Just Jordan

As I mentioned in my September post, I spent a significant amount of time in the summer revamping my Math 9 course. With an idea and the guidance of a math leader in our system, I created a Mathematician's Workshop.  Every lesson is run over 2 days broken into 4 blocks (Teacher-led, Math by Myself, Math with Someone, and Math Technology).  Teacher-led instruction looks exactly like how you picture math to be taught. I do lots of mini whiteboards to spice it up. What are mini whiteboards?  Every student is given a small whiteboard and dry erase marker. They are then asked a question (like "-3 - 5", during our integer unit, or "Find the surface area of a cube with side length 8" in our square roots and surface area unit). Students then do their work on the board. Sometimes, like in the first question, there is only a answer. Other times, like in the 2nd question, there is some work to be shown. After an appropriate amount of time I ask students to flash m...

The biggest news in the our world in October was the snow. I heard on the radio that snow on my birthday (the 6th) happens once approximately every 100 years. Midway through the month the snow was gone, but the early snow was certainly good motivation to swap out our fall gear for our winter stuff.  The boys both wrapped up their swimming lessons at the start of the month and they both passed. We were a bit disappointed that they didn't get any skills checked off their next levels (as we thought they were capable of the skills. . . particularly Boone), but we will be registering them in their next levels regardless.  We had a pretty eventful Thanksgiving. My brother fell through the attic of his cabin and broke 3 vertebrae (T11, T12, L1). He is completely fine, but it was certainly stressful and worrisome. The doctor told Luke that of all the possible outcomes he could think of after a man fell 16 feet, Luke's outcome was a best case scenario. We all felt very luck...

These are a few little notes I wrote down for a post that never got written. I don't want to lose them, so I thought they might as well be published! Boone adores his run bike. No desire at all to learn to pedal a bike with training wheels. Lawson loves to read a book and has started to learn that her sleep sack equals bedtime and isn’t impressed. Lawson also loves her babies (stuffed animals) and blanket. Boone also loves his babies and “baby” blanket as he calls it. Don’t call him a baby, though. He is a big boy. Calder loves to pound nails and use the drill. He actually started to put together a book shelf for me at the cabin with 2 x 4s . 8 foot long ones. Needless to say, Hugh would really like to start a project with him when he doesn’t have pressing cabin work to do (a leaky roof takes priority). Calder has also talked about making a fort in the bush behind our cabin. I think this is a fabulous idea and hope he is still keen next spring. We have some BBC ...

We spent 7 glorious weeks at the lake this summer. Highlights include: ·          Hours on the boat. Hugh dumped the boys off the ski trainer tube in June and it took a while to get them back behind the boat. Funny, but not funny!  My parents got the kids this giant tube for Christmas and it didn’t take long for Calder to be standing, jumping, and acting crazy in general on it once July hit. Boone didn’t love tubing, but he did do it. Lawson LOVED it and often would cry when we had her in the boat and not out on the tube. The tube was also great for floating. The kids loved jumping on it and off it. No one more than Lawson. She has perfected the belly flop and would do it dozens of times in a row (Hugh gained some serious upper body strength hoisting our girl back onto the tube). We also enjoyed many a picnic lunch on the boat. Meat sticks, cheese, pickles and veggies were our go-to. And nothing like a bag of chips on the side. Every. Si...

We started the month of September in a 100m dash. Any teacher will tell you that the first week of school is one of the busiest and stressful time of the year. This was particularly true this year as I have an intern (who is lovely and great) and Hugh's school was overstaffed so they had to lose a teacher. On top of this, Hugh and I are billeting a girl who is attending the softball academy at my school (she is also lovely). The softball academy takes place during the school day, but she also made the senior volleyball team, so we have been managing her practice and game schedule as she doesn't have her license yet. On top of this, Hugh is the vice president of our local hockey association which means that he had to attend every ice session of every age group's tiering. On top of this, the boys were in swimming lessons twice a week in the city. Calder started piano lessons (which he is really enjoying) and Calder also started hockey. On top of this, Hugh took off ...