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.

MTBoS Challenge Week 1

3 Things I Want To Continue From Last Year

1. Weekly goals for failing students- this will need a bit of modification, since I'll be doing a SBG hybrid, but similar to last year, failing students will be given a slip of paper with their current failing grade and their goal grade (+5%). They have a week to meet this goal or they call home to let their parents know they're failing and will be bringing home a progress report to be signed. The slip with their goal also had a list of 1-5 assignments on which they have an F. I noticed this specific goal, deadline, and means of reacting the goal help students make progress.

2. Interactive Notebooks- my students last year LOVED the organized and predicatable set up, table of contents and flippables in their notebooks. We were constantly referencing their notebooks and looking back to old skills they needed to refresh.

3. Rotations- last year each of my classes were broken up into three groups and they rotated through the activities each day. They were grouped by ability shown on pre-test and the activities were usually spiral review, notes, and teacher time. This allowed me to work with 1/3 of each class at a time, so each student got more one on one attention and I better knew the understanding of each student.

2 New Things I Want To Try This Year

1. Standards Based Grading Hybrid- there are some assignments I still want to bear weight on their grade, so I'm not going completely SBG, but 80% of their grade will be SBG. I'm a little nervous of the workload this will add, and how to explain it to parents/students, but the concept of students/parents/me knowing what skills students need more practice with- not assignments- just seems like common sense.

2. Cornell Notes- this is a notes organization created by AVID that lends itself nicely to review/studying

1 Goal For This Year

1. My highest goal for this year is that 80% of my students meet or exceed their expected growth this year. At the beginning of the year we are given the score students need to get on the end of grade test to have made a year's worth of growth. As of right now I'll have about 85 students, half of which will be identified as gifted in math. I anticipate my biggest struggle actually being with my gifted students; when a student comes to you at the 98th percentile, that doesn't leave a lot of room for growth.

I am trying this year to link up each week with the #MTBoSChallenge. I am new to blogging (and twitter) so we'll see how this goes. 

A Journey Into a Standards Based Grading Hybrid- Part 1

I'm a bit obsessive and have spent way too many hours reading every blog, tweet, research paper, etc. I could about standards based grading. It is summer after all, so I've got spades of time. I want to start by saying I absolutely LOVE the concept of standards based grading (or SBG for short). It makes perfect sense and I'm flabbergasted that I haven't heard anything about it before (I only graduated from my undergrad 3 years ago), and just happen to stumble across it this summer. My first exposure was from this blog, which led me to this blog, which spelled it out in the level of detail I wanted/needed (including posts on how to apply it to different subjects!).
This is one of those times I hate being a 6th grade teacher; since we're at the middle school and 5th grade is at the 4 feeder elementary schools we get minimal information about the students we're to have, and since these kids are being blended into one school for the first time issues could pop up where they didn't exist before. What we have heard is that next year's class is just as lazy as last year's class (and last year's class was VERY lazy) and they're very immature (prone to whining and crying). But even knowing that, I blame my greenness for my ideology that this year my class will run perfectly; every activity will run smoothly, all my students will love me and do all their work, they'll learn everything I teach them, and unicorns will prance around below blue skies and rainbows (that last one was a bit sarcastic, but you get the idea). Throw into the mix that I'll be teaching two AIG (academically intellectually gifted) classes and one regular class this year (I have only ever taught regular classes), and I think I'm going to go with a SBG hybrid model. I'm not comfortable jumping all in from the beginning. Here are my notes on what I've learned from others with a few musings of my own, let me know what you think.

1) Grades for my regular class will be 10% from Clipboard Math (a spiral review activity our students work on every day), 10% from notes (questions answered in eduCanon videos and reflection bookmarks completed once a unit), 80% SBG. Grades for my AIG students will be 7% Clipboard Math, 7% notes, 6% superstar homework (check out this link for the 6th grade series, it's problem-solving/higher-order-thinking practice), 80% SBG.

2) Assessments for SBG will be discussions in class, the final exit ticket for an LT, weekly quizzes, unit tests. Our district gives a "benchmark test" at the end of each quarter, I'm not sure if or how this will factor into their grade.

3) SBG will be on a 0-10 scale I got from here. 10 is advanced (can only be achieved by earning two or more 9's), 8-9 is proficient (wiggle room for little computation errors, missing label, etc.), 6-7 is basic, 0-5 below basic. 1 is they started the problem but didn't get far (underlined correct key words, messed around with the numbers a bit but obviously had no idea what they were doing). 0 is they didn't do anything with the problem.
I'm going with a 10 point scale because my district (and our required grade book system) is based on percentages. If it's a 4 point scale, and 3 means proficient, I don't want that showing up as a 75% in the grade book. Especially since we're on a 7 point grading scale, so 75% is a D. Yikes! Proficient canNOT be a D. My AIG parents would be freaking out, blowing up my email and phone, and stampeding my room for a change.

4) If a student has a 0 on a LT I contact their parents and tutor them during lunch; there's no excuse for getting a 0. This tells me they're either so lost they need immediate intervention, or so lazy they won't even pick up their pencil. And either they need a lot of 1-on-1 support or they need a lesson that actions (or inaction) have consequences, and if they waste my class time I will take their social time to make it up.

5) LT grades will not go down if they don't do as well on a later assessment. This is the part that has made me do the most thinking. I can understand why some people allow their LT grades to go down, it reflects the student's most current understanding of a target. My thoughts on that are first, what if they had a bad day, and that's why they did poorly on the second assessment. Most people would say, "Well, then they practice and see me for a re-assessment." That would add to my number of re-assessments exponentially, it would be more than I could handle, especially my first year at this. Second, if their grade is to show how well they understand a target, and at one point they were proficient, I don't see the benefit of punishing them for forgetting a few things. Honestly, this is 6th grade math, and some of my students don't know where they're going to sleep tonight or where they're going to get their next meal, so in that context what does it matter if they went down 2 or even 5 points on a topic.
I want their grade to show me what they have been able to push their minds to do. I need to have faith that my assessments are truly measuring their level, then I won't have to question that the earlier higher grade was a fluke. My plan, in exchange, is to keep track of their level progression for each LT. So maybe their level for dividing fractions went 5/7/8/7/6. In cases like this where they're showing quite a bit of forgetfulness I'll have a conversation with the student about how well they truly feel they understand the topic and why their score has been slipping. If it's an isolated target I might just give them a practice activity to work through and then we'll discuss it, if it's a pattern and they're truly declining I'll contact parents about what we need to do to provide that student with more support.

6) Homework- except for superstars- will be provided but not required. I will also be giving students the answers to the problems. I want homework to be about practicing skills. If they have the answers they know instantly if they're doing it right or wrong. The next day for the warm up we can discuss any issues they had. While this isn't completely an SBG thing, it's new to me, and I'm worried about it. As I mentioned, my students next year have a history of laziness, and I'm afraid that if it's not graded they won't do it. In the past I have tried making homework optional (now granted, I didn't give them the answers) and practically no one even looked at it, even my best students admitted to it. And I know they'll have a lot of required homework from their other teachers...

So, what do you think about all this? Have I lost my mind?