Summer to-do List

When the summer started a few weeks ago, I didn't feel like I really had that much work to do.  I'm teaching a new class next year (Algebra 1, which I've taught before) so that will take some time, but my other two classes are repeats from last year (and the year before.... and the year before....).  No problem, right?  All taken care of.

However, since I've been on twitter that much more this summer (don't tell my husband!  though I'm sure he probably knows), some more things have popped up that I want to figure out.

1.  Homework  - how do I want to do it?  I posted here some thoughts that have been bantered about... but now @druinok has me thinking about doing this, too (scroll down for her comments).  I like the idea of giving a list of assignments in advance and had thought about doing that for precalc.  Getting them checked (and signed for by me) before the test happens is something I still want to consider.

2.  Precalc - how do I want to do it?  I got the Workshop Precalculus book the other day but haven't had much time to look through it.  I'm hoping that it will cover a lot of the topics that the kids have seen before in a different way.  That'll hopefully help take some of the monotony out of the first quarter (or so) of school.  Not that I'm monotonous, of course, just doing the same thing over again can be. :)

3.  My focus the past few days has been the idea of Standards Based Grading (SBG).  It's a way of teaching/assessing so that the kids are really responsible for knowing their stuff.  Every person I've tweeted with has their own version, but I really like @k8nowak's version.  (Her jing screencast is here - that helped a ton!)  There's no way I'd roll it out for all three of my preps, but I'm thinking of trying to implement it in Algebra 2 - that's such an important year for them and I think using SBG would really make them learn their stuff.  Here are all of the links I've collected in the past few days tagged SBG.

I wish I would've done a little more work last week when my kids were out of town.  Instead, I had a great week of sleeping in, reading books, and going for runs.  I did get some work done - I de-wallpapered and painted my kitchen.  Whaddya think? :)