Annie Forest

I went to ISTE last week and I felt like I was cheating on my math friends. WHAT IS ISTE? First, ISTE stands for International Society for Technology in Education. They have a big annual conference every summer. This year it was in San Antonio and I was lucky enough to get to present and attend. If you have never heard of ISTE, you aren't alone. Despite the fact that this conference is HUGE, many educators don't even know it exists. (I didn't until a few years ago.) And I saw on Twitter a few math educator friends asking what #ISTE17 stood for because they were seeing it in their newsfeed. And, to make it even harder, I looked at ISTE's website and had to dig a bit to even find it all spelled out! So, why hadn't I heard of ISTE until recently? I've connected mostly with the math ed crowd on social media and engage with the fine folks in #MTBoS often. I just don't hear much about tech stuff as it relates to math... with the big exception being fo...

I am really lucky that I get to be home with my kids right now while I'm on maternity leave. While on leave, I still want to feel connected to my work. I'm keeping up on Twitter and taking on a few PD leadership opportunities in my district. When I came across a great activity by Sara , I just knew it would be one I would want to try if I was in the classroom this year. So, I passed it along to all my middle school math teacher friends. A few teachers tried it out and were nice enough to send me pictures! How amazing that I got to see the smiling faces of kiddos excited and happy to be in math class?! It makes me happy to be connected with teachers and classrooms!

Yesterday I presented to some math teachers about visible student thinking ( check out the slides here ). One of the ideas I talked about posing a picture, problem, or visual and asking kids what they notice and what they wonder. I just recently learned about this and started using it with my students last school year. It's one of those things that is so simple but so powerful. If you haven't heard of this idea before, please note that I completely borrowed this idea. Annie Fetter did an Ignite about it a few years ago. When you just ask kids what they notice and what they wonder, you are really helping them to understand that they already have mathematical ideas going on in their mind. The other great thing is that every student can participate right away. No matter their skill level, students notice and wonder things. There are no "fast finishers" yelling "DONE!" and students that struggle can contribute as well without fear of being ...

Math is everywhere! As a math teacher, I feel like I'm thinking about math often. But there are some latest inspirations that keeps math on my mind ALL THE TIME. I see math in almost everything I do! My first example of inspiration is " Math Photo Challenge ," a summer photo taking challenge for math-minded Twitter peeps (not on Twitter? check out the website ). Each week there is a different theme/challenge. It's a great way to see the math in your everyday life. The collection of pictures from everyone is also great images to use in your classroom in the fall. You can show pictures and ask your students what they notice/wonder. Or you can use pictures for specific standards and ask students what problems they can come up with that match the image. I'm even thinking about how I can have my students use their iPads to take pictures with a different theme each week so they are inspired to see math everywhere just like I have been! Here are a few examp...

Hey, Annie, where have you been? I do have a pretty decent (in my opinion) excuse for my lack of blogging lately. I had my second kiddo, Dean, on May 22nd. For some reason my kids like to be born about two weeks earlier than their due dates. So, although I wasn't due until June 6th, I decided to start my maternity leave on May 17th because I was starting to feel uncomfortable, it was difficult to get around, and I just had a feeling that my kid was going to be born soon. And, call me crazy, but I didn't want my 6th graders remembering me as the teacher whose water broke at school! My maternity leave will continue throughout the summer and for the first 10-ish weeks of school. I'll be back in action late October. Until then, I do hope to keep up with blogging. It's been tough the past few weeks, but I do have some ideas that I want to write about. I have been able to keep up with Twitter because it's easy to scroll through on my phone during a 3AM nursing ...

Twitter: 1. Following along with the NCSM Annual Meeting (#NCSM16) and the NCTM Annual Meeting (#NCTMannual) and all of my tweeps attending (#MTBoS). Feeling super jealous that I can't be there, but making the best of learning from afar! 2. Trying out using a Twitter chat format in my classroom. As a warm-up I post three questions on the board using the format Q1, Q2, and Q3. Then I ask students to fill out our Twitter google doc with their response to a chosen question using A1, A2, or A3. They also include the hashtag: #6Amathchat. I then curate answers and post to our class Twitter account ( @6Amath ). It's a great, quick formative assessment! 3. Continuing on my journey thinking about how I can be more culturally responsive. I've been reading a lot about white privilege and white silence in education. I'm following #educolor and a few people that have really pushed my thinking: Jose Vilson ( @TheJLV ), Rusul Alrubail ( @RusulAlrubail ), and Greg Curra...

I just got my copy of the book, The Best of Math Teacher Blogs 2015. The book is a collection of blog posts by teachers involved in the online community, #MTBoS. You can read more about how the book came to be on Tina's blog . One cool thing about this project is being published alongside some teachers that I really admire! Another awesome thing is that proceeds of the sale of the book go to giving scholarships to teachers so that they can attend " Twitter Math Camp ." I've never been myself, and if it wasn't for having a newborn this summer, I would have tried to get there this year! The idea of meeting up with some of my Twitter friends and talk math sounds so fun! I do hope a TMC is in my future in the next few years!  I'm looking forward to reading all the great posts in this fab book. If you want a copy for yourself, click here ! If you want a preview of the post of mine that is in the book, check it out here . It really is one of my favorites! ...

I think to be a good teacher, you have to love teaching, love learning, love kids, and love your content area. You don't have to love them all equally and there can be parts of your job that you like better than others... but you certainly can't dislike the subject that you teach! So, I love math. My love of math has grown as I grow in my own understanding. But I do love it. I love how numbers work. Prime numbers? Fascinating! Dodecahedrons? Beautiful! Fractions? Useful!  ... and Pi? Yep, I love pi! Today happens to be Pi Day. This is my 11th year of celebrating Pi Day. I've done everything from bringing in pie, having memorizing contests, investigating the ratio itself, and circle drawing contests. I have been in my own little world, proudly wearing pi t-shirts and pi earrings! My family and friends know I like pi. My brother bought be a pi pizza cutter . My daughter wore a onesie last year that says "Cutie Pi." I myself have 30 digits memorized! ...

I had an opportunity to present at the Metropolitan Mathematics Club of Chicago 's conference on Saturday. It was a great event full of learning! I really look forward to this conference every year. Besides doing a regular session about using technology in the classroom and for professional learning ( find the slides here ), I was also one of six teachers asked to do a 10-min "ignite-type" session after lunch. I was actually more nervous for these ten minutes than I was for my 75-min session! ((talking with my hands, as usual!)) In the end, the 10-min talk went great. I got a lot of good feedback and teachers told me they were inspired to try out Twitter because of what I shared. So awesome! If you are interested, here is a screencast version of my talk encouraging teachers to try out Twitter and become involved with #MTBoS . Another great part of the day was being able to learn alongside two of my mentees, Anna and Alix. Not only did they give up their Sat...

If you are following along with the #D100BloggerPD, you know I'm third to post on the topic, "What Inspires You." Check out Post 1 and Post 2 from some great bloggers in my district! You can also follow the hashtag on Twitter as educators will be posting all month (9 in all) about this topic! One fun thing about this #D100BloggerPD is it gives bloggers that write about all different topics a chance to work together on a joint project. I blog about math, some others blog about literacy/reading, while others might be more general education bloggers. I love the idea that new readers might come across my blog and realize it's not *only* about math, or even that math isn't as scary as they thought! :) So while the topic is "What Inspires You," I am taking the opportunity to blog about what inspires me in math education . Many of my regular readers know about #MTBoS, in which case, you will just find this as a love letter to something you already know...

This post is my contribution to the #MTBoS Blogging Initiative ! I'm writing about a day in the life of being a middle school math teacher. This happens to be about yesterday: 5:00- Alarm goes off, turn off quickly so I don't bug my husband too much. 5:15- Check my phone. There is a morning Twitter Chat #BFC530 (Breakfast Club 5:30) that I like to follow. 5:30- Get in the shower, get dressed, start hair/makeup 6:05- Help my husband get my daughter up, dressed. Pack lunch, pour my orange juice (pregnancy craving!) 6:25- Leave the house, drive hubby to the train 6:40- Natalie and I are on our way! 7:15- Arrive at daycare, drop off Natalie 7:30- Arrive at school. Park in one of the reserved "pregnancy parking spots" right outside of school. So nice for my school to be so thoughtful! Get to my classroom, start preparing for the day. Look at my calendar, check Twitter, check email. Look over my plans for today (changing fractions to...