Change, it's a comin'

Yes, things are changing in my world next year. Instead of teaching Algebra 2 and Math 2, I will be teaching Algebra 1, Math 1, and Calculus. I last taught Math 1 in 2011-2012 and Calculus in 2010-2011, but I think it's been since 1999-2000 since I last taught Algebra 1. We were using the UCSMP book then. Needless to say, Common Core wasn't even a thought then. We were using a County-wide curriculum book at that point - the Ohio State Standards were still in development then. By the same token, I have taught Algebra 2 for almost my entire 21 years teaching (except maybe 3 years I think).

I have to say that I was a little sad that I wasn't teaching Algebra 2 next year. However, now that I have had a week or so to think about it and for it to sink in, I am looking forward to the change. I will be teaching some of the same content that I have taught, although I am still trying to figure out how much of it filters to Algebra 1. What has also sunk in is that I will have to do yet another curriculum map and Learning Target list. Now, I have to figure out where to start in terms of the Common Core. After talking to our county math person, I think I am going to begin with what the Dana Center has for Algebra 1 and then adjusting for the PARCC Model Content Frameworks since we are in a PARCC state. I am still debating how much of the original Appendix A I will use since my understanding was that it is a guideline for the courses.

Then, of course, come the questions in my mind of how I am going to structure my course with Standards Based Grading. With having almost all freshmen, I know that I will need to have some sort of structure to incorporate homework into it. Without having that, I am certain that the students won't practice problems outside of class. I am also going to need to incorporate more in class practice as well. Lots of things bouncing around in my head right now.

So, as Summer 2013 begins, I am still working. Starting first to decide on how my Algebra 1 course will be structured, then moving towards finding the resources to help me. Should be an interesting summer...

Summer Update

Sometimes, you just need a break. And a break, is what I am taking right now. I can't say I am taking a TOTAL break from math/education/school, but for the most part, that is what I have been doing since school finished about a month ago. The last two summers, I have been thinking and reading math and math ed most of the summer. I can't say that I really felt like I had an honest break from school. Although I cannot say whether or not it was conscious or not, I have not been reading, thinking, and absorbing math and math ed for the last few weeks. To be honest, I only feel a teeny-weeny bit guilty. I do have things I need to work through and learn about this summer before heading back. However, my #summerlist this year is MUCH shorter.

The break I am taking is much needed. By a week or two after Christmas Vacation (which was a full 2 weeks plus the weekends before and after), I was feeling mentally fed up with school. Even though I kept plugging along, trying new things, I felt like I was on the proverbial hamster wheel.


from: Clips Ahoy

So, what have I been doing? June has been busy - running the kids places, visiting my parents, cleaning while the kids were at church camp for a couple of days, capped with a trip to the Monte Carlo Nationals in Johnson City, TN (with an excursion to Bristol Motor Speedway - more on that in another blog post). Oh, and planning Twitter Math Camp, which is coming up from July 19-22 in St. Louis.

That's not to say I haven't been doing anything with respect to school. We are doing curriculum mapping and I have three to get done before school starts back up in August. I did get the Calculus one done and I have left the two classes that I will be teaching next fall - Algebra 2 and Math 2 (think Geometry without proofs). I haven't decided which one I will work on next, but I have a mental goal of starting it next week. Possibly Math 2 next since I don't have learning targets for it yet.

I have one book I would like to read on Formative Assessment which I hope to start soon. The other thing I am working on is organizing the starred blog posts in my GReader in Diigo. I am tagging the posts so that when I am looking for something come fall, I can find it much easier. I had a flurry in June while I was at my parents, but I got sidetracked and need to get back on track. I also would like to go back through some of my favorite blogs and find the older things I may have missed that will be helpful for me. I have already done this with Infinite Sums and I know I want to do Square Root of Negative One Teach Math next. I'm hoping to get back on track shortly so that I can get re-motivated to do this.

While those are some of the things on my #summerlist, I still have a few other things to tackle. SBG is something I am really pondering this summer before I put it together for 2012-2013. Thanks to everyone for some great comments on my post on SBG and Grades. While I haven't responded to all of them, I am certainly thinking it through. I am glad to see that not everyone does SBG on equal percentage intervals. I think I am starting to lean towards that, although I haven't totally figured it out. I still have a lot to ponder there.

I do have to say that I feel more mentally refreshed at the moment than I have in a while. Taking a break from school is necessary. Sam Shah blogged about it at the beginning of last school year. Go ahead, click on the link and read it. It's well worth it. I'll wait. I am rediscovering that if I don't take care of me - and that means mentally as well as physically - that I am not the best me I can be. If I'm not the best me I can be, the people who depend on me - my children, my husband, my students - are being cheated. So, I am taking a break and recharging (which was on my #summerlist). I highly recommend that you do the same. Find the other things you like to do and talk about (other than math and school) and do them. It's worth it.

#summerlist2012

School is almost done - it's time to reflect (in another post) and make the #summerlist:

1) Twitter Math Camp!!! (If you're not familiar - check here) In prep for TMC, I'm starting work on the Exeter Problem Sets. @druinok and I will be putting the schedule together and getting the organization done as soon as the dust begins to settle here from the end of school. I am really looking forward to this - going to meet over 20 (at current count) of my tweeps! July 19th can't get here soon enough.

2) Revamp SBG. I had made revisions last summer and I will be tweaking again. I definitely don't think I'm going to do the teach 3 - quiz 6 - teach 3 - quiz 6 that I did this year. I haven't totally decided how it's all going to work yet, but Common Core's organization will play into it.

3) Tweak Bellringers. I have already started thinking about this and will continue to ponder this.

4) Adjust Learning Targets in Algebra 2. This is happening because of Common Core. I'm looking at following the order and structure set up here. This year will be a transition year since Algebra 1 was not taught under Common Core. We'll see how it plays out.

5) Set up Math 2 for SBG. It looks like (as of right now), I will be teaching Math 2 (think Geometry without the proofs) in addition to Algebra 2. I last taught it pre-SBG and pre-blog. Lots of stuff to think about here - I've made changes in grading and how I teach.

6) Recharge. It's summer, isn't that a given?

AAAAAAAAAugust!

AAAAAAAAuuuuugggggghhhhh!!!! It's August! I'm not ready for it to be August yet! (Yes, I know I'm writing this on August 3rd, and I'm still not ready for it to be August!)

So, I had posted this #summerlist at the beginning of June: New comments are in blue.

• Finish the online course I started last summer. This one has a deadline - I have to get it done in June.
• Read. I definitely would like to do some reading that I normally don't get time to do. Some professional (we are starting with Understanding by Design on #sbarbook), some personal. I ended up punting UbD. I was struggling with getting into it and I wanted to get some other reading done before heading to Orlando for NCTM's Institute on Reasoning and Sense Making. I have finished Teaching for Tomorrow, Nice Bike (the author is speaking to us on our first workday together), and most of Focus of High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making. After the Institute, I have added 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions, Mathematical Discovery, and The Stanford Mathematics Problem Book. Also added to the list is Empowering the Mentor of the Beginning Mathematics Teacher since we will be hiring a new math teacher for the upcoming school year and More Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Secondary Mathematics Instruction since my new principal mentioned that this was something I should look into when I went to the Orlando Institute. @dcox21 and others recommended this one, so it's my starting point.
• Revise my SBG for next school year. See this post.  Update on this here.
• Revise my concept lists for Calculus (which I'm not teaching next year), Math 1 and Algebra 2/Advanced Algebra 2. Along with this, put together the concept list for Pre-Algebra (7th grade), which will be my 4th prep next year. Have not even started this. I know I should but I am not feeling motivated to at the moment. I really should start this tomorrow.
• Learn more about rich problems and how to incorporate them into my classes. The NCTM Institute on Reasoning and Sense Making in Orlando last week helped to expand my knowledge of rich problems and how to incorporate them. This will be an ongoing project for me this year. I'm looking forward to it.
• Revise how I teach in my classroom. I am still very much a traditional math teacher (go over homework, teach/lecture on the new concept, give time for homework). I want to change that, I just don't know how. Still thinking about it. I did a post on bellringers as a starting point. I don't think I am going to make huge changes, but from some discussions with other teachers, I have some thoughts that I am contemplating integrating into my classes to switch things up a bit. More to follow on this later, I think.
• I am attending the NCTM Reasoning and Sense Making Workshop in Orlando July 28-30. I have some of the Reasoning and Sense Making books to read in front of that, but I also want to take what I've learned from that workshop and apply it to my own classroom. I am really looking forward to this!  See this post for the summary of this Institute (along with links to each of the posts I did)
• I'm also attending the Making Ohio Schools Work conference in Columbus next week as part of my role on our district's Race to the Top committee.
• Try and help my daughter to master her addition and subtraction basic facts. She finishes 2nd grade this week and will need to know them when she enters 3rd grade in the fall. It doesn't help that she has ADHD, but we will need to find a way to help her learn them. I think she is getting a lot closer on this but I haven't spent anywhere near the time I should have this summer.
• I am taking a course to learn Moodle in early August. This is Tue-Thu of next week.
• We have some fun trips planned this year also. First up is the Monte Carlo Nationals in York, Pennsylvania, with a side trip to the Crayola Factory afterwards. Then, hopefully a trip to see my sister-in-law in Houston, Texas. Reasoning and Sense Making is next, followed by a week on Lake Erie with my family right before school starts. Summer always finishes with the Canfield Fair and the annual Henry Hootenanny on Saturday of Labor Day weekend. I think this is the reason why I am going AAAUUUGGGHH at this point in time - we leave a week from Friday and when we come back from Lake Erie, I will have 5 days until our teacher workdays start.

So, here I sit looking at the list and the dwindling number of days until school starts (22 until I go back to work, 27 until the first day with students) and I'm a little panicked at this point. I had hoped to accomplish a lot. Maybe I made my list a little too ambitious. Like it or not, the first day of school is coming. I'd really like to spend that week at Lake Erie not dwelling on school stuff and I suspect because of the timing, that's going to be a little bit of a challenge. I'm going to do my best not to be thinking a lot about school. Guess if I want that to happen I better get crackin'.

Bellringers

I was mowing the lawn today (had to be done after returning home from our extended weekend trip to Houston to see my sister-in-law) and thinking. I have mostly pulled together SBG for next year (checked off my #summerlist for now), so the next thing I want to pull together is what the basic structure of my 50 minute class period is going to be. I had looked for some feedback from the twitterblogosphere but didn't get much. I had also checked out Dan Meyer's blog and the slides for his Algebra classes (when he taught) but I haven't looked at them in as much detail as I had wanted. A couple of weeks ago, @Fouss and @druinok were talking about setting up bellringers and I recalled the conversation. I think @Fouss had said something about wanting to do brain teaser type problems once a week, maybe on Wednesdays. @druinok came back with the suggestion to do them on Mondays and call it Mental Monday. So, that got me thinking...

Enough with the backstory...

Here's what I came up with:

Mental Monday - Brain Teasers as mentioned above. Anything goes here - Mensa, Martin Gardner, etc.

Testing Tuesday - All of my classes next year will have a test upcoming. Most of them are coming up on the OGT (Ohio Graduation Test - 10th grade) but if I end up doing the 7th grade Pre-Algebra, they will have the 7th Grade OAA. I am intending to pull questions from the released items of the OGT (or OAA) as well as ACT practice problems, since most of these students are intending to head to college. More on this in a moment...

What-We've-Been-Doin' Wednesday - These questions will come from the material we have discussed in the previous week (or two).

Testing Thursday - See Tuesday. I am thinking since our students have traditionally struggled with the short answer and extended response questions that for a while at least I will alternate between multiple choice and the "free response" type questions so our students will have seen them and gotten more comfortable with them.

Free-For-All Friday - Anything goes here. I could pick from recent review questions, additional testing practice (which could be helpful as we get closer to test dates), anything that seems interesting.

I am hoping that by specifying what I am doing on each day of the week, it will focus me on a) finding good questions, b) making a better effort at doing bellringers and c) making them effective.

On that last point - does anyone have suggestions on how to make them effective? With not grading them for points, I realize that I am going to mainly rely on establishing the culture and expectation that everyone do them. However, with 5 or 6 classes (since I am not totally certainly on the status of the 7th Grade Pre-Algebra at this moment) and probably somewhere around 120-150 students, writing feedback and handing back papers daily is incredibly time consuming. I had these initial thoughts:

1) Have students dedicate a spiral notebook (or section in their 3-ring binder) to bellringers.
2) Hand out a paper at the beginning of each week with sections marked off for each day (M-F) for students to work on. Jazz it up a bit with clip art, quotes, etc.

I still don't know what to do here with it. I want to have class discussion after students have completed the bellringer, questioning them as to why they think their answer is correct, etc. so students are comfortable with discussing math. However, I want to make sure that all students do the problems because I suspect that the students who need the bellringers the most may skip out on it. Please offer any suggestions or thoughts that could help me here in the comments. Thanks!

Well, that starts off my class. Now to figure out how to design the remainder of the 50 minute period...

Grading Policies Revision

On my #summerlist, one of the things I want to do is revise SBG in my classroom. (see this post and this post for past discussions). Here is my revised Grading Policies page for the upcoming school year:



Changes I made:

• I am going to quiz students twice. First time I am going to give feedback only, as I had intended to do but didn't stick with. Second time will have the feedback-only concepts tested and (up to) three new concepts for feedback only. From what I read from others during the SBG Gala, it seemed that more people felt that a feedback only option made sense for the first time students saw a concept on a test, and then grade the second one.
• The one I am having the debate on at the moment is whether or not to require students to show me their original practice problems before allowing a reassessment. At the moment, I have it in there but there is a part of me that doesn't want to deal with the hassle of it. I am a little afraid that it will discourage students from reassessing because they have to do the problems and if they didn't do them originally, that will be more work for them to do before reassessing. However, I think it is also a good idea because it will force students to have done the original assignment (at some point) if they want to reassess and maybe it will instill in them that they should be doing the problems in the first place. **I revised this to give students an option of what work to submit with the reassessment request. 
• I am limiting students to three concepts a reassessment.
• Students will have to apply for reassessment (a la Sam Shah). Since not all my students have easy access to email (or so I think), they can either email me or hand me the written information. Last year I had a tutor form they could get and fill in. I think by having written out at the beginning of the year what needs to be done to reassess, it will encourage students to refer back to this sheet throughout the year.
• When applying for reassessment, students will have to explain what they have done to prepare for the reassessment. They will also have to correct the problem(s) they were not successful on earlier and explain what they did wrong. I really think this will be the key for students to be more successful in reassessment.

Please, please, please, take a few minutes and look at what I have put together for the next school year and offer your feedback in the comments. This is not necessarily final, but it is as close as I am going to get it at the moment. Thanks so much!

Summer List 2011

Since summer is about to start for me, I figure I better get a list together to keep me honest. So, here goes nothing.

In no particular order: (Edited with comments June 30th)

• Finish the online course I started last summer. This one has a deadline - I have to get it done in June. (DONE!!!!! Once it posts, I have to get transcripts so I can get reimbursed and move up a lane.)
• Read. I definitely would like to do some reading that I normally don't get time to do. Some professional (we are starting with Understanding by Design on #sbarbook), some personal. (Working on this and not doing too bad. We are up to Chapter 5 in #sbarbook and I have been slowly knocking off the magazine stack I accumlated this school year.) 
• Revise my SBG for next school year. See this post. (Thinking about it. Got some good ideas from Sam Shah that I think I will use next year.)
• Revise my concept lists for Calculus (which I'm not teaching next year), Math 1 and Algebra 2/Advanced Algebra 2. Along with this, put together the concept list for Pre-Algebra (7th grade), which will be my 4th prep next year. (I briefly revised Calculus at the end of the year. I think I'm going to leave it where it is. I will probably start on Pre-Algebra next, but not for a few weeks.)
• Learn more about rich problems and how to incorporate them into my classes. (This has been on the back burner since I had to get my course done. This moves up the list.)
• Revise how I teach in my classroom. I am still very much a traditional math teacher (go over homework, teach/lecture on the new concept, give time for homework). I want to change that, I just don't know how. (I was hoping to get some ideas from the comments in this post but it didn't go very far.Still thinking on this one.)
• I am attending the NCTM Reasoning and Sense Making Workshop in Orlando July 28-30. I have some of the Reasoning and Sense Making books to read in front of that, but I also want to take what I've learned from that workshop and apply it to my own classroom. I am really looking forward to this! (Need to get started on this book. Maybe next week on the plane to Houston...)
• I'm also attending the Making Ohio Schools Work conference in Columbus next week as part of my role on our district's Race to the Top committee. (DONE - but this added to my mental list creating a problem solving course - semester long elective. We'll see how that goes.)
• Try and help my daughter to master her addition and subtraction basic facts. She finishes 2nd grade this week and will need to know them when she enters 3rd grade in the fall. It doesn't help that she has ADHD, but we will need to find a way to help her learn them. (In progress. I have created Addition Fact War for her and I to play - but she has to tell me all the answers. Also found Math Slam for her to help practice.)
• I am taking a course to learn Moodle in early August.
• We have some fun trips planned this year also. First up is the Monte Carlo Nationals in York, Pennsylvania, with a side trip to the Crayola Factory afterwards. Then, hopefully a trip to see my sister-in-law in Houston, Texas. Reasoning and Sense Making is next, followed by a week on Lake Erie with my family right before school starts. Summer always finishes with the Canfield Fair and the annual Henry Hootenanny on Saturday of Labor Day weekend. (We just got back from the Monte Carlo Nationals and the Crayola Factory. We leave for Houston July 7th - this will be my son's first flight and my daughter's second.)

Whew! That's a lot of stuff for my list. Hopefully I'll accomplish most of the stuff on it.