What's on your mind

I have already told everyone that I love this holiday season and one of the reasons is because I love watching all the holiday specials. I have found a web site that tells you when all the specials are airing onTV. I noticed that a few of my readers have taken the poll of Christmas specials and picked "A Christmas Story". Well you may be happy to know that it is on TV Friday at 8pm on TBS. Thursday night ABC family has "Jack Frost", "Santa Claus is coming to town" and "The year without a Santa" Too bad I will miss some of those because I will be at parent Teacher conferences for my daughter at King Philip. Tuesday night the "Grinch who stole Christmas" is on. but I think most of us will miss that because we will be at the football playoff game. That is pretty exciting, huh? We win Tuesday and then Saturday we will be at Gillette Stadium for the high school superbowl. Way to go Norton! The teamn winning has made this time of year even mo...

Last night I went to the semi formal and as usual I had a great time. I love to see all my students dressed up so nice. As I walked in the door I was right in front of the dance floor and I don't think any girl was wearing shoes. You girls are crazy walking around barefoot in a public place, but it looked like everyone was having the best time. Makes me wish there were more events like this. Now I have to wait until the spring to come and see everyone at the prom. Anyone know the date of the prom? Well I am looking forward to it. I'm glad everyone had so much fun last night and I am so glad I was invited. Make sure you view my photo album to the left with all my pictures.

What is your favorite time of the year? Is it Summer when you are out of school and the weather is wonderful? Not Me. I'm not saying I dislike the summer, because I don't, but it is not my favorite time. We are coming up to my favorite part of the year. I love the holiday season. I love the holidays and the cold weather especially when we get snow (and snow days!). I enjoy all the holiday specials on TV and I enjoy the music. The only problem with this time of year is that I have too much to do. I get so excited about the holidays and the shopping that my school work tends to take a back seat and that is not a wise choice to make. I will have to make a conscious effort this year to keep up with the school work. If I start slacking I am sure my students will let me know.

Once again the Norton Community has a chance to show it's spirit. Fox 25 news has nominated Sean Ryan as one of five players for High School Friday Player of the Month of October. All you have to do is go to myfoxboston.com. Click on the sports tab and then click on high school Friday and you will see the names to vote for on the right side. As of today, Friday 11-7-08 at 10:00am, Sean is in second place with 23% of the vote. A player from Medway has 71% of the vote. Lets get those votes in for him. PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG!! Lets get some spirit going!! Lets all vote for Sean Ryan as High School Friday Player of the Month of October.

Sports and Math......do they go together? I noticed that my blog has been a lot about sports (especially the redsox) and I was wondering if you think that math and sports are connected. I took a tour of the Patriots Hall of Fame Wednesday morning and that has me thinking even more about the connection between math and sports. The Hall of fame has a lot of educational things in it. When the kicker is attempting a field goal do you think he is thinking about the math involved? Well he should be. Do you have any idea what the percent of increase is on ticket prices and the programs sold at each game? What about the all the statistics kept on these professional players. I am sure there is a mathematician involved, specifically a statistician. So what do you think about the sports and math connection?

When you have a long weekend, do you ever think "This is great. I'll spend this time catching up"? When I left school on Friday I was so excited to have a three day weekend. I thought I could have the extra time to get caught up on things. Well it is already Monday and I have not done one thing that I thought I would do. I wanted to get caught up on some correcting and make some extra practice sheets to post on edline. I also needed to get some things done around my house. None of that got done. Saturday My daughter had a double header for marching band competitions so there was a 1:00 show in Dartmouth and a 6pm show in New Bedford. I am happy to report that her school, King Philip, won both competitions. When I arrived home Saturday night I stayed up to watch the late Red Sox game. Depressing that we lost, but I’ll get over it. Then Sunday my son had a baseball game, which his team won. They are 5-1 overall this fall. When I got home from that I did manage to do one thi...

I went to Bridgewater State College today to listen to Mr. Alan November speak about learning in the 21st century. Now I am all excited about trying new things in my math class. I have set up a custom search engine on google to help search specifically for web sites that will help explain precalculus topics. I am going to ask all my students to contribute web sites to this search engine. I have also set up an account with jingproject.com so we will be making videos at the end of each class to summarize the key topics we covered that day. The videos will then be posted on the internet for all to view. Each day I am hoping to have a different student volunteer to make the summary video, or maybe I will pick students at random. I know the class is going to enjoy doing this. My next project is going to be on epals.com. I hope to find a math teacher in a different country that wants to have contact with us. We can start communications between the two classes and use skype to have ongoing co...