Never in my life did I ever imagine myself teaching in China, and yet, here I am for a second year at that! Below are images of welcome packages I put together for the members in the Math Department this year, which includes:
– A door sign with the teacher’s name, room number, and teaching schedule
-Stickers, ‘cuz duh
-Coffee, a key element in sustaining the life force of a teacher
-A pack of cards, essential in any math teacher starter kit 
-A math puzzle, fuel for the brain 

I’m super happy with the way they turned out, and I’m looking forward to a good year ahead!  

This year I’ll be teaching Pre-Calculus 11 and Calculus 12, which I’m both excited and nervous about! It’s been years since I’ve taken Calculus and this will be my first year working with twelfth grade students (I’ve been doing a lot of review this summer on Khan Academy). Here’s a fun activity that I found on Kate Owen‘s blog that I plan on using this week with my Calculus 12 students. It’s a great way to review concepts and vocabulary from Pre-Calculus to see what students already know and remember from the course. 

I’ve added some modifications and created an accompanying PPT that’s a full lesson, all ready to go. Scroll down below to access this resource 🙂 I’m a big believer in sharing teaching resources for free, and this is my way of giving back to the online teaching community that has given so much to me. Huge shout out to everyone in the #MTBoS, I love this community. 

The activity works as follows:  

1.Students it with a partner, shoulder to shoulder.
2.One person faces the board, the other person faces away.
3.The person facing the board will be the explainer.
4.The person facing away will be the grapher.

Warm Up: Teacher does warm up round with the students, describing a basic graph (ex. linear function) and students attempt to draw it in their notebooks. Discuss: What prompts were useful? Is there something the teacher said that could have made it easier? 

The Activity: (see above)

Exit Ticket: Given a picture of a graph, students are to write a description that matches it in as much detail as possible.

Extension: Students draw a graph and write a corresponding description. Scramble the results and have students match them!