I moved to Colorado this Summer and started a teaching math at a public school (it's been 6 years since I taught in the public schools). One of the new requirements for me was putting all of my assignments online. Because of the Christian resources on this site, I started a new webpage for use at my new school: andrewbusch-bvsd.weebly.com.
Things have been crazy busy--moving, starting a new job, 3 small kids under 5. That means I've been neglecting my blog and not consistently updating my resources on this site for the past several months. I plan to do such things... just when I can catch my breath. However, my work website gets updated regularly... because I'm paid to do it. Funny how things work like that. Anyway, we've only been in school for a couple of months, but the website is fleshing out
So, if you're interested in what we're doing for Algebra 1 homework, feel free to take a look around. In previous schools most of my homework was from the book. Here, it depends on the chapter; my books are so old I regularly beg/borrow/steal stuff from other people and sometimes even create my own assignments. Like when covering exponents, the only application problems the book came up with were ones dealing with scientific notation. Really? Next week we're talking about cleaning up oil spills and modeling the process using exponential decay functions. Then we're going to talk about the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe that continues to unfold in Japan and the half-lives of Caesium-137 and Strontium-90. Next up, the population implosion in the city of Detroit from 1970 to 2010. All this book can hack up is scientific notation? No wonder we have a generation of adults that hate math and can't think of how basic algebra relates to "real life".
I will now step away from the soap box.
Hey, if you're interested, I'm also teaching an intro to programming class using the language Python. If your looking for ideas on how to structure an introduction to Python class in middle school, this my 1st attempt. It's not perfect but it's a start.
Things have been crazy busy--moving, starting a new job, 3 small kids under 5. That means I've been neglecting my blog and not consistently updating my resources on this site for the past several months. I plan to do such things... just when I can catch my breath. However, my work website gets updated regularly... because I'm paid to do it. Funny how things work like that. Anyway, we've only been in school for a couple of months, but the website is fleshing out
So, if you're interested in what we're doing for Algebra 1 homework, feel free to take a look around. In previous schools most of my homework was from the book. Here, it depends on the chapter; my books are so old I regularly beg/borrow/steal stuff from other people and sometimes even create my own assignments. Like when covering exponents, the only application problems the book came up with were ones dealing with scientific notation. Really? Next week we're talking about cleaning up oil spills and modeling the process using exponential decay functions. Then we're going to talk about the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe that continues to unfold in Japan and the half-lives of Caesium-137 and Strontium-90. Next up, the population implosion in the city of Detroit from 1970 to 2010. All this book can hack up is scientific notation? No wonder we have a generation of adults that hate math and can't think of how basic algebra relates to "real life".
I will now step away from the soap box.
Hey, if you're interested, I'm also teaching an intro to programming class using the language Python. If your looking for ideas on how to structure an introduction to Python class in middle school, this my 1st attempt. It's not perfect but it's a start.
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