Sunday, October 07, 2012

My Weekly Diigo Links (weekly)

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Wednesday, October 03, 2012

What would YOU do??

I have 4 sections of Algebra 2. My smallest section has 17 students, but it also has the largest gap. I have the brightest students in there - students who want to learn math, are enthusiastic about it, and do well with mathematics. They are extremely motivated. I also have students who are not very motivated, who complain I am going too fast (even though I am actually going at a much slower rate that I probably should be), and who are not as strong as other math students. The students who aren't as motivated actually seem to resent the students who do well and are motivated.

Although I do try to do grouping with them, unlike most of the students in my other classes, when the groups are of mixed ability, the students who struggle don't necessarily want help from the students who know what they are doing. We did a relay in class to review this week and I said that all students had to have the problem worked out before I would check their boards (and that I would be checking all of the boards) and I had students who would not even copy down what was on the other boards. Now, as a veteran teacher, I do recognize that is a two fold issue - not only is it an issue of not learning, it is now a discipline issue. I would like to deal with it from the not learning aspect rather than the discipline side first, with the hope that I can avoid the discipline issue.

Any suggestions? Please leave them in the comments. Thanks. :-)
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Monday, October 01, 2012

Change is Hard

(Warning - rambling and ranting ahead) I don't feel like I am a very good math teacher. I can explain the concepts fairly well so that many students understand it. I can structure the lesson so that it makes sense. But, I am pretty much a traditional teacher. I have made no bones about that here.

But then I start reading Mathematics Formative Assessment and we had a Waiver Day last week where a lot of the discussion was around formative assessment and now I feel like I suck as a teacher. As it is, I have been stressed and barely on top of stuff and it is extremely easy to revert to my old, established ways of just teaching and students watching, taking notes and then having to work out the problems.

During the Waiver Day, one of the speakers was talking about making formative assessment part of the daily culture of your classroom. I wish I could remember what exactly she said or what triggered the thoughts in my head, but I got to thinking that maybe I didn't need to do my lessons the same way each day. Right now, I still pretty much start with a warm up, go over homework problems, then teach the lesson. As it is right now, I don't have time to do an exit slip - I am pretty much filling the period. I want to do exit slips - I know I need to, and to be honest, I'd like to get to a point that I could try Socrative with my students. But if I don't have enough time in class to get to a paper exit slip, how am I going to have time to get to Socrative?

Another thing that was discussed, albeit briefly, was flexible grouping and differentiation. This is something else that I haven't done before and probably ought to be doing. It was presented to us as a part of using formative assessment to form the flexible groups. They didn't give us a ton of information about it, so I suppose that I will have to go do some research about it in my ever-growing shrinking free time.

One small good thing that I have done in the last week is I did put together a Google Form to survey my students as to what they know/remember about functions, which is our next unit. In the past, I have just taken for granted that they remembered (or guessed what they wouldn't remember) what was previously taught. I did do a pre-test at the beginning of the school year the last couple of years, but I wasn't happy with it. So, this is what I came up with while mowing the lawn Sunday:


(Hopefully this will continue to show up after my students are done with this)

I did like doing the pre-assessment this way. I very quickly got an idea after the first 5-10 responses where my students stood because I had a fairly good representative sample of students with varying abilities. What I did find out that they didn't know a whole lot about functions and function notation. I didn't ask them about the idea of one-to-one and based on what I saw in their responses, I'm pretty sure they don't remember much about it if at all. I am rethinking how I am going to teach functions. Originally I was going to start right at operations with functions, but I think I am going to have to spend a day reviewing what functions are beforehand. At least I know that now. :-)

Back to the original reason for posting... I still pretty much feel like I am totally sucking as a teacher. I am still pretty much teaching the way I was taught and the way I have taught for the last twenty years. I am looking at some of my students and seeing that they are not engaged. I already see a couple of my lower-ability students already not putting forth much effort and one in particular who is starting to become rather challenging - not participating in group activities and bringing down his group in the process, which happened today. He and I will have to have a conversation here shortly I can see.

I am looking ahead to functions and trying to figure out how I'm going to help my students learn the material. I wanted to type "teach" there, but as I was about to type it, I thought that if I said "teach," I already knew what to do. I know how to explain to my students how to work through the procedural stuff. But that doesn't help them learn the material. I'm trying to figure out how to help them learn the material. Me teaching and them sitting and getting isn't going to work. I have been telling myself that for 2-3 years now. The problem is, I haven't done anything about it. Compounding that, I don't really know what to do. What do I do differently? How do I structure class so that my students are learning and I am aiding them in their learning rather than imparting information to them?

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Sunday, September 30, 2012

My Weekly Diigo Links (weekly)

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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Second Thoughts on Assessment

First off, I do want to apologize for the lack of posts. I have to be honest, I am still very overwhelmed, although I am now at least planning 2 to 3 days ahead rather than just for tomorrow. I still don't feel like I am in my groove yet.

In Algebra 2, I am getting ready to give my second assessment. Like last year, I am assessing each learning target twice. However, I am counting the first assessment and if the student has earned their 5 on the first time, they do not have to do the second assessment. I have been having second thoughts about this after I gave their first assessment two weeks ago. I know why I had decided to do this. I wanted students to give a better first effort on the assessment and when I didn't give a score on the first time, students tended to skip the problems. Also, this gives students their first chance at a reassessment. But, there are a couple of things causing me to have second thoughts.

First off, after the first assessment, I had several students already asking for a reassessment. I put them off, telling them they would have another chance at it in a couple of weeks. At that point, and now, still, I am thinking that I should have let them reassess right away if they were ready. Now that it's been about two weeks, I'm not sure they will do as well. Secondly, some students are now facing 6 skills to assess on this time around. I am starting to think that I may have set them up to not do as well because of that. Thirdly, we had professional development today and one of the speakers talked about Standards Based Grading. Well, she didn't call it SBG, but it's SBG. She was talking about using exit cards to assess where students where on a particular skill. Normally, you would use this for formative assessment, however, if all students showed they understood the skill, she suggested that you could go ahead and record that as mastery of the skills. The teacher would only do this if all students showed mastery. That got me thinking about giving assessments that only worked with a few skills. I asked her about how a teacher would justify assessing in this manner when at the college level, almost every class gives assessments at a much larger interval. Her response was to inform students that your concern was that they showed they learned and understood the material and that if they have done that successfully at high school, they would be able to adjust once they reached college.

Now, I don't think I am willing to assess formally that often, however, it is really getting me thinking about putting 6 learning targets on an assessment. I am seriously considering after this assessment to go ahead and go back to assessing 3-4 skills at a time and just assessing once. Thoughts from the peanut gallery? Leave them in the comments. Thanks.
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Sunday, September 23, 2012

My Weekly Diigo Links (weekly)

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Sunday, September 16, 2012

My Weekly Diigo Links (weekly)

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Saturday, September 15, 2012

1 step backward to go forward?

I am still behind the proverbial eight ball here. I do have to say that although I don't feel as pressured this weekend, I still have not planned this week yet. I have been slowly working at it today (breaking my no school work on Saturday rule), but I have a lot to get accomplished tomorrow.

I am quickly coming to the conclusion that being a good teacher is extremely time intensive. I'm not saying that I wasn't a good teacher previously, but I certainly have not put as much thought into my lessons and what I'm doing in the classroom in the past as I have in the last couple of years. Case in point: Friday I gave my Algebra 2 students their first assessment. It was over solving systems of equations by graphing, substitution, and elimination. They did fairly well on the two algebraic methods but only about half of my students earned 4s or 5s on graphing. In the past, I would have just let it go, chalking it up to that they didn't prepare well. Even though I know they did not do a good job practicing solving systems of equations by graphing, I also am recognizing that they don't have the concept and will need aspects of it for what we are doing next (solving systems of inequalities by graphing). So, I sit here tonight still pondering what to do.

My first inclination Friday after I finished grading their assessments was that I needed to spend Monday going over how to graph a linear equation. I had originally tweeted for some help on this Friday night and, although I didn't tweet real clearly what I needed, I got some suggestions to think about. As I continue to ponder this today (Saturday), I am wondering how to best handle it since about half seem to have a pretty solid handle on how to graph. I had thought about pairing the students up so that one partner had a good idea of what to do and the other did not, but the question still remained in my head - what do I have them practice? When I tweeted my dilemma, there were a couple of tweets that got me really thinking:
@fawnpnguyen Wonder maybe they haven't had enough real-life context of systems.
@jacehan I had a lot of students who didn't see why we'd solve graphically with equations, so didn't/couldn't, but saw why with inequalities. It can help.
Both of these intrigue me. Fawn's tweet intrigues me because I know they haven't had enough real-life context, period. When I brought in word problems this week, they were already nervous and asked whether I was putting them on the assessment. In my haste to make the assessment, I left them off. However, after a brief discussion with @MSeiler and @4mulafun yesterday about including word problems, I think I really need to incorporate them as much as possible to get them past their discomfort.

James' tweet really intrigues me. I am really sitting here tonight wondering if it's worth going back to review solving systems by graphing when I am preparing to do graphing a linear inequality, followed by systems of inequalities and linear programming. My students will get a healthy dose of graphing over the next week or so. Maybe that will help with their graphing with systems of equations problems, as James suggested. Maybe I really don't need to spend Monday stepping backward to go forward. Instead, maybe this time I will deliberately push forward to a different, but related concept which will help cement the one they struggled with.
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Friday, September 14, 2012

New Blogger Initiative Week 4

Here is the 4th (and final) installment of new bloggers. Please take some time to read and comment on these blogs - there are some great ideas this week.

Angie Eakland (@aeakland) - Coefficients of Determination
The fourth post for the Blogging Initiation is titled "Visions of PEMDAS danced thorugh my head" and the author sums it up as follows: Order of Operations is such an important topic at sixth grade. It's not really something the students can discover and so their initial understandings come down to how good of a job I do at introducing it in a memorable way. I created a new foldable that - in part - made this the easiest introduction I've ever had. A memorable quotation from the post is: Students LOVED the foldable, they LOVED getting to choose the four colors that they would use with intentionality (my word, not theirs :)), and I loved how easily students picked up the idea of doing multiplication and division and then addition and subtraction as they moved from left to right in their expression! :) :)
My thoughts: This is a neat foldable. I really like how she designed it so that multiplication and division were on the same row as well as addition and subtraction were as well. It's cool when something comes together rather well, especially after a good night's sleep.

 crazedmummy - crazedmummy
The fourth post for the Blogging Initiation is titled "Posting on a post to a post..." and the author sums it up as follows: This post is about someone responding to something I stole, and sent on to them, and they actually found it helpful. Oh theft, I am so devoted to you. A memorable quotation from the post is: I feel as if I have edged in to a party that my kids are holding and they have not frozen in silence (you know what you did when someone’s mom came in – don’t give me that look).  
My thoughts: It is pretty cool when someone in the twitterblogosphere references what you've done. :-)

 Dan Bowdoin (@danbowdoin) - Technology Integration for Math Engagement
The fourth post for the Blogging Initiation is titled "Auto-Updating Agenda and Assignment Board" and the author sums it up as follows: I write about the switch from lesson planning on paper, to saving plans in computer files, and then the change to a completely electronic system that automatically updates for students as you make any changes! The idea was stolen from I Speak Math, Julie Reulbach. "Now, I’m all electronic when I plan. I made a Google Spreadsheet that lists the date, lesson, homework, and any important links the students will need. I love this way of giving homework, because then students can easily find the links I want them to access." A memorable quotation from the post is: It was great to see students, the first week of school, already going to the website and using the electronic links to complete their textbook assignment early.
My thoughts: It's neat to see how others use technology. Dan got such a positive response to this that he posted a link to his Google Spreadsheet in the comments. Pretty cool!

 Lee KT (@lthor010) - random expected value
The fourth post for the Blogging Initiation is titled "You've got a friend..." and the author sums it up as follows: Have you ever read something that aligns with your thinking so much that you wish that you could sit with down with this person and talk and talk and talk? That's blogging...start the conversation, and keep it going. KEEP WRITING!! And oh yeah, Desmos is so cool! A memorable quotation from the post is: KEEP WRITING!
My thoughts: Lee makes a great point - the blogs that we all write keep this conversation going. We read what is going on in each other's classrooms and minds and comment to what strikes a chord with us. We share freely and help to improve each other's teaching. These conversations are what make us the best twitterblogosphere. :-)

 Matt Owen (@_MattOwen_) - Just Tell Me the Answer
The fourth post for the Blogging Initiation is titled "Flipclass Reflections So Far" and the author sums it up as follows: I've been making videos for my students this year. So far, the response has been positive, but I'm not doing a good job of ensuring that they watched and understood the videos. Here's a possible solution (stolen from another math blogger of course). A memorable quotation from the post is: If the student doesn’t remember whether they watched the video, either A. they didn’t watch it or B. They didn’t get it.
My thoughts: I'm always glad to see people sharing ideas that they have used in their classroom. I'll be curious to see how it works in his class.

 Wesley (@wp202) - Intervals of Convergence
The fourth post for the Blogging Initiation is titled "Getting Students to Communicate" and the author sums it up as follows: I want my students communicating in many ways with each other and myself through the class. Most of this involves placing the students in a teaching role and helping others in their class. Here's how I do it in my class. Suggestions appreciated! A memorable quotation from the post is: I love how it breaks up a lesson, lets students become teachers (if only for 10 seconds sometimes), gives struggling students some help, and helps students get to know each other.
My thoughts: There are some great communication starters here to use with your students. Very nicely done.
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Sunday, September 09, 2012

HW Feedback 1st Time


In June, I had blogged about something I thought may work in my class as far as getting feedback to students on their homework. I decided I was going to try it Friday after I gave my first practice problems. As I was getting it ready, it dawned on me that there would be students who wouldn't have completed the assignment. Rather than doing the whole sheet that Hedge did, I added a line at the bottom: I did not do practice problems because ________________. Here's the page I handed my students Friday (2 to a page);


These were the directions I left on the SMART Board for them:
Warm Up
Please pick up a half sheet of paper from the stool and copy your work from your paper onto it as directed. Please hand it to me when you are finished.

Once you have done that, begin checking with your neighbors to see if you got the same answers on the problems you attempted. If you didn't, figure out what the correct answer should be. The rule here is ask three before me: ask three other students before raising your hand to ask me for help. You have 10 minutes to complete these two tasks. Thanks!
Some students did actually give me the problem and the work. A lot just gave me the answer (some with problem numbers).  I have redone the sheet below (this one is for Monday):



Overall, I was pleased with what I saw. Most students were able to successfully complete a problem. Even on the feedback problem, most had made good progress. However, there were several who did not give me much to give them feedback on. Obviously, we will talk about this on Monday.

The most disappointing thing to me was the number of students who did not attempt the practice at all. Of the reasons I got, most of them really seemed like excuses. The majority of the students who did not attempt the homework are my juniors and both my seniors. This concerns me for three reasons:
1) I know these are my students who have historically struggled with math. I have had most of them now three times - as 7th graders, as freshmen in Math 1, and now. These problems are problems they should have seen before and had some idea of how to start.
2) Almost all of these students have at least one study hall and in some cases, two. Why aren't they doing the work in study hall? (We had to cut staff and we have very few electives. Almost every kid has at least one study hall.) When I walked passed 7th period Study Hall any day last week, the students were talking and not many were working. How come they aren't using this time?
3) Some of these students are mentors to our freshmen in a program called Freshmen Focus. If they aren't willing to try practice problems because they had practice or it was a nice day, what kind of message are they going to send to our freshmen?

So, here are the reasons I got: I did not do practice problems because:
  • I feel comfortable with the LT and didn't feel I needed to. (2 times)
  • I had cross country practice. Then I had to be judge for volleyball.
  • I was absent, sick in bed.
  • (blank)
  • My mom wouldn't let me do my homework.
  • I didn't know how to do the problems past 2.
  • I had practice after school and I forgot to do it.
  • I wasn't sure where my points on the graph were to go. I attempted, but it didn't seem right.
  • I don't know where it is.
  • I forgot. It was in my folder.
  • I forgot my binder in school. (5 times)
  • I don't understand how to do it.
  • I need a little feedback.
  • I don't understand math. (2 times)
  • I think they are unneeded.
  • I think I need more examples.
  • I have no time after school to do them. It's either be dog tired everyday or go to sleep.
  • I really didn't feel like doing it yesterday since it was nice out.
  • I didn't want to get them all wrong and then have to erase the whole thing.
  • I don't have a graphing calculator at the moment, so it was more difficult without it. I don't really understand.
  • It was nice outside and I chose to go riding than to do my homework.
  • I kept getting stuck on the decimal part. The ones that where were the answers turn into decimals.
  • I went to look at a truck.
I may very well have to have the Come to Jesus Meeting with my classes tomorrow. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I'm going to say. But I'm pretty sure that it's going to be along the lines of:
  • We had talked about how Math is not a spectator sport - some of you are already starting out on the sidelines. Good habits start early and it's time to form them now.
  • How many of you have at least one study hall? (show of hands) There is NO excuse for not having 6 practice problems at least attempted when you have a 50 minute period provided in your schedule to study. Get it done.
We'll see how it goes tomorrow. I'll be curious to see what kind of responses I get in their half sheets from Friday's problems. I'm hoping it's better and I am certainly hoping there are less students who did not attempt the problems.
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