Long time, no post

So the last time I blogged was before our presentation. Glad to have gotten that done and over with on the first night! Although we (mostly I) experienced just about every tech. issue under the sun, I think it went pretty well!

Outside of class, I had the pleasure of seeing the high school's production of Seussical! It was awesome! Andrew and Alyssa were our very own stars! Way to go guys!

One reason I'm glad my team went first for the presentations was that my husband and I (mostly him) were hard at work this weekend, finishing up our bathroom renovations! Bill did 100% of the work on his own- from the electrical to the plumbing to the construction. They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so I'll let the before and after shot do the work:

We're mostly finished now, all that's left are the frame less shower doors and some shelving and decorations!

Presentation Day!

It's just about time to present our lesson on Cognitivism! We will be one of three groups to present on the first day. While I'm a little nervous presenting without having seen another presentation, I'm definitely glad to get this large part of the semester over with early on!

Karl, Julia and I are meeting one last time today to go over everything and practice our presentation. I have learned so much about Cognitivism, and hope the others in both classes can profit from the lesson.

In other news, I'm also working on getting my PLT outline done. I've decided to work on finding a solution to the age-old math question, "When will we ever need this??" As a math teacher, I hear this question quite frequently. I have found, though, that it is mostly asked when my students find a unit particularly challenging. They get frustrated that they are "getting it," and decide they'll never need it anyway, so why bother? I hope to find ways to incorporate the "why's," and "when's," of each topic into my lessons so that they know the answer before they'd ask the question.

I found a few cartoons I enjoy:

See everyone tomorrow!

Theories, Theories and more Theories!

This past week we briefly reviewed the theories. I was glad we did. Although though I've taken multiple education psychology classes, I always forget which theorists go with which theories, and the specifics about each one.

After working on the "pre" portion of our project, I now feel like an expert on Cognitivism though! It's very interesting to see how the theory connects to what I do in my classroom. I didn't realize how many of my teaching habits include Gagne's 9 instructional strategies. I also found it interesting that all of the examples of how to use Cognitivism in the classroom that I found were math related.

In class this past week, we also had a tutorial of Google Sites. We will be using these for our portfolios this semester. I am excited to make this change, I wasn't thrilled with the portfolio section of Blackboard from the last class.

For this upcoming week, I am excited to finish planning our lesson for our presentation next week. We already have a pretty good idea of what we're doing, we just need to put it all together!