A Go Figure Debut for a Mathematician Who Is New!

Secondary Math Solutions

Julie has taught high school math for 22 years, having taught everything from Pre-Algebra concepts to Honor Pre-Calculus. The past four years she has been teaching Algebra 1 to 9th graders. Most of her students would be considered on-level or below-level. (This sounds like my remedial math college students.) She loves the challenge of figuring out a way to teach them so they can understand the concept, practice it in class, and feel successful while not getting frustrated and giving up.

Currently, her TPT store (Secondary Math Solutions) contains over 200 resources and many are Algebra 1 products she has created and used in her own classroom. A large number of the concepts are broken down into scaffolded steps or prior knowledge skills. There are also pages and activities that go over and over the same concept because that is what her students need. Julie’s products do not contain "difficult numbers" because she doesn’t want her students getting bogged down with trying to remember how to add fractions, when all she really wants them to be able to do is solve an equation or find the slope of a line. She tends to make notes and practice sheets that are very focused on a specific skill or skills (sometimes prerequisite) that need to be developed so that her students can be successful. Her TPT math products reflect this.

Julie endeavors to make her math classes as interactive and hands-on as possible. Her "4 Types of Slope Activity" allows the student to create their own diagram which helps them to remember the four types of slope. Educators recognize that the student will have a greater chance of recalling what they create rather than what they are told. This is a great activity that can be glued into an interactive notebook when finished.

Speaking of interactive notebooks, Julie uses foldables as well. Her "Writing Equations of Lines Foldable" reviews all the ways the student might be asked to write the equation of a line. They fill it in themselves after they have been taught all of the material. This allows them to gauge what they do and do not remember. After it is filled in correctly, the students can go back and use it as a study tool before a quiz or test.

If you are a math teacher, I hope you will check out Julie’s store and consider her focused resources created just for the high school math student!