Twitter Math Camp SUNDAY edition

So, about twenty minutes after posting my last post, I thought, gosh, I forgot to include a link to Vaudry's music cues. And then, oh gosh, I forgot to blog about all of Sunday's My Favorites! So, this is the Sunday edition of my TMC recap (conveniently also posted on Sunday!).

As on my other post, anything I plan to focus on this year is written in red. If you're working on that thing too, I'd love to hear from you!

Sunday My Favorites

Friday Letters
I wasn't in the room at the beginning (bring on the shame, Lisa...I was practicing the song), but I did follow up to hear that someone (not sure who) thanked Rebecka @RebeckaMozdeh for her My Favorite last year. On Fridays for her warm up, Rebecka allows students to choose to do the regular warm up activity or to write her a "Friday letter." Then, on the weekend, she writes back to each student. It's a great way to get to know her students better and to allow them to share about their lives, particularly the quieter students.

Sports Simulation
When I walked in (late, I know, sorry Lisa...), Andy @rockychat3 was doing some sort of sports simulation that he wrote. Last summer I took Justin's @j_lanier Math is Personal class on-line with Andy, and I know that he is capable of making some incredible computer models! I didn't get the whole idea of what he was doing, but people seemed to be having an excellent time!

MFA Los Angeles
I've known people who have done Math for America in NYC...what a cool program! In LA, teachers get a $10K bump in salary each year for four years, a big travel budget for going to cool math stuff and the opportunity to work with other teachers. You also get some grants for your school. Talk to Darryl Yong @dyong for more info.

Global Math Department
There is a weekly interactive Webinar of the best math department out there each Tuesday evening at 9pm. I'd like to try to attend periodically this year. The time is tough for me as I often go to bed not too long after that and the ideas usually start flowing fast and furious while I'm there! The current organizers are Heather @heather_kohn and Dylan @math8_teacher (and some other people, but Heather and Dylan presented at TMC). They would love more help (at any level) with the organization of this wonderful thing.

Algebra Art Projects
Stephanie @melomania presented on her Desmos Art Project. The biggest take away for me was the agency that it offered her students. There was the space for them to mess around with things and to ask more specific questions than "how do I do this?"

Music Cues
Matt @MrVaudry has an excellent presentation style...he clearly spends time teaching adults! He has a collection of carefully cued and curated songs that each trigger students to do a certain activity, such as "take out your notebooks and open to this page" or "go get the materials we need for this activity." Rather than him being the one to tell students when time is up, the music does it for him. Matt also just shared all of his music files for us to peruse!

Tech Sabbath
Matt @MrVaudry also made a plug for doing a tech sabbath periodically. Early in my teaching, I tried to never work on Saturdays and there have been some times since then that I have very intentionally put away the tech for a day. I want to bring that back into my life again this year!

Student created videos
Princess @MathPrincessC flips her class. Her presentation shared some of her student created videos for this purpose. She also shared her fantastically funny style!

Trig Sum and Difference Origami
I may be the only person who thought this was one of the best My Favorites. I don't like memorizing things, so I have often had students derive the sum and difference formulas from a rectangle just as Amy @zimmerdiamonds did. The difference is that I had never done the folding, just labeling. The folding makes it SO much more clear! Here's the  blog post from Ben Blum-Smith where he gives the directions!

Tumblr
John @mathhombre shared how he uses Tumblr. As he said "I'm sharing another social network with a group of social network addicts." I hardly use FaceBook because that time has been eclipsed with my Twitter usage, so I don't think Tumblr will be for me, but it sounded like some other folks were intrigued.

Apocalypse
John @jdmahlstedt and Hedge @approx_normal led the Middle School morning session this year. They shared some of the resources from the Apocalypse themed unit. I think Middle School lends itself better to these wild themed projects!

#1TMCthing
I posted about this yesterday, but Lisa @lmhenry9 shared about it again at the end. Choose 1 thing (or a couple of you're a cheater like me) that you want to focus on from this year's TMC in your year. Find a couple of people whose goals are interesting to you, and follow up with them on Oct 26th (three months after the end of TMC15). Even if you're just watching from home and something from the blogs and Twitter posts about TMC inspired you, you're welcome to participate.

The Song
At my first TMC in 2013, the camp song symbolized who the "coolest of the cool kids" at camp were. This year, Sean @SweenWSweens ran up to me before the start of the day and asked if I wanted to sing with them. Holy cow! OMG! So, I didn't have any role in writing the song, but it sure was fun to sing it! I'm not skilled enough at blogging yet to know how to put a link to the song or to embed it here, but it's on Julie's blog.

Thank you everyone for sharing so generously and being so loving and welcoming!