Annie Forest

In my school district, once you receive 3 "excellent" ratings on your evaluations, you can move from having classroom observations to doing goals every other year.  I've had the privilege of doing this type of work for the past couple of years.  This year, it is time for me to come up with two professional goals. One goal revolves around SBG… continuing my work and helping others do it too. My second goal has to do with being more involved in expanding my professional development reach and getting involved more in professional organizations.  I reached out to Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics and offered to help with putting content on their Facebook page which I noticed hadn't had a post in a while.  Well, they took me up on my offer, so I'm now an editor on their page.  I'm excited for the chance to share some content that I think is relevant to the ICTM crowd!  Only, it's not really a crowd yet with only about 60 "likes."   ...

This is a great article by Katrina Schwartz called "Giving Good Praise to Girls: What Messages Stick." How to praise kids: It’s a hot topic for many parents and educators. A lot of the conversation around it has stemmed from studies by  Carol Dweck , professor of psychology at Stanford who has been researching this specific topic for many years. “My research shows that praise for intelligence or ability backfires,” said Dweck, who co-authored a seminal  research paper  on the effects of praise on motivation and performance. “What we’ve shown is that when you praise someone, say, ‘You’re smart at this,’ the next time they struggle, they think they’re not. It’s really about praising the process they engage in, not how smart they are or how good they are at it, but taking on difficulty, trying many different strategies, sticking to it and achieving over time.” But what some might not know is that this paradox is strongest for girls. Dweck’s research, which focus...

Yes, more of this!!!! This teacher has students do a non-routine problem solving activity.  This is not about doing something the "right" way or even about getting the answer!  We need students to have interesting problems to challenge them and make them think.  After all, it's not really a "problem" if you can solve it in 5 seconds! If you want your students to have some non-routine problems to try, check out Problems of the Month . I try doing these once per unit.

While I'm on maternity leave, I'm still checking in with some of my teacher friends to see how things are going.  Our principal has asked the staff to embark on a Standards Based Grading journey this year.  I've heard that some teachers are having a few struggles making this change and I think that is totally normal, expected, and okay! It's about progress , not perfection !  I don't have all the answers about SBG either!  I tried it last year, and I liked how it made me think about what I'm teaching and I liked how my students responded.  I hope to help other teachers by letting them know what I tried, what worked, and what didn't, but I am still on the journey too! (You can check out some of my other posts about SBG here .) I encourage my peers to continue on this journey.  Standards Based Grading helps students and helps us too.  It forces us to really define what it is we want our students to be learning.  It sets learning targets and ma...

Kids are great with technology and they love it!  I also love technology and am lucky to work in a district with 1:1 devices for our students.  Lately, though, I've been thinking about screen time and just how much time my students are spending on technology. Here is what the American Academy of Pediatrics has to say about media and children : Media is everywhere. TV, Internet, computer and video games all vie for our children's attention. Information on this page can help parents understand the impact media has in our children's lives, while offering tips on managing time spent with various media. The AAP has recommendations for parents and pediatricians. Today's children are spending an average of seven hours a day on entertainment media, including televisions, computers, phones and other electronic devices. To help kids make wise media choices, parents should monitor their media diet. Parents can make use of established ratings systems for shows, movies a...

I'm starting to think about my presentation for the ICTM conference in October .  My topic is about how teachers' use of "tricks" has changed since Common Core. "Tricks" would be things like "FOIL," "PEMDAS," "flip the second and multiply," "cross multiplication,"  "add a zero" when multiplying by 10, "two negatives make a positive," key words, etc… Here are some questions that I posed to some of the math teachers in my district: 1. What trick(s) did you learn as a student or previously teach that you don't now? 2. Why did you abandon this(these) trick(s)? 3. What trick(s) do you still use in your teaching? 4. What makes this(these) trick(s) helpful or useful to your students? I'm interested to hear their responses.  I want to be able to include some of their thoughts in my workshop.  I also plan to refer to "Nix the Tricks," which I wrote abou t a few months ago. ...

Hey Chicagoland teachers!  Head over to Chick-fil-A tomorrow for a free chicken sandwich meal. I love when businesses show teachers a little love!  I try to remember my school id when I go shopping because there are a few stores I shop at regularly that give discounts (including J Crew, Loft, and Banana Republic!).  Here is a list of some more stores that give discounts to teachers .