Annie Forest

Being a new Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics board member has me thinking about ways to connect more teachers across the state. I want to put my obsession knowledge of social media/blogs/Twitter to some good use! I've been the main editor of the Facebook page for ICTM for some time now (like the page, if you haven't yet!). I also recently volunteered to help with the Twitter account ( @MathICTM ). I really want to expand the use of these tools to help more Illinois math teachers feel connected outside of our annual conference. While there are some teachers that participate in #MTBoS, I want to bring more of that to our state. A Twitter chat might be one way we could do this. I'm still thinking on this because timing is important to help build momentum and make sure it is sustainable. Evenings are pretty busy for me right now with the kiddos, so I've not been participating in as many chats as I had in the past. I'm sure this busy bedtime phase will p...

There are days leading up to break when you want to do something: 1. "mathy" 2. low-tech 3. fun 4. engaging that will keep everyone's attention! It's that time of year when teachers need a math game idea. My post about  activities to do the last weeks of school  is one of my most viewed because of this exact thing. I wrote about this game, "Draw 10", in the post I mentioned above, but I don't think it got much attention, probably because I didn't explain it well or give examples of how it will look as you play it, so I wanted to fix that. This game is fun for grade levels 3-12. With younger kids you will want to play the whole numbers version, while older students will be more challenged by the decimal version. ((Speaking of older kids, it would be really interesting if someone adapted this into another base besides base-10!)) To play Draw 10 you will need: 1. The game boards printed for your students. I usually try to fit quite a f...