CAMT

The Conference for Advancement of Mathematics Teaching

One of the largest conferences in the state of Texas! There were over 2000 math teachers at the Gaylord in Grapevine this week!! It was crazy. I've already talked to some of you about it, but its one of those almost too overwhelming experiences that you never want to do again, but will. I am exhausted after the three days and am glad it's not a whole week of sessions!

The biggest thing I learned all week was: I will never be one of those teachers who rolls a little box cart behind them. ha! I'm not kidding. I don't care how much stuff I have, it's not going to happen!! Mark my word.

But, for real. I did get several awesome tips/ideas for this next school year. One thing I had never heard of was "Whole Brain Teaching." It's teaching all concepts using gestures. Everything you do has a gesture along with it and it sticks in the little adolescent mind and helps them remember the objective! I'm not sure if I'm going to do it 100%, but I've already written down several concepts (like scale factor, scientific notation, and pythagorean theorem) that I will definitely use the gestures for. It's just one more different way of expressing a concept that might stick with different students!
I, of course, went to a "songs" session and got a few more songs/chants to incorporate. My favorite one goes to the beat of the "Hillshire Farms" commercials and the students repeat it after me. It's going to be awesome.

I said Pythagorean Theorem.
I said, a squared + b squared = c squared
I said, short leg + the long leg = the hypotenuse
I said, the hypotenuse is the longest side
When I say Pythagorean, you say Theorem,
Pythagorean, Pythagorean
Go Math!!

ha hopefully you got the idea? Overall, it was a good conference, but I'm ready to move on to the rest of my plans for the summer! School will be here before we know it!!