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SMART Goal Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluation:

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SMART Goal Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluation:

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Course Learning Objectives Self Evaluation Part 2 (Final)

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SMART Goal Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluation:

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Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluation Part 1 (Final)

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SMART Goal Final Portfolio Self- Evaluation: 

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SMART Goal Final Portfolio Self- Evaluation: 

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SMART Goal Final Portfolio Self-Evaluation

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The fact is:
We all use math in everyday applications whether we're aware of it or not. If you look hard enough, you'll see math emerge from some of the most unlikely places.

Mathematics is the universal language of our environment, helping mankind explain and create.

From playing games to playing music, math is vital to helping students fine tune their creativity and turn their dreams into reality.

When am I ever going to use math?

Variations of this question have echoed through the halls of math classrooms everywhere. Students often wonder if, when, and how they will ever use math in "real life" situations.

The truth is that we use math all the time!

Sure, unless you're an engineer or an actuary, you may not use some of the more abstract mathematical concepts.

However, the underlying skills developed in math classrooms resonate throughout a student's lifetime and often resurface to help solve various real-world or work-related problems--sometimes years down the line.

1. Math Helps You Build Things

Ask any contractor or construction worker--they'll tell you just how important math is when it comes to building anything.

To create something of lasting value out of raw materials requires creativity, the right set of tools, and a broad range of mathematics.

Figuring the total amount of concrete needed for a slab; accurately measuring lengths, widths, and angles; and estimating project costs are just a few of the many cases in which math is necessary for real-life home improvement projects.

Whether students work in construction jobs in the future or own a home, having the ability to do minor home improvements will save a lot of money and provide a sense of accomplishment and self-reliance.

Teacher Tip: Consider incorporating a small building project in the classroom--like a simple house out of cardboard boxes or a small wooden boat from a kit--to reteach math-related skills such as measuring, estimating, angles, and following instructions.

2. Math is in the Grocery Store

One of the more obvious places to find people using math in everyday life is at your neighborhood grocery store.

Grocery shopping requires a broad range of math knowledge from multiplication to estimation and percentages.

Each time you calculate the price per unit, weigh produce, figure percentage discounts, and estimate the final price, you're using math in your shopping experience.

Teacher Tip #1: Encourage students to play math challenges at the grocery store with their family. For example, they can estimate the total cost of all groceries prior to checkout. For a greater challenge, encourage students to incorporate coupons, sales, and adjusted pricing for bulk items.

Your little bargain shoppers will thank you later when they're saving money on their own groceries.

Teacher Tip #2: You could also organize a field trip to the grocery store--with the help of a few parents working with smaller student groups--making lists and pricing out items ahead of time, that your class can then use to cook with (see below)!

3. Math Makes Baking Fun

More math can be found in the kitchen than anywhere else in the house. Cooking and baking are sciences all their own and can be some of the most rewarding (and delicious) ways of introducing children to mathematics.
After all:
Recipes are really just mathematical algorithms or self-contained, step-by-step sets of operations to be performed. The proof is in the pudding!

Working in the kitchen requires a wide range of mathematical knowledge, including but not limited to:

measuring ingredients to follow a recipe

multiplying / dividing fractions to account for more or less than a single batch

converting a recipe from Celsius to Fahrenheit

converting a recipe from metric (mL) to US standard units (teaspoon, tablespoon, cups)

calculating cooking time per each item and adjusting accordingly

calculating pounds per hour of required cooking time

understanding ratios and proportions, particularly in baking (ex. the recipe calls for 1 egg and 2 cups of flour, then the ratio of eggs to flour is 1:2).

Following a recipe can sometimes be tricky, especially if conversions are necessary. Conversions are an important part of following recipes when they use Celsius or the metric system, and students can find doing the math a fun part of the cooking experience.

Here are just a few useful measurement conversions for the kitchen:
Celsius to Fahrenheit Conversion
Ex. The recipe calls for the oven to be set at 220°C, but yours is labeled by Fahrenheit. To convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit in this recipe, follow the following formula:

Formula: °C x 9/5 + 32 = °F

220 x 9/5 + 32 = °F

396 + 32 = 428°F
Metric to US Standard Unit Conversion
1 US legal cup = 240 mL

1 US tablespoon = 14.79 mL

1 US teaspoon = 4.92 mL

1 US fluid ounce = 29.57 mL

Teacher tip: Cook in class! Simple projects like no-bake cookies or snack mixes that require measuring and mixing but no potentially dangerous activities like ovens or knives can be fun while reinforcing math concepts. Plus you get to eat yummy food together! Kids (and adults!) love that kind of math!

4. Math Takes the Risk Out of Travel

Math comes in handy when traveling.
Think of it:
When you travel, math comes along for the ride--from estimating the amount of fuel you'll need to planning out a trip based on miles per hour and distance traveled.

Calculating fuel usage is crucial to long distance travel. Without it, you may find yourself stranded without gas or on the road for much longer than anticipated. You may also use math throughout the trip by paying for tolls, counting exit numbers, checking tire pressure, etc.

Long before GPS and Google Maps, people used atlases, paper road maps, road signs, or verbal directions to navigate throughout the country's highways and byways.

Reading a map is almost a lost art, requiring just a little time, orientation, and some basic math fundamentals.

If you're a teacher, you can show students how to use their math skills for reading maps.
Why?
It will make them safer travelers and less dependent on technology. Plus it's a lot of fun to use old-school maps, drawing out paths to follow, and estimating how long it will take to get somewhere or how many miles will be covered.

Teacher tip #1: Plan pretend trips as a class or in groups. First, teach your students how to orient themselves on a map to start planning a trip by finding their current position on the map. Have them label this as point A. The simplest way to do this is to locate the town you're in. Next, have them pinpoint nearby crossroads, intersections, or an easily identifiable point such as a bridge, building, or highway entrance. Once you've established a starting point, locate where on you want to go (point B). Now you can determine the best route depending on terrain, speed limit, and so on.

Purchasing inexpensive paper maps is a fun way to incorporate this activity into your class. Or go high-tech and use map apps found online.

Teacher tip #2: Teach your students how to navigate by using the sun in the daytime and stars at night.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Depending on the time of day, you can orient yourself based on the sun's position in the sky. This gets a bit trickier around midday as the sun appears directly overhead at noon. The earth's rotation around the sun and sun's position overhead is also the basis for the sundial, Man's first clock.

On a clear night in the Northern Hemisphere, you can locate Polaris (The North Star) by using one of the most recognizable celestial bodies, Ursa Major (The Big Dipper). Two stars on the outer edge of its "dipper" point to a bright star, which all other stars rotate around since it's pointing to the North Pole.

5. Math Helps You Save Money

Most experts agree that without strong math skills, people tend to invest, save, or spend money based on their emotions.
Here's the kicker:
To add to this dilemma, those individuals with poor math fundamentals typically make greater financial mistakes like underestimating how quickly interest accumulates.

A student who thoroughly grasps the concepts of exponential growth and compound interest will be more inclined to better manage debt.

Financial knowledge decays over time, so it's important to keep young people involved.

By continually showing how specific math lessons apply to real life financial situations and budgeting, kids can learn how to properly spend and save their money without fear or frustration.

Teacher tip: Practice investing! Allot your students a set amount of pretend money individually or in groups. After teaching them about saving, investing, and interest, have them make financial decisions with their cash. Follow the stock market and check in on their savings weekly so they can see their totals rise or fall.

6. Math Lets You Manage Time
Time is our most valuable asset.
Teach your students about the value of time by not only teaching how to tell time on analogue and digital clocks, but about the world clock, time zones, calendars, and the value of how they spend their precious time.

In our fast-paced, modern world, we can easily get distracted and find the time has blown by without accomplishing what we meant to.

Teacher tip: Have your students set goals and determine how much time they must put aside daily or weekly to achieve these goals. Have your students calendar their time, create their own to-do lists, and give their tasks a number to rank what their priorities are. Not only are you teaching math, but you're helping a child learn how to organize their life and achieve their dreams!

The bottom line is:
Math is everywhere, operating in real life ways all around us.

So, the next time you or one of your students says, "I'm never going to use this math again!" remember the above examples, to help them be motivated to keep learning math!

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Real World Math: 6 Everyday Examples The fact is: We all use math in everyday applications whether we're aware of it or not. If you look hard enough, you'll see math emerge from some of the most unlikely places. Mathematics is the universal language of our environment, helping mankind explain and create.

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How to Use Real-life Connections in the Classroom To Increase Engagement

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How to Use Real-life Connections in the Classroom To Increase Engagement

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How would your students rate your ability to engage them in the learning process? This one measure of how you connect with students will determine how you perform in all aspects of your duties as a teacher - lesson plans, behavioral management techniques, collaboration in the classroom, and the ability to create a safe and supportive learning environment.

Before students apply this all-important measure to you, evaluate how effectively you use real-life connections in the classroom to increase engagement.

Is The Golden Measure of Teaching Engagement?

The positive link between student engagement and academic achievement is so strong that Canada's annual student engagement survey has become an international standard. The results of this hard measurement of your ability to connect with your students are not only used in teacher evaluations but also in:

developing curriculums

delivering lessons

implementing classroom management strategies

determining class size, and

allocating technology and other resources.

Highly rated teachers use real-life connections in the classroom to make the learning experience fun, engaging, and meaningful to optimize engagement and learning. This involves moving away from lecture-based lessons and making lessons interesting and interactive.

Make Learning Fun

Your lesson plans should inspire creativity, imagination, and the motivation to pursue self-initiated learning in the student. To this end, the following points are all interconnected. They all have the same objective - engaging the student. Making learning fun and meaningful for students requires developing different strategies for each grade level. A high school teacher requires different elementary school teachers' strategies to keep the attention of restless teenagers.

Make Learning Meaningful

The lessons a teacher implements should have relevance to a student's life. If they can't see the point in learning a topic or are totally uninterested in it, they won't sit quietly and attentively, patiently waiting to be filled with knowledge. At the start of any topic or lesson, you need to give your students as many reasons as possible for listening to what you're about to tell them. When you give them enough reasons as to why they need to hear something, there is more chance they will listen.

There's no point in just rambling on about a topic, expecting them to want to learn it. If your answer to the question "Why do we have to listen to this?" is "Because it's on the exam" or "Because I say so," then you have a disinterested class.

Explaining why a lesson is meaningful is particularly important to science teachers, math teachers, and those teaching other complex topics. With media, technology, and mobile apps, it has never been easier to connect lessons with real-life examples. If students can't see the point in learning a topic, they will soon switch off. They'll get bored, stop listening, act out or break the rules. The way to avoid bored students is to ask yourself the same question while developing a lesson plan - Why do students need to learn this?

Involve Students in Lesson Development

Once you've prepared a few constructive reasons why the lesson is important, you can then put the question to the group at the start of the lesson.

Avoid simply telling students why the information is relevant to them - get them to come up with the answers themselves. This will increase engagement because learning the material will make perfect sense. Moreover, you are empowering the students - the main pathway to engagement. Students are now involved in structuring the lesson based on objectives they have identified. Some teachers make the mistake of equating engagement with alternative teaching methods. In fact, structured lesson plans minimize student boredom.

It's a sad fact that a lot of the information provided in some schools is of little practical use to a broad sector of the student population - particularly with the less academic students who are less likely to progress into further education. For this reason, you need to develop lessons that meet student interests with their help.

Bring the Real World Into the Classroom

Students will engage more deeply in structuring lessons if the classroom material relates to their real-world/ everyday life. Always strive for high practical relevance. Students need to be shown concrete examples and see how academic topics related to them, thus making the concepts less abstract and scary.

You can talk about your experiences, bring up current events or ask students to talk about family values or beliefs. Current events are not only tools for Social Studies teachers! Incorporate guest speakers to discuss the subject and demonstrate how children can apply what they have learned in the classroom to real-life or a potential future career. Field trips are among the creative ways to energize and engage students to optimize learning.

Media is the main tool used by teachers to bring the real world into the classroom. With the help of YouTube, streaming videos, podcasts, and news feeds, it is much easier to bring the material to life and gain the students' interest. Students can satiate their natural curiosities by researching related topics via the Internet. You may also want to use national or international online news networks to discover topics of interest and open the classroom to the wider world. Leverage social media to make their interactions with the real world interactive. They can add comments to articles and tweet and blog their opinions on global and local issues. Seeing their comments read by thousands and having others respond - possibly from across the globe - will empower them!

Make a Real-Life Connection Through Technology

Employ Gamification in the Classroom

Gamification is the latest buzzword for saying, incorporating games into lessons. Depending on the grade level you teach, it can be hard to get certain students interested in current events. If the topic does not include movies, games, or pop stars, you may be hard-pressed to grab students' attention. Encouraging students to be active, mentally and physically, is the best way to make a real-world connection.

You can find games, interactive lesson plans, and many other teacher educational resources to make real-life connections in the classroom to increase engagement online.

There are many ways to relate your lessons and activities to the real world to increase student retention, student motivation, and interest in subject matter while maximizing learning opportunities. Using a real-life connection in lessons will dramatically reduce classroom management challenges because engagement will increase. If students have an interest in learning something, they are less likely to act out.

In what ways do you develop and implement creative lesson plans? Understand what components make a great lesson.

Learn more about Candace Alstad-Davies by reviewing this about me page. From that page, you can review testimonials and frequently asked questions.

Need some writing help making a stellar teaching application letter, cover letter, resume, or CV curriculum vitae? Take the time to review and order one of our resume packages or individual services.

Have questions, please connect by sending an email to Candace or call toll-free at 1 877 738-8052. I would enjoy chatting with you.

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How to Use Real-life Connections in the Classroom To Increase Engagement

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How would your students rate your ability to engage them in the learning process? This one measure of how you connect with students will determine how you perform in all aspects of your duties as a teacher - lesson plans, behavioral management techniques, collaboration in the classroom, and the ability to create a safe and supportive learning environment.

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project Goal Update #2

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8 Practical Ways to Conquer Your Child's Math Anxiety

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8 Practical Ways to Conquer Your Child's Math Anxiety

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Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM

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Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM

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Free Integrative Lesson Plans

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Grades K-3 These K-3 arts integration lessons have been cultivated from across a variety of content and fine arts areas to showcase high-quality, rigorous integrated instruction. Within these lessons, you'll also find links to STEM and Common Core Standards so you can ensure the very best and latest connections to relevant instructional strategies.

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The Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM

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LESSON PROCESS

Step 1: Students review units of ones, tens and hundreds in math.

Step 2: Have students get into groups of 3-4 and hand each group a stack of colored index cards. The index cards should be in Roy G. Biv colors and on one side contain a number in the ones, tens or hundreds, with lighter colors being higher numbers and lower numbers being darker colors.

Step 3: Have students arrange their cards in a pattern, first by color. Then, show students the class set of Boomwhackers. Ask them what they notice (ie: same colors as cards, different sizes, tube shape, etc).

Step 4: Show students how to play the Boomwhackers (tapping them lightly on any surface, hand or on the body) and that each different color makes a different sound because the colors are associated with the size of the tube. The longer tubes make lower sounds and the shorter tubes make higher sounds.

Step 5: Have students match their colored index cards with the same color Boomwhackers and "play" their pattern for the class.

Step 6: Repeat steps 3-5, but this time arrange the cards in a pattern with the numbers on the cards. See if playing this pattern sounds any different.

Step 7: Review why patterns are important (they make solving an equation or playing music easier) and how they can be used in different situations.

ASSESSMENT:

Students can successfully perform a self-created pattern with their boomwhackers that uses ones, tens or hundreds.

Students can use their index cards as their music notation.

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Step 1: Students review units of ones, tens and hundreds in math. Step 2: Have students get into groups of 3-4 and hand each group a stack of colored index cards. The index cards should be in Roy G.

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Art, Math, ELA - Integrative Lesson PLan

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Art, Math, ELA - Integrative Lesson PLan

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Connecting Math to real Life Resource Guide

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Connecting Math to real Life Resource Guide

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Who needs math games when a world of meaningful real-life fun is beckoning? It's easy and rewarding to connect to the real world in math class. On the Information Highway," we can find online collections of real-world math activities, math activities with a specific real-life focus (including natural disasters), online data sources, portals for joining or launching collaborative math and science projects, and more. The real-world resources assembled here are sure to excite teachers and students alike.

Collections of Real-World Math Activities

The math activity sites listed here are repositories of lesson ideas that can be explored offline without the use of computers.

Math Goodies
Their multi-media curriculum includes 168 in-depth lessons organized into instructional units. For each unit, there is a corresponding set of worksheets, puzzles and interactive learning games.

Online Math Activities with a Specific Focus

You'll want to be connected to the Internet to explore the math activities below with students; the activities can be adapted for whole-class, small group, or individual investigations.

FEMA Disaster Master
FEMA presents a wealth of kid-friendly materials on each type of natural disaster. The disaster area relays information and statistics on each type of disaster in simple terms.

Math Collaboration

Math takes on new meaning when students can collaborate with other students and professionals from around the world.

More Real-World Math Ideas at Education World

Check out the Education World features below linking to online data sources or other real world math sites.

Updated 11/18/2016

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Who needs math games when a world of meaningful real-life fun is beckoning? It's easy and rewarding to connect to the real world in math class. On the Information Highway," we can find online collections of real-world math activities, math activities with a specific real-life focus (including natural disasters), online data sources, portals for joining or launching collaborative math and science projects, and more.

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Why Should Schools Embrace Integrated Studies?: It Fosters a Way of Learning that Mimics Real Life

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Why Should Schools Embrace Integrated Studies?: It Fosters a Way of Learning that Mimics Real Life

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Why Should Schools Embrace Integrated Studies?: It Fosters a Way of Learning that Mimics Real Life

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Integrated studies allows students to gain knowledge in a truly interdisciplinary fashion.

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Integrating Subjects in Elementary School

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Integrating Subjects in Elementary School

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Integration

In most elementary schools, when students are learning math, it's separate from science. When they're learning language arts, it's separate from social studies. In the upper grades at Ralston, however, students learn how two subjects are connected.

Through departmentalization, their teachers specialize in two subjects, as well as teach those subjects in the same lesson. When the students learn math, they will then be able to apply that to what they learn in science. When they learn language arts, they will be able to apply that to what they learn in social studies.

"It makes me feel more involved," reflects Pablo, a sixth-grade student. "You have the chance to learn more about the real world."

How It's Done

To recognize the benefits of Ralston Elementary's departmentalization practice, it's necessary to understand how the school is structured:

Kindergarten and first-grade students learn in regular elementary classrooms, with one teacher for all subjects.

Second- and third-grade students have three teachers, each responsible for a separate subject: math, reading, and writing. This is departmentalization. For example, all students learn math from the same math teacher.

In grades four through six, there are two teachers per grade level. One teaches math and science, and the other teaches language arts and social studies. This is departmentalization plus subject integration.

Start Small: Implement Departmentalization Across One Grade

Three years ago, Ralston piloted departmentalization at the second-grade level. The teachers wanted to deepen their content knowledge, which departmentalization allows, and they also wanted the ability to quickly iterate their lessons to better meet students where they are.

What Departmentalization Looks Like in Second Grade

There are three classrooms at the second-grade level.

Students have one teacher for each of the core subjects: reading, writing, and math.

Each core subject is a 75-minute block.

Each teacher also teaches social studies and science for their homeroom class.

Students rotate to each of the three teachers for their three content areas.

Expand Implementation Slowly Across Other Grade Levels

After Ralston's successful semester pilot using departmentalization for their second-grade students, other teams began to show interest. Principal Dawn Odean, instructional coach Anne DiCola, and the teachers discussed what departmentalization would look like in other grade levels and how they might facilitate that.

They began by looking at units of study. Instead of approaching content in the traditional way -- teaching math by itself, teaching science by itself -- they looked at how math, science, social studies, and language arts interacted, and how the students could apply their math learning to their science learning, and apply their reading and critical thinking skills to help them better understand social studies concepts. Through departmentalization, Ralston teachers teach only two subjects, making those subjects easier to integrate.

"One of the things we found," recalls Odean, "was that [departmentalization] really helps integrate curriculum and provide opportunities for students to apply and transfer -- so we could really see mastery."

Today, Ralston uses departmentalization in grades two through six. They keep kindergarten and first grade in the traditional setting, with one teacher for all subjects, as they want to focus on making students feel comfortable and building strong relationships in a new school environment.

What Departmentalization Looks Like in Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grade

There are two classrooms at each grade level.

One teacher teaches science and math as one class, and one teacher teaches social studies and language arts as one class.

Each teacher sees all grade-level students every day.

Students rotate between two class periods of two hours and 15 minutes each.

Reflect on and Refine Your Lesson Plans

An added bonus of departmentalization is the idea that teachers are teaching the same lesson multiple times, which gives them an opportunity to quickly iterate based on student feedback.

"[The teachers] do their lessons three times a day in their content area," explains Odean. "If they were in a normal elementary school it would take them three years to do a lesson three times. [With this approach] they can reflect, shift and adjust, shift and adjust again, and make it be the best that it can be."

Integration In Action

While teachers practicing departmentalization specialize in specific subject areas, integration in the upper grades is the practice of weaving content from one of their subject areas to the other.

By applying their learning from one subject to another, the students begin to see its relevance. For example, by learning computational skills and measurements in math, Ralston sixth-grade students were able to measure the slope in the drain in their school parking lot, giving them ownership in fixing the school's water overflow and ice problem, and showing them that their learning is connected to the real world.

"We wanted to do something that would tie into one of our three big spheres of science," explains Jon Bromfield, sixth-grade math and science teacher. "Hydrosphere is a perfect connection for measuring the slope of the parking lot because it connects to watershed and how our friend gravity is always pulling things down. You couldn't ask for a better laboratory."

In their sixth-grade social studies and language arts class, while doing a simulation on the Maya, students take breaks for research, close reading of articles (from secondary sources to primary documents written in the 1500s), and analyzing their own artistic replicas of primary documents.

By departmentalizing and integrating two subjects, Ralston teachers guide their students in transferring their skills. They have more time to plan and intentionally integrate their lessons.

Create Integrated Lesson Plans

Departmentalization at Ralston has spurred upper elementary teachers to create integrated lesson plans. Laura Hinijos, a sixth-grade language arts and social studies teacher, offers three tips from what she has learned:

Be transparent. Some days, she says, students ask her if they'll do reading in class. To be more transparent, she could say, "We're doing social studies today, and here are the literacy skills that we're using."

Create structure. Some days, she outlines defined reading and writing time. Other days, their focus is on a social studies concept, and her students use their language arts skills to learn and better understand the ideas discussed.

Be responsive. It's important to have structure in place, she notes, but that structure is responsive to what needs to happen in the classroom. "If we need more time on a project and more time collaborating, then some of those other structures shift, which is the beauty of having that almost two-and-a-half-hour block. I have that ability to shift what's happening during those two and a half hours."

Look at Concepts Across Grade Level

Ralston Elementary integrates concepts across subjects. Each grade level has one specific concept that ties across all their classes.

In kindergarten, they looked at the concept of change. "They're looking at change in science," describes Odean, "and they can talk about those things in reading and writing, and in math as well. Some of that integration is done at the more basic level at the primary grades."

Hinijos focused on risk as a concept in her sixth-grade social studies and language arts class, and she talked with Bromfield about how he could incorporate risk into his math and science class at the beginning of his geosphere unit. They brainstormed questions such as:

What are the risks that we take, or don't take, with our natural resources?

How does that affect our geosphere?

Integrate Expectations

Ralston's teachers share students across grade levels and create common expectations. With departmentalization and integration, explains Hinijos, "it's more of a sixth-grade decision versus an 'in my classroom' decision."

Create shared expectations.

Both sixth-grade teachers share the kids and share that responsibility of creating unity among both classes. They talked about their expectations and agreed to always be on the same page. "We've worked really hard on making sure we have those commonalities as far as shared expectations for the kids," Hinijos points out, "so it's not like whiplash for the kids. . . 'This is what Miss Hinijos expects.' 'This is what Mr. Bromfield expects.'"

Create a homework agreement.

They also created shared agreements around homework. If one of them has their students working on a large project, the other one won't be assigning a lot of homework. "We're trying to be responsive to what the students need," elaborates Hinijos, "but also respectful of what students can handle, and making sure they're getting a common line of communication from both of us."

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Integrating Subjects in Elementary School | Edutopia

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Integration In most elementary schools, when students are learning math, it's separate from science. When they're learning language arts, it's separate from social studies. In the upper grades at Ralston, however, students learn how two subjects are connected. Through departmentalization, their teachers specialize in two subjects, as well as teach those subjects in the same lesson.

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Connecting Student Learning Across Subjects

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Connecting Student Learning Across Subjects

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Tip for Principals: As a principal, you need to encourage and recognize your teachers for collaborating. To create an atmosphere where your teachers feel encouraged to try new things -- in addition to time -- it's also important to provide them with a budget, advises Emmons.

Related: See how another K-8 school redesigned their schedule for prep time.

Step 2: Define the budget for collaborative planning.

Teachers at Hood River come together on more robust cross-curricular activities rooted in their community, ranging from field trips to the Columbia River Gorge to launching a weather balloon into the Earth's atmosphere. Bringing these projects to life requires funding for resources. Emmons created an internal grant funded by parent and community donations to support teacher projects and collaboration -- the Hood River Middle School (HRMS) Building Grant.

"I use parent fundraising and donations to fund classroom grants from teachers," explains Emmons. "I believe it encourages innovation and allows families to see the direct benefit to student learning that donations and fundraising provides for the kids of our community."

For teachers to apply, the funding needs to benefit the kids directly and cannot go toward staff development. The project also needs to be aligned with Common Core. Teams can request up to $1,000, and individuals can request up to $400. For 2015-2016, the school will distribute $4,000 through this grant.

To apply, teachers fill out the HRMS Building Grant application, including their name or team member names, the subjects and grades that will be taught, the title of their project, and the project description and budget. They also answer the following statements and questions:

Describe how the funds will be spent.

Describe the project timeline.

Clearly state the learning objectives.

Explain what the project will accomplish and how it will be evaluated.

Discuss any anticipated obstacles.

How many students will benefit from the short- and long-term of this project?

Their review application committee consists of Principal Emmons, parent volunteers, and Vice Principal Ocean Kuykendall.

For Teachers

Step 1: Start by finding one collaborative partner.

Adam Smith, a Hood River sixth-grade math, science, and language arts teacher, came across a video online called "Hello Kitty Goes to Space," showing a seventh-grade student launching a high-altitude weather balloon into the atmosphere and capturing data while in flight. After seeing that video, he knew that he wanted to adapt this project for his classroom and make it a collaborative effort across content areas. He reached out to sixth-grade engineering teacher, Rebekah Rottenberg, who was just as excited to bring this project to life.

"Having that one other team member that was fired up about collaborating created enough inertia to get this project started," says Smith.

Step 2: Get resources.

Whether you're planning a large or small collaborative project, you'll need funding and resources. Once Smith and Rottenberg partnered together, they created a budget and submitted a Hood River Middle School Building Grant application. They received funding for a flight computer, the balloon, helium, and a few GoPros to capture the footage of the balloon in flight.

Tips on Getting Funding: If there aren't internal grants available at your school, here's a list of grants, contests, and classroom resources that may be a fit for you, and nine online resources that you can use to raise money for your collaborative project.

Step 3: Share your idea with your grade-level team.

"We had a clear idea in mind of what we wanted to do upon retrieving our weather balloon," recalls Smith. Reinforcing sixth-grade topics like watershed, atmospheric science, engineering design, and scientific inquiry were part of their plan. "It was great to bring the topic to the rest of the team to find out how we could connect it to language arts and other content areas."

During one of their grade-level meetings, the language arts teachers brainstormed a way to connect the journey of the balloon to both creative and scientific writing by having their students write about that single experience from different perspectives.

"The beauty of the weather balloon project is that it's something captivating that provides many points of entry," says Smith, "whether you're a student in an engineering class working on how to build a structure that's going to survive a fall from several thousand meters, or if you're in a science classroom trying to ask good scientific inquiry questions that could be tested, or if you're in language arts and you want to write a creative piece about what the balloon's journey might be."

Step 4: Continue to update your team at grade-level meetings.

Collaborative projects aren't planned in the span of a single meeting. They evolve over time. Laura Haspela, a Hood River seventh-grade science teacher, and her colleague Anne Marie Untalan, who teaches seventh-grade science and math, brainstormed over the summer about a grade-wide field trip to Fossil, Oregon, where their students could dig -- knowing that archeology interested their students -- and focus on the geology of that area.

When they shared this idea with their grade-level prep team, they realized it was unfeasible. "It ended up that we had a limited budget," says Untalan. They brainstormed together, and instead decided to go to the Columbia River Gorge.

They developed their curriculum over time. In their first meeting, they realized that they could connect the Gorge to reading class by studying local legends. At their following meeting, both language arts teachers expanded on the idea of legends, deciding that kids could write their own legend. "That brought in social studies talking about how people back in the olden days -- before science explained why these things existed -- made up these legends to explain why things existed," says Angie Adkins, a Hood River seventh-grade language arts teacher. In language arts, they later came up with the idea for their students to present their legends through skits, storybooks, comic strips, puppet shows, and iMovies. Their curriculum continued to develop over time as they shared ideas during their grade-level meetings.

Related: Watch how Haspela connected geology to the Gorge field trip in this student-made video.

Step 5: Use informal spaces for collaboration.

Time in between classes is great for quick, informal conversations. While passing a colleague in the hallway, Smith will often say, "I have this great thing I want to try today. If it works out for me, I'll let you know. You should try it out tomorrow, and then we can see where we can go from there.'"

These on-the-fly, organic discussions are great for encouraging flexibility and adapting practices easily and quickly, but with a lack of time, it's not always possible. To ensure grade-level collaboration, grade-level meetings are necessary. Those meetings need to be scheduled, and that time needs to be protected.

"Because of that common prep time, it allows every team to figure out how to make the curriculum more real for students," says Untalan. "Those collaborative conversations were starting on the bus ride back home after the Columbia River Gorge field trip because the kids are on board. They're excited; they're enthusiastic; and they were commenting about all they had learned."

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Connecting Student Learning Across Subjects

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Tip for Principals: As a principal, you need to encourage and recognize your teachers for collaborating. To create an atmosphere where your teachers feel encouraged to try new things -- in addition to time -- it's also important to provide them with a budget, advises Emmons.

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Reflecting on coursework and making connections to SMART Goal

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project Goal Update #1 Reflection

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project Goal Update #1 Reflection

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project Goal Update #1 

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project Goal Update #1 

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1. Goal: connect math to other content.

2. Make a plan for how you will meet your goal: What will I do to accomplish this?

-Make insightful and relevant connections to real world experiences.
-Be mindful of themes, genres and specific concepts being discussed in other subject areas and create parallels

3. what will you do in and out of the classroom to meet your goal? How will you use choices in class assignments to help you reach your goal?
-Discuss with mentors, colleagues, and other educators to discuss ways that this has worked for them , how they tackle this and what content areas are most easily transferable.
-Online resources to provide easy and accessible activities to transfer knowledge from one area to math.
-Be mindful of themes and concepts being addressed in other areas and bring those into lessons appropriately.

4. Make a plan for how you will document your progress.
-keep weekly journal to record themes and concepts being discussed in other content areas at the same time.
-lesson planning for 4881 with this goal in mind can be very useful

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project - Pre Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluations, Parts 1

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project - Pre Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluations, Parts 1

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Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluation Part 1

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project - Pre Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluations, Part 2

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project - Pre Course Learning Objectives Self-Evaluations, Part 2

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Course Learning Objectives Self Evaluation Part 2

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project - Mathematics Timeline 

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SMART Goal Portfolio Project - Mathematics Timeline 