Linear Equations

I have to say that I am so overwhelmed and grateful for all the compliments that I have been getting on my blog and ISN ideas.

I wanted to share the pages I did with my algebra classes today just to show that every ISN page isn't going to be a masterpiece.  I put a lot of time into planning some of the foldables and stuff that I do, but that just doesn't always happen.  Largely because I don't always have the time and energy.

So here's what we did today (ha, even the picture is not spectacular):

As for the rest of the notes I just used this chart.  Each column is going on its own page and we only got through the first couple slope-intercept boxes today.

Not all that fancy and I'm sure I could have come up with something better, but oh well.  I feel like it's fine, but nothing all that special.  Maybe next time I teach this it'll be something more creative and all that good stuff.  This year I had some pages that I really liked and will definitely be keepers, but I had plenty of pages that I wasn't all that crazy about and my hopes are just that this year to improve upon them.

So I share this in hopes that saying that if you are planning on attempting to use an ISN next year, don't get stressed out trying to make it perfect.  Don't get discouraged if it's not always spectacular. It's not going to be.  Starting something new always takes time, especially in teaching.  I honestly don't think I really even figured out my true style of classroom management for like five years.  Sure I thought that I knew what I was doing back in year one, but I look back now and realized that I had no idea.  I expect this ISN to be the same way.  In a year from now I hope to have a better handle on it than I do right now.

You just have to figure out the way to do something that works best for you, and it takes time for that to happen.  I could try to plan everything out right now for this year and plan exactly what I'm going to do, but the reality is that as soon as those kids walk in the door everything will probably change.  The key is just to expect that and go with the flow.

Good luck :)