they can't just come whenever the mood strikes them!

2) The date-- yep, we are learning about integers.  So today's date was written as -1 x -7.  One of my favorites to throw in there is anything to the zero power for the 1st of the month (like 5^0).  It gets them every time… until it stops "getting" them and then I know they "got it."  Make sense? :)

3) The agenda.  I post this everyday.  I think it helps students to know what is coming next and what to expect.  Also, every year I have a student or two with autism or Aspergers that really benefit from knowing the agenda as well.  

4) What's missing?  An objective.  This is on purpose.  Many times I want students to "discover" the objective for the day.  For example, yesterday we talked about generalizing the rules for multiplying integers.  If I told them that we were doing that, it would have taken away from when we had that "ah ha" moment as a class.  I think it is much more effective to summarize the lesson at the end than to give the objective up front.

5) Today was "Hug a Bear Day."  Wacky holidays… so fun.  Read more here.

6) A quote.  This is something new I'm trying.  I think I'm going to pick one quote for the week.

A few weeks ago, I saw Mathy Cathy's blog post about having fun in her classroom I couldn't believe how much we have in common with what we put on our boards each day.  She also does the mathematical expression for the date and wacky holidays!  So fun!

So, that's what's in my agenda.  A lot of stuff in one little spot!

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