Summer Planning

Well, it’s that time of year again.  Summer, the time when teachers put away their school materials and spend lazy days relaxing with school the furthest thing from their mind…

Wait, WHAT?  That isn’t what teachers do in the summer?? 

Like most teachers, summer is the time when I work on the majority of my planning for the next year.  I know, doesn’t have quite the ring to it, does it?

Last summer, I completely redid my science curriculum.  It was very time-consuming, but it completely paid off throughout the school year.  This summer, I decided to focus on math.  This past school year, I began using a flipped classroom model for my mathematics classes.  I also decided last year when I was redoing my science curriculum, I wanted to completely eliminate textbooks from my classroom.  As a result, I wrote iBooks to be used for science.  In the spirit of this decision, I am working this summer on completing math iBooks. 

To write my iBooks, I use iBooks Author.  It is very user-friendly and I highly recommend checking it out if you have never tried it.  For each unit, I am including the new Indiana Mathematics Standards, a video lesson, a short interactive quiz, and screenshots of problems from our old textbooks.  My thought behind doing this is students will have all of their video lessons in one place instead of on their Google Drive, which is what I used last year.  Hopefully, this will make it easier for them to view lessons at home and to come back to if they need extra help later on in the school year. 

My other goal for improving my mathematics instruction is to continue to develop more hands-on activities and projects.  The best thing about the flipped mathematics classroom was it produced ample time for these types of activities during class. 

Now, it’s your turn.  What are you doing this summer in preparation for next school year?