Conference - Thursday to Saturday of This Week.

 I leave Wednesday  to attend the 58th Northwest Conference in Tacoma, Washington.  I admit, I look forward to it because I've signed up for a whole day of Desmos Workshops including one with Dan Meyer who is known for his three act tasks.

There are so many choices for Friday and Saturday.  Unfortunately, the conference has two types of activities.  There are 50 minute sessions up against 80 minute workshop sessions with hands on activities.

I've seen panels on storytelling in the math classroom, introducing quadratics naturally, the commonality between vertex form and logarithms, Superhero statistics, Math games, creating powerful  moments in the classroom, graphical transformations, similarities in geometry, mathematical discourse, concept circles in math,  spicing up the class with TI-84 activities, Formative Task matrix, proportional relationships, strategies for group work that work, making math meaningful with content integration, modeling our world with math, and so much more.

It is frustrating to have at least two different topics going at the same time with another one or two overlapping which makes it difficult to attend everything I want to know about.  I think I'll talk to others from the district and see if I can get their notes for the sessions I want information on but can't attend.  I know I'm going to undergo math overload but I also know I'll learn so much information to share and use in class.  I hope to take the one on using the TI-84 because I have several I am using in the classroom. I know some things about it but not as much as I should because I've been using Desmos for all my graphing needs.

Although there are several sessions focused on working with ELL students, I won't go this time because the school I'm at only has a few students who are classified as English Language Learners but I'm hoping to get to the session on RTI in middle and high school since many of my students are performing well below state averages.

There is one session on building activities around student lives and identities.  It has the teacher collect information and then create hands on activities using this information so as to make the lessons more interesting and relatable.  This sounds quite interesting but its at the exact same time is a talk on "nudging" students into using their own ideas during numerical talks.

I look forward to this and what I'll learn.  I hope to meet new people and perhaps get a chance to meet any of you who read this blog.  Have a great day.