Tag: bridge to college

Adapting for Discourse

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In one of my classes (Bridge to College) there are sets of developed lesson plans that address the standards for the course. Because of agreements with the community colleges in our state, I do have to stick fairly closely to the outline provided. Luckily, the lessons themselves are pretty well thought out and have a huge focus on the practice standards and the idea of more than one right way to solve problems approach that I like to employ in my other classes.

I do, however, take the opportunity to make small additions or adjustments to further the opportunity for student discourse. Continue reading “Adapting for Discourse” →

Bridge to College 4: Collaboration

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Part 4 of a year long series: The first 3 here.

Not a long post today, but its been longer than I’d like between posts. There is a push in Bridge to make sure students have a chance to develop skills that will serve them in life after high school. One of those skills is creating a collaborative peer group to support learning in college or the ability to work on a team.

Students were asked to think back to a successful group they’d been apart so far this year and brainstorm why they though it worked. They shared those out and are in blue on the poster below. They also had to think to when their group struggled or weren’t as successful and what might have been the reason. When we shared those answers, they had to come up with a solution or the opposite positive of the issue. Those are in green on the poster. When they work in groups and are giving self-reflections or if I’m giving feedback we reference the poster. “We compared ideas and strategies at a level 3 today, but probably told instead of helped when someone got stuck. I’d give us a 2 there today.” “I saw you guys justifying your work and providing constructive criticism! Be mindful of where your whole group is pace-wise though.” It was their words and their ideas. Harder to argue about cell phone use when they said it was impeding their learning.  Continue reading “Bridge to College 4: Collaboration” →

Bridge to College Part 3

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This is part 3 in a year long reflection of one specific class period. Part 1 and Part 2 can be found here: All Bridge to College.

Some of my favorite lessons have all been from the MARS Shell Classroom Challenges. The structure is predictable and they are all built to encourage meaningful student to student discourse and yet they are easy to implement and run. I have used them in two ways, to see where students are and begin to develop conceptual understanding near the beginning of a topic or as an end of the unit recap/group work quiz. Part of the students grade in this class comes from their work on mathematical communication both written and verbal. I am also trying to build up the idea of peer support. When my students leave high school, part of their success in higher education might depend on whether or not they ask for help from their professor or their fellow students.

The following work is from the Sorting Equations and Identities Lesson.  When I assign group work, I travel around with a clipboard to take notes. This particular lesson, each group seemed to approach the task differently and there work styles were different. One group really wanted to do a lot of rough draft work and then put together a clean, well explained poster. Others wanted a more informal capture. The groups with the least writing were also struggling more with talking to each other. Some looked at structure of the equations only, some solved to see what happened. Instead of answering questions, I asked groups to explain pieces to each other.

 

Finally, they each individually took a quick assessment. The group that struggled the most at talking to each other also struggled the most on the assessment.  I wanted to check in to see what was the issue. Did they all have a conceptual gap which prevented productive discussion? Nope, just struggled with motivation to talk. I showed them quiz results and asked them to talk to each other for 10 minutes and retake quiz with no additional guidance from me. All the quiz scores went up. Then we had a quick chat about why group work can be valuable and I extracted promises or increased participation in the future.

I want to address the idea of collaboration and learning with the full group in the future. I think the next time we assess I’ll have them all try alone and I won’t even grade/look until the end of the next step. Then talk to each other for 5-10 minutes and then re-assess on a clean quiz with no instruction/input from me. My assumption is that scores will go up. If that hold true, as a group we’ll talk through why that happens and what strategies that implies for future problem solving.

Bridge to College Part 2: One of Those Days

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We’ve been in such a good grove so far this year. Students are coming on time, attendance has been good, the focus and willingness to struggle productively has been awesome. And then…….

Last Friday hit. Groups of two were working on the Shell task on polynomial dot patterns together. Three students wandered in late and started trying to get students off task. I had to redirect some less than appropriate for school discussions. I put the three new ones in a group together and tried to get them started. The task was tough for all of them. I had to spend too much time redirecting the new group and didn’t offer enough support to the others. I walked away from that class feeling pretty down.

Then I turned here for some reflections:

  • I chose to group the late ones together so they could start at the beginning, but group dynamics worked against that. I think I’d rather have them split up and jump into already started groups. It could be good practice for the groups to explain/teach the late students.
  • Should I have spent more time with the on-taskers? I’m not sure where I fall here. They would have gotten more out of class had I let the others stay off task, but there is a line where I can’t ignore behaviors. It is so rarely an issue that I haven’t spent enough time thinking about it. Normally, the late students join in so seamlessly.I want to find a better balance.
  • I need to be okay with that fact that not all days will be the best day. I’ve been so pumped about this specific class that I took the not so good class too hard.
  • I wanted to address it. I had a plan to do so.

 

Monday. I had planned to have a quick discussion with the students about how working in teams requires a different level of respect for each other. I’m actually less concerned with someone interrupting me than a group of peers.

I didn’t have this conversation.  Instead, before I could say anything one of the involved students came up to me to apologize. He says, “That wasn’t me on Friday. You know. I mean, I’m sorry. That’s not who I am, I hope you know that. I’ll do better.” Instead of giving my spiel, I answered, “We all have bad days. And you’re right, I do know that you are a fantastic student. I’m glad today is better.” And it was. Class was back to going well. Students worked hard. We used Fawn’s Visual Patterns to work through seeing patterns. Students worked with teams and then came up to the board to show the whole class when they found a unique or interesting way to look at the patterns.

And we do. I have days when I’m not feeling it. I’m sure the students know. In fact, I often tell them I’m having an off day so if I say or act differently I am sorry and its not about something they did. Teenagers are certainly going to have those days. These kids have so much going on. And they haven’t had as much time to figure out how to deal with those off days. I pulled said student aside again after class. To thank him and tell him I was proud about how he handled himself.

With that in mind, that students are going to have days where they act in ways we wish they wouldn’t, I want to keep brainstorming strategies to respect both the students who are ready to work and those that need a little gracious understanding. I’m hoping that as I continue to get to know each student I can sense when the day might be off ahead of time, but I know that won’t always be the case.

Bridge to College Part 1

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We are now just over a week into the school year. Its my second year in the same building, third with the same school (A record for me and my crazy moving lifestyle) which is both exciting and scary.

It is also year two of a new pilot math class I took on last year which is intended to help students who struggle with math get ready for college by way of deeper understanding on math practice and content standards they have mostly already seen. I really like the focus on going deeper not wider and showing the students that they are all mathematicians. I had a great little group to pilot it last year and I was worried going into this one, but I’ve been blown away by their willingness to jump out of comfort zones and into the work. The class also comes with some PD to look at student work and discuss teacher practices which has been great.

My goal is to blog about this class more this year. I’m asking the students to really focus on communicating their thinking, so I’m trying to do so as well. I want to reflect on student thinking, the challenges my site presents, and importantly, my teaching and where I can grow.

We opened the first unit with two questions: When is estimation appropriate?  How can you take advantage of the structure of an expression/problem?  And the MPS focus was constructing viable arguments.

Task One: Bucky the Badger. We watched the clip and split into groups. I tried out two techniques I haven’t had a chance to use yet: Visual Random Grouping (kind of silly with a class of 6-10 students, but fun anyways) and Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces (Amazing. Had some complaints about standing, but they wrote more, tried more strategist and had more all around participation.)

 

After the groups came up with an estimate, they were tasked with explaining why it was reasonable. We had a quick whole group chat about order of the points and then split up to find a smallest possible and highest possible push up value  before watching the reveal clip.

We then had a quick discussion about the class itself. They felt really proud that they were close and we looked at the ‘math’ involved in the problem. Mostly addition. The idea that even basic math can be a powerful tool is one I want them to take away from the class. Its not about how many advanced theorems you have memorized, but how you are able to apply what you do know and know when you need to learn a new math strategy to go further.

We ended with a quick Illustrative Math task around reasoning about place value. Again, an easy entry problem to set up larger discussions. Small pieces of knowledge add up when you look for structure and patterns. The class does get into more typical high school math type content soon, but the first unit is really about building up the idea of how the class is going to run in terms of expectations, group work, communication and writing required as well as reminding them that taking advantages of what you do know, you can solve problems you’ve never encountered before. This is not a learn the steps, do the practice class. I don’t teach like that anyways, but this class is specifically built up to avoid it.

Moving forward, I want to capture more student examples and conversations to share here. This is such a great class, full of students who have historically ‘failed’ at math who are being amazingly brave and owning their work. Its been a week and I’m excited to see where the year goes.

 

Day 3: Woo Hoo

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We made it to Day 3. That might not seem too exciting to anyone else, but it is September 21st and only the 3rd day of school due to a contract issue and teacher strike. As of 7 pm last night, I didn’t know whether or not we’d be having Day 3 today or weeks from now.  Now, I feel more grounded. School is off and running.

Monday started off and running too. We drove right into challenging material and students doing the hard work. I love walking around the room taking notes, peering in to conversations, and not talking back. For most of the students, this was a shock to them. They seem on board, but I’m hoping soon that they, too, prefer working this way.  Attendance was better than I was expecting which was exciting as well.

The Bridge to College class did Dan Meyer’s Bucky the Badger and followed up with  a quick reasoning with numbers activity to close out. They had to take a multiplication fact and justify other multiplication and division problems without using a calculator or an algorithm. (Example: If 17 x 22 = 374, what is: 17 x 2.2;   2200 x 170;   374/0.17  ?)

Geometry is working on creating and using definitions. I provided each group with cards that had vocabulary terms and pictures that were example and other non-examples of said term. They had to create definitions and then switch with another team to try draw examples from the definitions only (no term). Tomorrow we’ll revisit the definitions with feedback included and they’ll be tasked with rewriting them.

   
 

Algebra is working on inequalities, using some guided exploration to review/discover the effect of operations on inequalities. My other 3rd year class was picking out linear, quadratic, and exponential patterns from tables and creating equations. Lots of good energy today!