An Update & Prep for ISTE

Hi everyone! It was pointed out to me that my last post left a bleak image of my experience teaching high school. I'm happy to share things have vastly improved! I'm not sure I can pinpoint exactly what the problems were or how I fixed them, but even by the end of that first semester, things were leaps and bounds better.

Now as I finish my second year at my school I'm looking forward to the ISTE annual conference in San Antonio! I've made a plan of attack; I know this can be an epic PD experience and I don't want to waste a minute of it! First, I've pre-registered for the BYOD sessions that I feel I *can't* miss (unfortunately some of them were already full 😥). We're only allowed to pre-register for one each day, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Next, I printed out the program; I ❤️ tech for just about everything, but for this next task I wanted paper copies to mark up. I'm taking the program and marking each session in one of multiple ways (there are over 1300 sessions, so this is still a work in progress): a star next to a session is one I'm really interested in, an asterisk next to a session is a BYOD session I'm interested in, a curvy line through the sessions that don't apply to me, a jagged line through the sessions that would apply to me if I got the Tech Facilitator job at my school 🤞🏼, a star inside parentheses for a session that's offered at multiple times, and no marking at all for sessions that seem ok but aren't the top of my list for that time slot. Then I'll go through each time slot and decide my first, second and third preferences; if I'm not digging a session I plan on leaving to try another one, and I wanna be prepared for those possibilities.

If anyone's been to ISTE and has some words of wisdom I'd love to hear them!!

A Cry For Help

I love the MTBoS. I love reading about amazing math teachers and their cool ideas, and I'm amazed they're not thought of as celebrity-like in their regular lives. And the amount of available resources is awe-inducing.

But I'm also feeling like a horrible teacher, so I'm asking for help. Here's my situation:

I teach in a rural high school with a stellar reputation. We have about 1300 students, 87 of which are mine this semester. I teach three 80-minute periods of math II (check out the awesome way NC has broken up the high school CCSS http://maccss.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/Math+II+Standards), one of which is an honors course. And we are 1:1 MacBooks.

This is my first year teaching high school, so in my room so far we've started with a warm up each day (estimation180, visual patterns, mobiles, factoring/order of operations practice, and WODB), we then review the warm up and any questions they have on their homework (they have 5 questions each night, 3 of which are interleaved from previous days/weeks/months). Then I introduce a new topic (usually lecture- so far we've looked at quadratics in standard and vertex forms, factoring, and every way of finding zeros), go through 3-6 examples, then they do an exit ticket. This takes up the whole 80 minutes and it's common to run out of time.

The students are constantly saying they don't understand, but when I talk/plan with a fellow math teacher she's saying I'm making it as simple as I can. Out of my almost 90 students, about half are hardcore failing (like 30% or less), and I let them do corrections on everything as well as use an index card of info on quizzes/tests.

So, I see all these awesome ideas on Twitter and blogs, and wonder when people have the time to do these things. I'm literally introducing at least one new topic each day, and my students are struggling to keep up. Any ideas on how I can restructure my class to have time for these application/interactive activities? I want them to understand the concepts as well as see how this applies to anything beyond the mandated standards. I don't want to be a mediocre teacher anymore :(

Blaugust Challenge Post #3

Oops, I forgot to write yesterday :( today I want to talk about my favorite formative assessment from last year: my exit ticket system.

I started this system after winter break and it was super easy to set up. I used the site www.exittix.com. Students will need Internet access for this system, so this is best for 1:1 or BYOD schools. I set up my account and my 3 classes in a matter of seconds. There's an option to input each student's name, but I just gave my students the code for their class and lead them through creating their own accounts. Bless their hearts, a handful of students thought they had to go through this process each time, so each day they created a new account for themselves. It only took me a day or two to see what was happening, and I easily corrected their misunderstanding and deleted the old accounts, but I'd definitely let your kids know this account set up is a one time thing, especially if they're younger. (I did this with sixth grade.)

When you first set it up, it might auto-generate classes; if you don't like what you see just click "Edit Class" at the bottom of one of the classes, then "Edit school term, courses, classes" and you can change how many courses you teach and how many classes of each course. You'll want to be sure this part is accurate because you won't be able to copy an assignment from one class to another if they're not the same course.

Anyways, this site has a bunch of assessment types, but I only ever used the "Exit" type. Each day I gave my students one true/false question, one multiple choice, and one open ended. Beware the open ended!!!! The answer $4 is not counted the same as $ 4. It's VERY picky about correct answers; if you put "$4; $ 4" as the two possible answers (the ; separates possible answers) it would require students put a space before $ 4 because you put a space between the ; and $. Like I said, VERY picky. I always told my students NO labels and NO spaces for these answers, and I circulated to check anyone who had questions.

Each day after our practice I would pull up the projector/class version of the screen and Start the exit ticket, which made it viewable to students. The screen then showed their overall class average, the average for each problem, and the students' averages, but the neat part was it used their student IDs so they couldn't tell who was doing well and who was struggling. I had it sort students by score, so the kids who were doing well could see their score and be proud, and the kids who were doing poorly didn't have the whole class seeing a low score.

This went on for about a month before I realized I wasn't getting reliable data, as far as what they knew. It didn't count for a grade, so they didn't care so they didn't try their best. So I turned it into a competition. On the home screen you can see the overall class average for the year. If their class average for the day was higher than their average for the year they earned a letter. My advanced class convinced me that if their average for the day was an A (93% or higher) they'd got two letters. On the side board I spelled out Exit Ticket for each class using earned letters, and when they had spelled out Exit Ticket that class got a reward. My advanced classes got out of doing an advanced/problem-solving homework sheet the next week and my regular class got a pass for 10% added to an assignment. They loved it! They tried their best, took their time, cheered each other on and paid better attention to the notes/practice from that day.

And the data the website generates is awesome! I can't remember it all, and unfortunately it has deleted my classes for last year so I can't go back and look :( but it does save the questions from one year to the next, and you can use any questions created for any of your courses. One random note about the questions: it doesn't do advanced math, but it's super easy to copy and paste a picture into the problem, which I anticipate doing a LOT with my classes this year.

I used this every day we learned/practiced something; so not on test/quiz days. It took anywhere from 5 minutes (absolute value days) to 20 minutes (writing eqations days), but you can adjust the time by adjusting the number and types of questions. It was awesome because even if I was out for the day I could create the assessment and start it from home or the doctors office or wherever I was when it was Exit Ticket time. I HIGHLY recommend you check it out. And if you do please let me know your thoughts and if you have any other ideas of how to use it. I'm already coming up with plans on how to use the Quicklet function this year and I'm pumped :)

Slow down the teaching to speed up the learning

The title of this post was a line we heard A LOT last year, and at the time we were all thinking, "what is that supposed to mean?!??" I think I get it now. I've recently read Make It Stick, by Peter Brown, followed a Twitter chat about the book, and I'm continuing to read blog posts by other teachers about how they're going to use what the book taught them, and I finally understand what our admin meant by that line.

I use to stress about grading. We had 80 minute classes, to keep middle schoolers focused we (the sixth grade math teachers) broke our class time up into three chunks, add in homework and I could easily have 2 or 3 new assignments to grade each day (because if it wasn't graded, our students wouldn't do it). That's about 400 assignments over the course of a year. It was overwhelming.

I think what our admin meant was for us to do higher level questions, take more time for students to discuss their work and different ways of approaching a problem, explore how a problem might be extended, reflect on their thought processes and work, and revise their work. Instead of spending 25 minutes on 8 basic process problems we should have spent 1 or 2 whole classes working on a handful of deep questions.

Hindsight is 20/20, right? The awesome part about being a teacher is being able to start fresh each August and learn from our past mistakes, so that's what I plan to do :)

Here are some things I want to do:

1. Explicitly teach students how to take notes. I've gone to AVID training, so I can share Cornell Notes with them. I've don't interactive notebooks for a few years, so I can show them that way of being organized and making notes engaging. And I've pinned a few things on teaching students how to take notes. Now I just need to not stress about time and take a day or two (or three) to teach students how to organize and use what they're taught in class.

2. Give students time to reflect. Without time to reflect, how can I expect students to learn from their mistakes, or learn in general? I need to give them time to connect what we're learning to what they already know as well as any real life applications. I don't think they'll be use to this in math class, so I'll need to come up with a list of questions or sentence stems they can use to guide their thinking. One thing that might help with the building connections part would be AVID one-pagers; students get a blank sheet of paper, colored pencils, pens, pencils, etc. and summarize/connect/draw what they learned. Here is an example of a proportions one-pager:

Anna at TypeAMathLand.blogspot.com mentioned having a summary sheet in their notebooks at the end of each unit, and I LOVE the idea. I'm thinking of making the sheet an assignment/homework two days before each test, so students can come to review days (assuming I have time to take a day before each test to review) knowing what topics they need more time working with. 

I saw the idea somewhere (if it was your idea please let me know so I can give you credit!) of letting students grade their own tests using an answer key and a unique colored pen. I'm not sure I want them looking at test answer keys, but I plan to continue doing weekly checks of understanding (read: quizzes, but we didn't call them quizzes) and I think this would be a good time for them to figure out where (and why) they went wrong. This would help them (and me) see instantly what they know and what they need to review more.

3. Give students time to revisit and revise their work. Half the value of feedback is students being able to correct what they got wrong. I'm not sure what type of assignment(s) I want to do this for, but I want to give students a chance to make corrections after getting feedback but before its formally graded. Feedback might come from a peer, a group, or me, but I want to give students a chance to correct misconceptions before I assess their understanding and give it a grade. I know I won't have the time to look at each assignment twice, even if I do some peer checking, so I want to be sure to implement this where it'll have the greatest impact.

4. Continue spiral review activities, and make tests spiral as well. A big point of Make It Stick was mixed review and revisiting a topic days/weeks/months later. The school I was at required we do a spiral review activity each day, so interleaving (as it's called in the book) is something I'm very familiar with, but I think I need to do more than just one activity. I see homeworks being a mixed review, not including any problems on the topic covered that day (again, an idea I can't remember where I got it from; let me know if it's yours), and tests including items from previous units. I think this last part will go well with the standars-based grading hybrid I did last year (and plan to do this year); these old-unit questions will be optional and will be the topics the most students have low grades for. If students choose to attempt these problems they can replace their current grade on the topic. One thing I struggled to decide on last year, and I can use some input on for this year, is whether newer lower grades should replace older higher grades. This past year I always kept the highest grade a student earned on a learning target, assuming that lower grades were a product of having a bad day or making a silly mistake. I figured if a student could earn an A (which was a real challenge) on a learning target at one point they had to have a real understanding of a topic, and any newer lower grades were due to issues besides not understanding.

In summary, I think that spending more time working on, reflecting on, and fixing higher quality questions would allow me to slow down the teaching to speed up the learning. Thanks for reading my brain dump! And thank you Anna for your post that lead to this eureka moment! Any feedback/advice anyone can give would be greatly appreciated!

Blaugust Challenge Post #2

I meant to do this post yesterday, but it was the last day of a family trip and I drove back so I didn't get the chance. I'm going to try rewriting my original Baugust Post #1; 20 facts about me.

1. I grew up in Ohio.

2. I moved to North Carolina after college to get away from Ohio weather.

3. I've spent the last three years teaching sixth grade math; this year will be my first year teaching high school.

4. I want to go back to school for a Master's, but I'm not sure yet what I want to study.

5. I got my cat from Craig's list when I was in college- I wanted a pet and it was easier to take care of a kitten than a puppy. His name's Kolby; I named him after an adorable 6 year old kid I had in summer camp who sang Beatles songs.

6. I LOVE traveling- I've been to 11 countries and 21 states.

7. I LOVE reading- my favorite is historical fiction.

8. I'm a horrible cook- I've managed to burn no-bake cookies and easy mac :/

9. I rarely eat meat, I never eat seafood, and I never drink milk or (nor?) pop

10. My favorite show is Walking Dead and I'm super excited to see the spin off series.

11. I've wanted to be a teacher since kindegarten, but I was in seventh grade when I decided I wanted to teach math.

12. My favorite math topic is a tie between algebra and statistics.

13. I started playing piano when I was 10 and continued playing instruments until I graduated high school.

14. I had stitches three times as a kid.

15. I have 1  2/3 tattoos. My second one isn't complete; where I get the last piece done is just as important as the tattoo itself.

16. In college I was in a program called Camp Adventure; they trained us and sent us to military bases around the world to run childcare services. For under $5000 total I spent 12 weeks in Japan, 15 weeks in Key West, 3 weeks in Italy, and 10 weeks in Boston.

17. I have 2 to 3 cups of coffee every morning, if I don't have coffee I get a migraine that afternoon.

18. Last school year was rough and I considered switching to be an ITF (Instructional Technology Facilitator).

19. I've never been good at playing sports, I lack the coordination.

20. My first job in high school was working in a candy shop. My second job was working at an amusement park.

To join the Blaugust challenge check out the prompts at statteacher.blogspot.com, and be sure to share your post on Twitter using #MTBoSBlaugust.

Blaugust Challenge Post #1

So I just finished typing up this post when the app crashed and it completely disappeared 😭

I had originally written for the "20 facts about yourself" prompt, but after the crash I'm feeling defeated and don't want to type it all again, so I'll come back to that prompt later and instead I'll respond to prompts 6 and 7. (For the list of prompts visit statteacher.blogspot.com)

First is "One time in math class... (as a teacher)". So last year I had a student that had a very big personality, and his other teachers and I spend a lot of time teaching him when it was ok to be funny and when it wasn't appropriate. By the third quarter he had things pretty much under control. One day I was at the board leading the class through an example and I called on that student (he was just over my shoulder, so chances are I was just making sure he was on task, I don't remember exactly). I do remember turning and looking over my shoulder at him- waiting for an answer- and he must not have heard me call on him because I turn to see him doing a little dance in his seat (pencil in hand, looking at his sheet), snapping his fingers, and very quietly singing (now keep in mind everyone else has heard me call on him, so the whole class is watching and waiting for his answer) "you know what to do with that big fat butt... wiggle wiggle wiggle". We all bust out laughing and he looks up with the most surprised/shocked face I've ever seen, he had no idea we were watching him; I swear I'll never forgot his face in that moment. It was one of those times I couldn't help laughing, and he was an easy-going kid so he laughed along with us. It became an inside joke with that class and helped me remember that it's just as important to laugh with my kids as it is to cover all the standards.

Now for my "One time in math class... (as a student)". It was seventh grade when I realized it was math I wanted to teach. I'd always known I wanted to be a teacher, but up to that point I had no idea what I wanted to teach. We were learning about volume and surface area. Our teacher gave us each a little box of nerds to eat while we took notes, but we had to be very careful with the boxes. After the notes she had us measure the nerds boxes, then find the surface area and volume. We worked in groups, and I remember a lot of my friends were struggling to find the surface area; the top and bottom of each box has four flaps and they were counting both long flaps on the top and both on the bottom. I struggled to get them to understand that for surface area you only needed one of the long flaps on top, and one on the bottom. So I took them to the side one by one until each of them understood. Seeing the lightbulb go on and helping them understand is what convinced me I wanted to be a math teacher; I loved math and loved helping others understand.

If you're not already writing for the Blaugust challenge you should join us, and don't forgot to share your post on Twitter using #MTBoSBlaugust!

Keep, Change, Start, Stop

Our last day of school was two weeks ago... I can't believe its already been two weeks! I'm trying to be very aware of every day this summer, so at the end I don't feel like I've taken it for granted; for example, if we were still in school right now I'd be in the middle of my second class for the day. I'm also trying to do something five days a week, so I don't feel like I wasted my time.

My big to-do is getting ready for next year. I'm switching from teaching sixth grade to teaching high school. Right now the plan is two Math I courses and one Math II Honors course first semester, and two Math II courses and one Math II Honors second semester. I'm liking the idea that this time next year I will have taught and tweaked Math II Honors twice. I have a friend that teaches science as a semester class in seventh grade, and I'm envious that she gets more opportunities to complete her curriculum and make improvements.

So, without further ado, I'd like to talk about what I want to Keep, Change, Start and Stop...

Keep

• "Interactive" Notebook- I love the organization of us all being on the same page, and knowing exactly where to direction a student when they're struggling (even better, when a student uses it without prompting!). They're not very interactive (I don't do many foldables) but that's something I'll need to work on at some point.
• Class Jobs- I might have to do some modifying of what jobs are available, but I LOVE having the extra help around class. My most used class job was group leaders; group leaders would help me pass out and collect things throughout class. I handed them each (three in each class) a small stack of papers and they passes them out. They also collected papers at the end of class, so I didn't have 27 students trying to turn in their paper in at the same time. Another job that seems minor, but I loved having, was door monitor. They didn't really monitor the door, but whenever we went anywhere (we had to walk as a class everywhere, and I had to escort them) I had one student responsible for closing the door when everyone was out of the room.
• Class Economy- Part of my classroom management was a class store. Students earned points for behaving, doing class jobs, doing extra work, or helping me. Students could redeem this points for supplies and rewards in my class store. I had a link to a pdf of the "prices" for each item on my class website, and I also created a google form they used to submit an order. I think this is one of the reasons my classes ran so smoothly; students loved earning points and were super cooperative.

Change

• Standards Based Grading- I want to keep the idea that grades are reported by learning target, but in a district that's still on a 0-100, A-F scale its a huge stresser trying to grade based on understanding. So I want to continue to break up grades by skill, but each question will be worth two points (one for showing work, one for correct answer) and grades will be calculated normally.
• Notes- This past year my goal was to do cornell notes, and I started out the year doing so, but it faded away. I tried letting up control, and putting more responsibility on the students, but they didn't keep up with it and I didn't enforce it. I'm not sure if I'll do cornell notes again this year, but I have found some awesome pins about explicitly teaching students how to take notes and I am going to do that, in some form.

Start

• Daily reflections of lessons- I found my lesson plans from my first year. Man, were they detailed! AND I reflected on each lesson each day!! I think that stopped when I stopped printing my lessons and didn't have a pretty blank box staring at me everyday. This year I bought a lesson plan book (this past year I used a google spreadsheet); I'm trying hand written lessons and I want to start reflection again each day.
• Teaching high school- This seems like a duh, at this point, but with switching districts, schools, grades, standards, I think one Start is enough.

Stop

• Talking so much- I think I talk too much sometimes and my words are losing their value.
• Grading everything- Ok, I've gotten away from grading EVERYTHING, but I still grade too much. I'm not sure if that's just part of being a math teacher (my ELA, Science and Social Studies friends don't grade nearly as much as I do) or if I'm over doing it. I'll have to find someone (more multiple people) in the math department at my new school with more experience and find out what they do.