School is Back

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I must be really bad at breaks because I always come back feeling more tired than before. Or really good at taking full advantage of exploring/adventure time. We had a really good turn out today and it was much easier to jump back into the fold than I was expecting.

Algebra 1A worked on x and y intercepts. They got equations in all forms had had to find the intercepts and graph.

Algebra 1B finished up the exponent unit test. Weird timing. I meant to have it done before break, but the students asked to take the test in shorter segments even if that meant doing one on the Monday after break. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to have negative results.

Geometry A worked on dilation, with a quick recap of all the rigid transformations first.

Geometry B is on probability and determining independence/dependence. We also spent some time with setting up area or tree models of events. I have been surprised at the difficulty of this part of the topic. It is not a task I had budgeted much time for and have needed to revisit often. In the future I need to find a better introduction to them.

3rd year math is all of different topics depending on which class they’ve chosen.

Advisory is tackling racism. They paired up to discuss types of racism (individual/structural/institutional) and then we had a class discussion. We’ll continue the conversation tomorrow with a focus on our city and what is happening to combat the issue.

I didn’t taken any photos today so hopefully I do better with that tomorrow.

On a side note, we didn’t have clocks today. I have never paid much attention to them (I am unfortunately really good at keeping the students in class past the end without realizing it) but it was weird not having them there so I must look at them much more than I think.

WODB Student Attempts

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A while back I talked about our introduction to Which One Doesn’t Belong as an activity to practice writing precise definitions as well as all the other good stuff that comes along with the activity. At the end of the activity I had asked the students to come up with a WODB. I told them it could be anything: shapes, numbers, graphs, etc. I also told them it could be as simple or a tricky as they wanted. They had to draw it and then also provide a key or chart to track what 4 attributes they changed throughout the process.

Here are a few of the submissions and as others roll in I’ll update.

  

 

 


Translations and Reflections

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My Geo A students are working on a unit on construction and transformations. (I actually shared the skill learning target here for a student who was transferring out and wanted to get ahead). They are supposed to come in with some knowledge of transformations, so we did a quick review of how each of the transformations work and then focused on composition of transformations. I handed each pair of students a sheet like this:

And got back things that look like this:

  

Its fun to see how they approach the problems. A few are struggling with writing rules, some seem to have a mix. Some students only will reflect of integer lines, others are okay with decimals. Some wanted to minimize transformations, other wanted to see how many they could write out. No group came up with identical answers, so I had them trade papers and discuss how they were alike and different. I was waiting for one group to undo either part 1 or 2 and then copy the steps from the other one, but it didn’t occur.

It was a fairly low bar for entry and all students seemed to contribute something. I’m hoping to build on that tomorrow. I am going to start next class with the magic octagon video by Dan Meyer and probably the best reflections activity will also make an appearance thanks to some twitter posts. Inspiration from here and the link to the activities here.

Learning Targets

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One of the best decisions I’ve made this semester has been the introduction of student tracked learning targets. As a teacher I obviously use the CCSS to inform my unit planning and daily lessons. I also post the daily target on the board. The seemingly obvious jump from that is to hand the student a friendly version if the whole unit goal ahead of time and give them a place to track their understanding on the targets as they go through. Student can self pace through the unit. Before they test, they turn in a completed learning target sheet.

Basically, they pre-test. If they score a 4 (Above Standard) they can skip some of the in class work for that topic. This is rare. Because of our mobile student population, every once and a while I’ll get a student who has already done the class a few times and because of some issue or another just has not received credit. This allows them to jump in mid stream and make new progress.

Then we hit each learning target at least once during the unit. Sometimes we do a few a day, sometimes one learning target takes a few days. Either way, once they can show me they have practiced it in class and are comfortable proving to me, I sign off on the in class column. Then they quiz. A score of a 3 (At Standard) or 4 is required. Otherwise, its back to another class work attempt. Once they have the whole sheet complete, they test. Retakes are offered to everyone and they can retake a specific learning target if need be. Retakes are strongly encouraged (aka pretty much required) for a post-test score of a 1 or 2.

This has allowed me more freedom to do great whole class activities that were more difficult before and has really helped my students with attendance issues. I’ll conference with them at least once a week and point out where they should be in order to earn full credit.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I also have one of these sheets for the math practice standards. I include a few more columns for in class assignments. These are often where I sign for our 3 Acts, Would You Rathers, Which One Doesn’t Belong, our Drone Project, or anything else that doesn’t fit a skill type assessment. These count toward semester long grade/tracking for the MPSs.

Flight is Better with Math

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Wednesday is our shortened school day. Each block has two different classes in it instead of one, so we spend those days looking at the parts of math that transcend the content of a specific class/topic. Its a good day to focus on the math practice standards or exciting problems that are harder to work into a regular lesson day.

Today, we flew drones. The students were tasked with finding find objects in the gym without leaving their seat. The time was limited to 1 minute. They had to plan out what they thought would be the most effective flight path and then try to recreate it live. Then they revised their plans to try it again. One sign of a successful hook? A student instagramming/snap-chatting the lesson.

Today was most of the students first time at the controls, so part of the flight was spent adjusting and learning how to fly.  I didn’t give them any instructions on how the controls worked, so they had to field test. It was fun to see how they reacted to crashes and how that in turn affected their next attempt at trying to figure out how it worked. Students who have never participated in any group work were jumping in to help when a fellow classmate needed it. Attendance is definitely higher on drone day…now to capture that same excitement everyday.

Our Students Matter

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We have had a long year. March seems to be a common time nationwide for a dip in positive feelings toward school both by teachers and students, but this has been an especially long year. We have lost 6 students so far. 6 young lives. In 6 months. 6 kids who decided to take a second chance at gaining an education and a better life. I don’t really know what to say other than I’m tired. The daily struggle might be math, but the real struggle is what these kids face when they leave in the afternoon. I was typing up a blog post on scatter plots when I got an email with a link to a podcast story on our students. Listening, I didn’t want to talk about math today. I wanted to share their story and the story of far too many of our young people. You can listen here.

Scatter Plots and Trends

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I had high hopes for today’s Algebra 1A lesson on scatter plots and introduction to trends and correlation. I was going to use the Movie Compatibility idea found here, but I chose to use the top 10 songs on the Billboard chart. The students and I have had lots of discussions about music. They always want to know about what I think of some song I’ve never heard of and I in turn put on my music. I’m an old school jazz fan, so I get lots of groans. I was looking forward to the delight when I had an assignment with the cool kid new music. Dun dun dun…. that was my mistake. Apparently the Billboard Top 10 is a terrible representation of the teenagers I work with. I assumed since I hadn’t heard of the songs, my students must have 🙂 One student had heard only 2 of the songs, and I think the most was someone who had heard of 7. We had to scrap that plan and move on.

Instead, we did a sorting activity where students took two variables at a time and decided whether they would have positive, negative, or no correlation. I found the activity here, and since it was an in the middle of class change, I didn’t update or change it. I had the students match the graphs first and then share ideas of things that would fit in each category.  Then we added the notes in blue. then in pairs or alone, the cut out and sorted the different scenarios and taped them into the correct flap. One of the better debates was around age and height.

My most common line of the day was “If you can defend it…” I like that even in a card sort, there is not necessarily a right answer, and a seemingly true answer is no good if you can’t justify reasoning. I’m going to look for some crazy correlations to share tomorrow. We touched on correlation/causation today, but I think I can drill home the need for proof with a few example like: “The per capita consumption of cheese, people who die by being tangled in bed sheets” .

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Side Note: I tasked the students with going home and listening to the 10 songs that we tried to rank today so that they could rank them tomorrow. I like the idea of generating data, especially without the typical measuring labs. I tried to play the songs in class today, but they failed the internet safety filter. I never assign homework, so I scared a few today when I told them they had homework. When they figured out it was listening to the songs, they were excited though. Hopefully tomorrow should be smoother.

 

MSP – Attending to Precision with WODB

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My main focus in class is on the Math Practice Standards. I try to model and expect students to live up to them in everything we do, but once a week we do a task to specifically focus on one of them. We teach content in that manner, so I think the MPSs deserve equal if not more  careful consideration.

Today’s Algebra A class (first semester algebra, but it offered every semester) was looking at MPS #6 : Attend to Precision. I wanted them to think about how they communicate their understanding with clear definitions and labeling work.

Thanks to the MTBoS, I have been frequenting the website Which One Doesn’t Belong? I chose shape #4 by Chris Hunter for the activity. Each student got a printed copy of the picture and a letter A-D as they walked in the door. They were tasked with finding out why that letter didn’t belong and then writing a definition for the group containing the other three. Next, they each drew another shape that would be in the group and one that would not be in the group. This took about 10-15 minutes.

We got back together as a class. Each student would read his or her definition and the rest of the students had to say which shape didn’t belong according to that definition. Using the feedback from the other students and based on the clarity and success of choosing the right shape, the writer was asked to redraft the definition.

As a close out, they were each tasked with deigning their own WODB and then writing precise definitions for each of the four groups. We’ll trade student generated tasks next time and see if the original writer’s definitions are similar to the one from student who is doing the task.

Exponential Equations Take 3

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We finished up our M&M Lab today with the help of Desmos. We don’t have many graphing calculators or other technology in the classroom, but I have an iPad and we can project its screen up on the wall.

If you are not using Desmos, you should check it out. All we did is use it for a scatter plot and the regression line (which any graphing calculator can do) but there is so much more out there that it can do! Start here and explore.

But even not using the tech to its potential, the students still got a kick out of entering all their data and coming up with a class model. It came out with a growth factor of 1.42 for the growth function and 0.55 for the decay function. Students compared there personal model with the class model and then made predictions for future trials and well as explained the discrepancy between the model and the experiment.

Then we moved on to determining linear versus exponential patterns. Each student had to make up a table of values and present it. The rest of the class would call out linear or exponential and the “teacher” would choose one of them to write the equation. We’ll cement that as a warm up tomorrow and then move on to bigger things!