#Teach180

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Post Contents hide
1 The Beginning of #Teach180
2 Teach180 Awesomeness
3 My Favorite #Teach180 Posts of the Week
4 My Fav #Teach180 Tweets from Last Week
5 #Teach180 Year Two
6 Favorite #Teach180 Tweets
7 An Invitation to #Teach180
#teach180 with twitter logo above

The Beginning of #Teach180

Originally Posted August 15, 2015

Okay.  For years, I’ve followed along with some amazing 180 blogs.  The idea is to blog a picture from every single school day with a short caption.  (Unless, of course, you’re Justin Aion…)  

These aren’t full blown blog posts.  They’re just photos with descriptions.

I have enough of a hard time trying to keep up with blogging once school starts without trying to remember to blog every single day.  Last year, my blogging dropped off dramatically.  But, I imagine that probably had something to do with starting my master’s degree and dating someone in Australia…  

This year, I’m finishing that master’s degree and marrying that someone, but I’m determined to stay plugged into the #MTBoS more.  I know I’m a better teacher when I’m actively reflecting on what I do in my classroom within a supportive community.

#teach180 twitter logo

I’m not starting a 180 blog, though.  I admire those of you who manage that, but I need to make things as easy as possible on me.  So, instead of 180 mini blog posts, I’m committing to 180 tweets.  

Every single day, I will take a picture of something that happened in my classroom and tweet about it with the hash tag #teach180.  I may not be able to manage a blog post every day, but I can manage 140 characters minus the number of characters the hashtag and picture takes up.  🙂

And, thanks to Shireen and Meg for inspiring the hashtag!

And, I hope that my pictures spark questions and conversations from tweeps and eventually end up in a blog post, too.  That blog post just might comes months later, though.  

So, anyone want to join me???

[Side note.  My school year isn’t actually 180 days long.  We have 5 professional days, 163 days with students, and 2 days of parent/teacher conferences.  Oh well…]

Teach180 Awesomeness

Originally Posted August 29, 2015

We’re seven days into school, and I’ve only blogged about the first two days.  Not off to the best start.  But, I am proud of myself for tweeting a #teach180 picture every day.  

Hopefully these pictures will all become blog posts of their own some day.  I’m so excited about all the awesome people who have joined in with me to tweet something from their classroom every day!

teach180 logo

In an attempt to persuade you that you MUST check out this hash tag, I’m going to post some of my favorite ideas I’ve seen so far.  You guys are so creative!  [I should be writing a blog post about one of my own ideas at the moment, but my brain is fried from spending the entire morning on a grad school assignment…]

If you don’t see any pictures below, just wait a second while they load!  #worththewait #pinkypromise

Factoring Trinomials Card Sort

Awesome, Artsy Classroom Windows

Using Post-It Notes to Post Four Fours Solutions

Graphing Calculator Posters

Ways to Grow Your Brain Bulletin Board

I really, really, really want to be in Nancy’s German class!

Function/Not a Function Exit Ticket and Card Sort Idea

https://twitter.com/MickieGibbs2/status/636566357228650496

There were lots more amazing posts.  But, it’d be silly to post them all when you can just look at them all by following this link.

Hope you’ve found an idea to try.  Or inspired you to follow the #teach180 hash tag on twitter for more awesomeness.  Or maybe inspired you to start posting your own picture of the day on twitter?  

I know you have some amazing ideas, and I really want to steal them.

My Favorite #Teach180 Posts of the Week

Originally Posted September 6, 2015

I continue to be so inspired by the #Teach180 tweets.  I’ve had a blast making sure I take a picture and post it every day.  It’s kept me more involved on twitter which is exciting since that was one of my goals for tweeting a daily snapshot.  I’ve also participated in heaps of conversations with tweeps as a result of my pictures or their pictures!

teach 180 logo

In case you’ve been too busy with back to school or prepping to go back to school, I decided I would read through all of the #Teach180 tweets from the past week and post my favorites for you to check out.  Since I teach math, I tend to “favorite” the math-y ones.  If you teach science, there are a ton of tweets about fun-looking labs and activities out there that you should definitely check out.  There are also a few language teachers participating, too!

Here are my favorites from this past week.  It takes a moment for the embedded pictures from Twitter to load, so you’ll have to be a tiny bit patient.

Angles In Standard Position Matching Cards

Folding Paper to Find Quartiles

Square Root Clocks

Friendly Graphs

Solve It! Prove It! Daily Warm-Up

Most Adorable INB Pocket I’ve Ever Seen

Popsicle Sticks to Visualize Patterns

Using Color to Promote WODB Discussion

Math-Themed Infinity Scarf

Modifying Train Game To Teach Ordering Positive and Negative Numbers

Having Students Write Letters To Themselves Each Year

Venn Diagrams + Coloring = Awesome

“No Excuse” Bags

Math-y Wall Decals

Sprinkle Kindness Like Confetti Display

Student Feedback Cards

Powerful Parabolas Activity

Mathematician Of The Month

Giant Outdoor Venn Diagram

Word Of The Day Vocab Book

Glue Sponges

Graphing Calculator Help Foldable

Calculator Caution Poster

If you like what you see, give these people a follow!  And, please consider joining us this week and posting a picture from each school day with the hash tag #Teach180!

My Fav #Teach180 Tweets from Last Week

Originally Posted September 16, 2015

So, I sat down at the end of last week to read through all of the #teach180 posts from the last week and choose my favorites.  As I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled through TweetDeck, I was just blown away by how many teachers are participating!  It was really hard to just pick a few and not every single one of them.  Since there are so many now (which is a super good thing!) this will most likely be my last weekly round-up.

teach180 logo

But, I still want to encourage you to check out the hash tag and consider tweeting a picture a day from your classroom with #teach180 attached.  With embedded tweets, it always takes a little while for the images to load, so please be patient!

#Teach180 Year Two

Originally Posted August 22, 2016

School starts tomorrow.  TOMORROW!  And, I don’t feel ready at all.

Don’t take that the wrong way.  My copies are made.  My SMARTBoard slides are ready.  

My classroom is decorated.  My first week is planned out.  My first units for each of my five-ish preps are in various states of preparedness.  

We won’t be starting Unit 1 until NEXT Monday, so I’m not freaking out about that, yet.

Even though I’m working for the same school district doing the same job, it feels like I’ve quit my job and started all over.  I’m teaching in a different building this year.  This means I had to pack my entire old classroom and move it to my new classroom.  

I will be working for a new principal.  I have two brand new preps this year: math concepts (a class for 9th graders not yet ready for Algebra 1) and physical science.  There’s been a changeover in the math department, as well.  

But, I can’t exactly complain about the fact that the new hire is my husband. 😉

This year is definitely going to be an adventure!

Now, I want to make a very selfish request of you.

Join me for a second year of #Teach180.

#Teach180

Not sure what #Teach180 is?  It’s a challenge to post one picture from your classroom each day with the hashtag #Teach180.  And, it’s not just math teachers.  

Last year, we had teachers from many subjects participate.  It was so fun to see what I could learn each day just from seeing a single picture of an activity in someone’s classroom.

I was inspired to start #Teach180 last year because I admired those teachers who had the motivation to keep an 180 blog where they blogged about each and every day of the school year.  I LOVE blogging, but I just don’t have time to write about what happens each and every day.  But, I do have time to take a picture and write a tweet.  (Plus, most of my pictures and tweets later become blog posts!)

What if your school year isn’t 180 days long?  That’s okay.  Mine isn’t either.  To be honest, once testing started last year, I didn’t feel like I had anything exciting to share.  So, I stopped.

What if school has already started for you?  No problem.  Jump in right where you are!

What if you don’t think you can tweet every day?  That’s okay, too.  Share when you can!

How can I best follow the #Teach180 tweets?  I have a #Teach180 column in TweetDeck that I check on a regular basis.  You can also just search for the #Teach180 hashtag on twitter.

There’s no need to sign-up.  Just start posting and following along.

I’ve already seen one #Teach180 tweet this week that’s worked it’s way into my first week of school plans.

Here’s the tweet:

Water Jugs Problem Group Posters Tweet

I’ve decided this will be a perfect problem to set my physical science students to solving on Day 2!

Here’s the task card I’ve created:

two buckets puzzle task card

I’m looking forward to seeing the posters my students will create.  This may just make it’s way back to be another #Teach180 tweet!

I said earlier in the post that this was a selfish request.  It’s selfish because I’m asking you to share your best ideas with me.  But, I think you’ll also benefit from seeing and interacting with other teachers!

Still not sure?  Give it a try for a week.  See what happens.  That is my challenge to you.

Favorite #Teach180 Tweets

Originally Posted August 30, 2016

The craziness of back to school has finally got to me!  So, for today, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite #Teach180 tweets from the past couple of weeks.  So many inspiring ideas!  I wish I could have included all of the posts, but I had to choose just a few.  Be sure to search for #Teach180 on Twitter to see all of the posts!  

You may have to wait a few seconds for all of the pictures below to load since they’re embedded from Twitter.

I love this visual patterns problem!

So, if I’m honest, I don’t exactly know what’s going on here.  But, it looks so interesting!

I can’t say enough good things about Sarah VanDerWerf’s 1-100 activity! I featured it in my round-up of 30+ ideas for the first week of school.

This order of operations matching activity looks fun!

I’m teaching trig this year, so I can’t wait to engage my students in some Always, Sometimes, Never!

If you spend much time around my blog, you’ll quickly find out I love Slope Dude.  I even made Slope Dude posters this year!

This makes me want to give my students a comic strip assignment!

I’m also super excited that my husband is doing interactive notebooks this year for the first time!

I’ve seen so many great growth mindset ideas lately like this!

I love an “I have…Who has?” activity.  I’m not teaching geometry this year, but I can use the same idea for other classes.

https://twitter.com/POPCS1089/status/769187770396848132

You can’t look at this and not be happy!

Since I’m teaching physical science this year, I’m paying a lot more attention to the #Teach180 science tweets!

I love me some labeling and color coding!

I’m including this post because I need to remember to get out my shower curtain coordinate plane.  I actually have room to lay it out in my new room without rearranging the desks!

I love when students name things and form attachments to things in the classroom.  It just makes teaching so much more fun!

https://twitter.com/k8mcnabb/status/768957070699737089

This idea for privacy shields is brilliant!

Need to keep this idea in my mind for when we start unit circles in trig!

What a gorgeous, inspiring classroom display!

I’ve done this activity before, and the responses from students are priceless!

LOVE these fraction problems!

Jennifer’s use of post-it notes here is awesome!

https://twitter.com/jlwilliams314/status/768549436372942849

I MUST remember this activity for our polynomial chapter in Algebra 1!

Shawna had her students make their own fair spinners in geometry.  I’ve been wondering how I could use something like this when I teach stats next year.

More color-coding 😀

Cute parent function posters!

I actually tried this problem with my physical science students during the first week of school!

I hope you found some inspiring ideas, too!

An Invitation to #Teach180

Originally Posted August 9, 2017

Reality is starting to sink in. School is starting. Soon. For some of you, school has already started. For others, you’ll be soaking up summer until Labor Day has come and gone. Or, maybe you teach outside the U.S. and are currently in the middle of your school year. Whatever your situation, I want to invite you to join in #Teach180 this year.

teach180 logo

So, what is #Teach180? Let me give you the history of how this hash tag came to be.

For years, many bloggers (in the MTBoS and outside of it) have kept 180 blogs. The idea behind these blogs is to write a short post each day containing a photo of one of the day’s activities with a short description. Though I’ve always liked reading these 180 blogs, I knew that there was no way I could commit to writing a blog post every single day. Some of you may be thinking “Sarah, but you do often blog every day.” Except I don’t. Usually, when you see me go on an every day blogging streak, many of those blog posts have been written on the same day and scheduled to post so it looks like I’m blogging every day!

Two summers ago, I decided I wanted to take the general idea behind a 180 blog and turn it into something that would work for me. I was also wanting to become more involved on Twitter, so I decided to smash 180 blogs and twitter together. This produced the #Teach180 hash tag. You can read my very first post introducing the idea of #Teach180 here. The experiment has been a success! I love taking the time to make a short daily reflection in 140 characters or less. Taking lots of photos means I have photos to insert into blog posts later! And, I’ve achieved my goal of getting more involved on Twitter!

The idea is simple. Take a photo of a classroom activity each day. Post it to twitter with the #Teach180 hash tag. Need inspiration? Do a quick search of the hash tag to find hundreds of creative and innovative ideas. Over the years, #Teach180 has developed into a community of its own. Participants love to see what other participants are up to. I’ve been so encouraged by the comments and “likes” from other #Teach180 participants.

Casey McTeach tweet re: Teach180

Have you been looking for a way to interact with the #MTBoS? Have you been convicted to #JustPushSend? Do you want to start using Twitter but are too scared to just jump into a conversation? #Teach180 is a great way to get started!

Really, it doesn’t matter if you’re opening your classroom to the world via a blog, twitter, or instagram. Just do it!

Need more convincing? Check out this awesome article written by some #Teach180 participants! Here’s my favorite quote from the article:

Article about Teach180 Movement.

Sarah Carter teaches high school math in her hometown of Coweta, Oklahoma. She currently teaches AP Precalculus, AP Calculus AB, and Statistics. She is passionate about sharing creative and hands-on teaching ideas with math teachers around the world through her blog, Math = Love.

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26 Comments

  3. I'm considering something similar with Instagram. Maybe I can link it to twitter as well.

    1. I think you can write an IFTTT to take your instagram posts and put them on twitter.

  4. I'm in too. Our school year is 180 student days but we started 2 weeks ago so I will have a little less too.

  5. Count me in. I will also try to blog more this year, but a tweet a day is very manageable.

  7. Hi Sarah, congratulations on your dating and future wedding. Thanks for all the inspiration. We've been at school two weeks now. I would love to join the 180days (minus 10). I'll start with my room.

  8. I'll be there. I take so many pictures, it will be nice to have a place to put one. We do have 180 kid days – starting August 24.

  11. Yes I can do this! I was a faithful new blogger all summer but imagine it will drop off some in the school year (although now I want to post all my precaculus interactive notebook materials…). I'm really enjoying the quick short & sweet nature of twitter. Never used it for math teaching purposes until just this month. Our school year is 180 days with students and then all those other days on top of it. We start (with students) Wednesday 8/26. Thanks again Sarah for all your help and inspiration this summer!

  13. I wish I had known about this when I was still in the classroom! Or even at the beginning of the year. I could post my PD that I deliver to my math teachers I guess. I'm totally following what everyone's posting though!

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