I just wrapped up week 4 of the 2025-26 school year, and year 24 for me is off to a strong start. I’m pretty sure I say this every year, but I truly love my students—and it feels like this could be the best year yet!
This week, I was so honored to be featured in Amplify’s newsletter! Seeing an activity Steph Reilly and I worked on together YEARS ago is still generating so much engagement was both affirming and surprising. In fact, it made Amplify’s curated list of the Most-Taught Community-Authored Lessons, EACH of which was joined by over 20,000 students in the past school year!
So yes, the transition from Desmos Classroom to Amplify Classroom has been a bumpy one. Even with all of their responsiveness through DMs and their Facebook page, I’m still running into tiny glitches here and there. In the spirit of sending a few 🧡orange hearts their way (instead of tomatoes), after 4 weeks with my new student crew, I’m not sure what I would do WITHOUT this platform.
The way I’m able to craft a journey for my students, and tweak it every single year, thanks to its features and capabilities… it’s STILL my go-to for differentiation, real-time inquiry, instructional pacing, error analysis, and formative assessment. It’s the place where I can create and do 98% of the things I WANT to create and do, giving my students rich experiences nearly every day of the school year. And the fact that I can improve my own work by remixing it with the work of others with a simple command-c, command-v… I mean, who else does that?! And at no cost…?!
My understanding is that all of the goodies we’ve created and shared on this platform over the past decade will be Google-able again soon. In the meantime, you can check out my own curated units in the sidebar here. ➡️➡️➡️ And in the spirit of sharing some potentially just-in-time first-quarter faves (the ones where I wake up that morning so excited to see how students will respond and what kind of discourse will unfold) check these out:
• Zero and Negative Exponent Patterns
• Real Number Sort: ALWAYS, SOMETIMES, NEVER
• Open Middle: Rational and Irrational Numbers
• Slope-Intercept Form Intro With Marbleslides! 🟣 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Do you have some favorite activities that get you out of bed on a Monday morning with a little extra pep in your step? Share them in the comments – I’d love to hear!
And here’s a little blessing to send you off: May your 🧡Amplify experiences be smooth, your Google searches fruitful, and your school year the best yet. Here’s to lesson plans that land, tech that actually works, and Monday mornings that feel like Friday afternoons – you’ve got this!
