First off it was just amazing that our District was able to send 17 teachers to the conference funded by our EETT C grant.  It was not originally planned, but with staff development funding in the grant available, we were able to get it approved.  Fourteen of the seventeen teachers were first time attendees and I could see the happy faces on Friday night when when we all met up and I asked, "What was the best thing you saw today?"  For many of the teachers it was difficult to find one thing as their best.  The excitement was abuzz and they were ready to tackle Saturday with enthusiasm.  We got some of them using Twitter and "tweets" were flying back and forth as they days progressed with information about sessions.

Over the next two weeks these teachers will be sharing their experiences and what they have learned at our last staff development day of the grant for this year.  I'm sure they will bring that same enthusiasm back to our training days.  Their move from trainee to trainer has now become complete for many of them.  This sharing will be posted in our SWATTEC wiki  as the training week progresses and teachers will have access to it when they want to go back and look for a resource.  It's always been important to have a place to put all our resources for teachers to have easy access.  Over time this will be even more refined and organized so it is easier to use.

I'd like to give props to our vendors who have been so supportive to our teachers.  They were so excited to see the teachers come by and say hello while the teachers were visiting the exhibit hall.  I've heard that they have actually been spreading the news about our SWATTEC program. 

For many of the 55 teachers in our program, the infusion of all the new technology over the last 2 years has been an uphill struggle, but they have worked very hard to implement the programs and use the new hardware to improve their student achievement.  If the results from last year continue through this year, which I'm sure they will, they have met and exceeded any expectations.  They should be very proud of themselves.  So many props to our classroom teachers. 

Providing quality staff development experiences like CUE is something all teachers should have the opportunity to participate in at least every couple of years. 

A

http://www.iasted.org/conferences/formatting/Presentations-Tips.ppt

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Apparently it is more complicated than that. In the interest of being correct, I did some research. 0 is a multiple of every integer, but so are negative values of that integer times any other integer. That means truly multiples of 5 are {....-15, -10, -5, 0, 5, 10,...}. So I'm not going to outright say that the book is wrong. I will say that our text took the wrong approach. What we're interested in are not multiples of integers but multiples of natural numbers. After all, isn't the goal to eventually have these students calculating the LCM by comparing the multiples of the two (or more) numbers they're considering? If we teach them that zero is the first multiple now, what do we teach them later? Because they're sure to declare that 0 is the LCM every time. Think about it. Teacher: "What is the smallest number that I can divide both of these numbers by? Make a list, find the first multiple that appears in each, blah blah." If we undermine that method of finding LCM, then everyone will have to calculate it by using prime factorization (arguably not a bad thing).

If you're not in chpt. 5 yet, lucky you. If you've been there and didn't notice, you might want to go back and clarify any misconceptions. 5th grade will thank you for it.

I noticed this when I gave the publisher's test and kids were missing questions (graded with the key) that they had actually answered correctly (by my instruction). I generally use the text for pacing, practice work, and back-up if I don't know the topic as well as I'd like to. I couldn't figure out why during review discussions the kids kept telling me that zero was the first multiple. Sadly, it's in the book without the natural numbers explanation I gave above. I plan on putting a yellow sticky in my book to remind me of this next year.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?id=L730

orderopstemp.xls application/vnd.ms-excel

You can also create your own Jeopardy games for any subject area at http://www.jeopardylabs.com

Enjoy!

Sarah Sabol

PS: A tip for palying the game: If a question is answered correctly, add the points before clicking "Continue", or the question will remain on the board to be selected again and again.

regionsscrapbook.doc application/msword

http://www.certnyc.org/ffth.html#