Friday, December 28, 2012

Math Focus Wall Photos-Updated



I wanted to share some recent photos I took of my Math Focus Wall.  I apologize for not posting these photos sooner as I feel I have been promising to post them since school started, but it really has been a busy year thus far.  Thank goodness for break and some time for me to blog!

The evolution of my Math Focus Wall has been a work in progress from my creative thought process and planning last school year to the background design seen in this post:  The First Sneak Peek  and the original design seen here: Take 1.

TA DA!  I think I am finally happy with it

After a few months of school and actually using the wall with my students I realized that I needed to have two separate sides to reflect the two different courses I teach.  On the left is the board for my accelerated math 7 class and the right side is for the three sections of math 7 I teach.  

Accelerated Math 7

Math 7
I also changed up some things to make the board work for our class needs.  It specifies the CC 
standards, lesson, topic, and student objectives for each day, as well as, the Mathia pacing expectation for that week (that is what unit students should be on in our computer program).  The poster on the top left of the board is the Mathematical Practice Standards and as you can see I still need to get my Problem Solving Strategies Posters on the top right.

You can see Math Vocabulary to the left of the Focus Wall

Creating a Math Focus Wall was a major goal of mine for the 2012-2013 school year and I am very happy with and proud of how it turned out.  It was a lot of working putting the wall up this summer.  I am also finding it very time consuming to have to create all the posters that go up and can change daily.  I use sentence strips for the goals and lesson topics, but it is easier to print out the common core standards and lesson information.  

Of course this will all be done for next year, but this year it is a ton of work.  I try to create everything in advance for the chapter so it is all ready to go.  I like to make sure the focus wall is done for the next day so I don't have to worry about it in the morning when I get to school.  I did not realize how labor intensive this all would be because we can do three to five different lessons per week and when the lesson changes so does the focus wall.  I do feel it is worth the effort to have this information prominently displayed for students around the SMARTBoard which we use daily.

What it looked like on a different day

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the math focus wall.  #made4math

12 comments:

  1. I just got hired on as a first year teacher teaching 7th and 8th grade math. I'm so glad I found your blog, I've found lots of great things that I love here! Thank you!

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  2. Hi Sherrie, Great blog. I get your updates via emai. Very organized focus boards. On our website we are hosting a Middle School button link up by speciality or generalist subject. If you are interested please visit our site for info:
    http://2peasandadog.blogspot.ca/p/middle-school-blog-log.html
    Thanks for considering.
    Happy Blogging
    Kristy @ 2peasandadog

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  3. I really like it! My school is required to have a common board configuration, and I bet my admin would love seeing something so organized like yours!

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  4. Absolutely love your focus wall! The wall where I have my smart board is completely empty like yours. I could totally do this. Thanks so much for sharing!

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    1. Thanks Kim. If you do it be sure to post a photo. I would love to see it.

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  5. Thanks for reminding me about your focus wall in a comment you left me. So helpful!

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  6. Sherrie,

    What are you using to adhere the standards etc to the wall every day? Thank you!!!

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  7. Hi Sherrie,

    My name is Adriana and I'm a 7th grade math teacher in NJ. I would really love to do a math focus wall this year but had a few questions for you. How did the students feel about the focus wall? Did they embrace it and find it helpful or did it not make a difference from what you did in the previous years? How much work was it for you as a teacher to keep it up to date? Where did you get that banner and how did you create the letters? It all just looks amazing. I just want you to come to my class and work magic on it lol.

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    1. Okay so I reread your post and realized you answered my question about how labor intensive it is for a teacher. Do you have any advice on how to minimize the amount of work? I may assign a student in my homeroom to help me with this. Last year I had a student in charge of my assignment calendar and he always made sure it was up to date. If it was up to me I'd be weeks behind lol. I guess that's my biggest fear of a focus wall, just not being able to keep up with it.

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  8. I'm considering doing a focus wall and was just changed to 8th grade. I will have an Algebra and regular math classes. Where do you find the standard information? I've looked and can't find detailed standards that are all the same size :) Thanks!

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  9. Sherrie,

    What is on the upper left side of your focus wall? I can see on the upper right there is space for problem solving strategies. I cannot tell what is on the left side.

    Thanks,
    Beth

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  10. Thanks God..At last I got this site.

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Thank you so much for visiting my blog and leaving a comment. Feel free to email me at luvbcd@yahoo.com with any questions you have.