Tour of Room 610

What the students see as they walk into room 610:

Totally stolen from Pinterest

 My cart with individual white boards.  How can you teach math without them? But, my favorite are the group white boards cut by the friendly guy at Lowes (full sheets cut in half).  They cover 4 desktops perfectly and allow for large print when sharing work with the whole class.

 I love having plants in my classroom, and it's the perfect spot for my Roger Federer and Bryan Brothers posters.

 My advisory is made up of 18 5th through 8th graders and we meet the first 25 minutes of each day.  We also have an all day community service day in the fall and an all day activity day in the spring.  I love starting my day with these awesome students!  We named our group "Wix's Wildfire."  Last year we tie-dyed cool shirts and then screened our logo onto them. 

 Our building is just a few years old and our administrator wanted ALL of the walls painted white.  Along with the white ceilings and white flecked tile floors it feels very institutional!  My students do a scale drawing activity in the spring and the huge posters are perfect for adding color to the walls for the beginning of the next year.


Open House is the only time of year my desk will look this organized!

And finally, our class mascot, Bert, the farting Hippo.  (It is, after all, middle school!)

Best thing to happen this week.

We just finished our first full week of school.  My class routine is catching on for my 6th graders.  I like to start most days with an Estimation 180 picture and discussion.  The students are enjoying the challenge and they are doing a better job of talking about their thinking each day.

Each year my team of teachers take our 3 classes to the nearby park during lunch and recess for a "getting to know you" picnic.  It's our chance to see who has made new friends, what students hang out together and what students appear to be left out.  When a group of students finished lunch they asked to go across the way to play kickball.  I offered to supervise them, and off we went.  When we got to the ball field, there was a huge pile of sand right on the pitchers mound.  The die-hard kickball fans decided to play around the pile.  One of my students went up to the mound, scooped up a handful of sand and said, "Hey Mrs. Wix, how many grains of sand do you think are in my hand?  How many grains in the whole pile?  We can make our own estimation 180 questions!"  FIST-BUMP!  We followed up with a conversation on how we could come up with a reasonable estimate.  Talking math... during recess... on a Friday afternoon!