I do it!

".... And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous." - Einstein

Kevin Honeycutt spoke at our district kickoff on Monday. I have seen him at MACUL but I do not recall Kevin sharing his background. I think it really helped to frame his message based on some of the feedback I heard from other staff. He encouraged us to not be "that guy" who just dusts off the 3 ring binder of lesson plans each year. Go beyond having kids filling out worksheets with the bold words from the text book or having students write for an audience of one. If a student can Google it, then why are you giving a 50 minute lecture on it? Challenge students to think and create. Do not think of technology as a crutch or "cheat" but as a tool that enables us to focus on thinking and creating. These are messages many of us have heard but it does not hurt to hear it again and again.

This past summer I had a chance to attend Twitter Math Camp (#TMC12). Honeycutt shared the above quote which made me start to reminisce and then realize I did not finish (well, ok start) my post about the experience.  You know how so many professional development days you feel like it is just being done to you? As my kids would say when they were younger, "I do it!" That kind of sums it up. Us taking charge or as Fouss put it, "For Us by Us." For a variety of recaps visit Lisa's post and for some history of how it came to be, visit Sam Shah's post. There was even some debate and press in Education Week about the awesomeness of math teachers taking advantage of social media.

I can not imagine what it must be like to teach in a school where you might be one of only a couple of math teachers. Even in a larger school like the one I am in, our experiences are limited to just the ten of us. We have our struggles and are always looking to find possible solutions. There are so many others out there who have experiences to share.  With social media, it has become much easier to reach out and connect with others.

If you have ever thought about what this Twitter thing is all about or what are these blogs people say they are reading and/or writing, something was made just for you to get started.  This guide to Twitter and blogs came out of a session by Sam Shah at TMC. I highly recommend anyone interested in using Twitter or blogs for your professional development, even if you just want to peek, go and visit that guide.

When I first heard TMC was really happening, I was not sure if I should go.  I used money as an excuse to cover up some stupid insecurities I had. For some reason I was thinking because I was not that involved last school year on Twitter like I was the prior year, I should not go.  I hemmed and hawed about it at home and finally my wife said go.  Trying to still use money as an excuse, I conveniently late in the game asked if anyone still needed a roomie. Troy from TechSmith generously offered for me to stay with him. With the money excuse now pulled out from under me, there was nothing I could do but go.

I was secretly excited but nervous as hell. Not sure what I was thinking. I should have known after being invited into the stats circle and book talks and being gently nudged into my first post that in person these folks would not be any different. At first, I did my usual wallflower bit but eventually warmed up and felt at home enough to run circles (he he).

We packed in the days which made my brain hurt but then had great fun in the evening. It was the perfect mix. Big thank you to Lisa and Shelli for putting in the work. The well planned out yet flexibility of the event was appreciated. We even had those little signs outside each room which described the session. Also thank you to Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School for hosting us.

I enjoyed the morning work sessions. Not necessarily the Exeter set itself but the discussions about the math that we had. Then there was the morning we broke out into a spontaneous lesson plan after doing the typical baseball diamond problem.

Have you ever been to those conferences where you want to be in different sessions but they are happening at the same time so you have to pick? Yeah, me neither. I'm usually happy if I can come home with an idea or two. The afternoon sessions at TMC were hard to choose from. I needed to clone myself so I could be everywhere. I finally got a chance to sit down with Geogebra, got some handy tips for batch importing into Google calendar and saw how others use Google apps in the classroom and dove into the world of interactive notebooks.

When you hear the phrase "flipped classroom", it can conjure up images of fingernails scrapping across the chalk board to the revolution of math education depending on who you talk to.  To me, I had the image of kids watching video on how to solve a system of equations and then coming into class the next day to practice problems. This experience did not make sense to me or match how I thought students learn best. Yet, having the videos available did make sense.

This was my "a ha" moment and I am glad Troy shared his thoughts. I plan to explore the "Explore-Flip-Apply" model this year.

There were other sessions as well that I was able to walk away with to bring back to my students and colleagues. I even got a chance to play a math board game. This was unlike any conference or PD I have ever been at. It felt strange to come home overloaded with ideas and missing all the fellow attendees friends at the same time.

Thank you to the mathtwitterblogosphere for welcoming me with open arms and allowing me to have an incredible experience.

New Home

Just a quick post to mark where I transitioned from wordpress to here. I did not move because wordpress was not user friendly.  The move was mainly because my life is all on Google. Hopefully by only being a click away, I will have one less excuse not to get my thoughts down.

I am working on my post #TMC12 reflection and a more detailed post on how I use Scribblar.

Rethinking the School Day

Recently some staff members have kicked around ideas on how to provide intervention during the school day.  We feel our current school day is not meeting the needs of many students.  If a student wants help it is before/after school or during lunch if the student has the same lunch as the teacher (and the teacher is available).  This works for some but not all students have someone available to provide a ride early or get picked up late.  Plus there are the students who shall we say are not inclined to seek help.

Our current set up is a 72 minute 5 period day on trimesters.  Most courses are one or two trimesters long.  Some students do have a support period (special education mainly) but most do not.

We are thinking of a seminar period (for lack of a better name) where students can get support, enrichment or just plain study hall.  The catch is not all students have a choice.  If you have a D or E your are automatically placed into a support in that subject (if multiple subjects pick the weakest).  If you lowest grade is an  A or B you have a choice of an enrichment or study hall.  If your lowest grade is a C you have a choice of all 3.

This seminar period would be at the same time of the day so every teacher is involved.  The support option would have 15 students with a teacher. The enrichment and study hall options would have 30-35 students with a teacher.

The support option would be the teacher giving specific help, not necessarily just kids sitting there doing (or pretending) to do work.  Instead of having 15 students myself, I could see teaming up with another teacher and splitting our kids based on who needs help with what on that day.

The enrichment option would be opportunities for students to investigate something that interests them.  I could see a teacher building trebuchets and discussing the science and math behind them.  Another teacher might have students who love to read and they do book talks and/or create digital reviews (podcast, glogster, etc.). There could be a student newspaper group or a group to take on responsibility of the school web presence.  PE teacher could do sports science (not roll balls out and play but actually talk about and investigate the science of sports).  I can see this being opened up to students for what they might be interested in.

The study hall would be plain old study hall but we can do some skill building lessons for study habits.

In order to do this, we would need to cut some time from the other 5 periods to create the seminar period.  They would go from 72 to 65 so we would gain a 35 minute seminar period.  Is this enough time? Do we do this every day or Tuesday's and Thursday's only? These are questions more staff might have opinions on.  Thirty minutes seem short but not sure if 35 minutes would be enough.  If we did this every day that would be 35 minutes per week lost in instruction which is about 7 days lost over the course of a trimester.  That might be too much for some folks (we already feel rushed in trimesters).  On the other hand, if we are getting targeted support to all students who need or wish, would that make it so more could be accomplished?

Our ideas are nothing new or earth shattering.  I swear I have read examples of what some other schools are doing but of course I am unable to find that information (must have been pre diigo and Evernote).  I am hoping some others can share how their day is structured and any pros/cons.

 

#anyqs

So here is the usual "long time no see."  Today I sent out an email to my colleagues and afterwards thought, this could have been a post.  Then my wife came home with a message from a colleague saying I needed to start blogging.  I guess you can say "I saw the sign."

Today during our staff development day, a few colleagues shared out what they have learned at their Cultures of Thinking workshops.  It prompted me to send out the email below and to then think it should have been a post.

Hey all mathy folk,

Earlier today we chatted about student thinking. Later on at CJHS building activities, Darlene shared out something from cultures of thinking called see-think-wonder routine. My first thought while she was talking was "who stole #anyqs?"

For those of you who haven't dipped your toes into reading math teacher blogs or poking around twitter, #anyqs is a hashtag (a way to tag a conversation) that people use when posting (tweeting) something to do with a math topic you see around you.  #anyqs is short for "any questions?"  Example below:

(Here is the link from above if you were curious)

Yup, a whole bunch of math teachers out there just posting up stuff for you to use (of course if you are a nice guy you would go back and comment on the blog letting the person know how it went, what you did differently, etc.  That's the idea behind sharing online.)

Want to know/see more?  This is the one that started the whole idea behind #anyqs.  Here is a spreadsheet (google doc of course) of possible #anyqs created by Dan Meyer (the guy your probably saw this about. This post describes the three acts of #anyqs.  Here are some blog posts describing more about the idea behind #anyqs and how you might use it.

If you have twitter, search for the hashtag #anyqs and you will see many more ideas being tossed around that you might use or spark a conversation with. Just to help show what you can do with twitter, here is an example of some teachers (PS these are 3 teachers on opposite sides of the U.S. who only met through twitter, PSS if you are on twitter you should follow those 3) talking through a lesson plan involving #anyqs.

Cheers,
Jamie

Common Core Assessment

Now that the Common Core has been out and we have had some time to digest the new math standards, the next question is, what will the assessment look like?  I wanted to share information present to us.

Since the fall, our district has been looking at our current alignment compared to the Common Core.  For schools in Michigan, there does not appear to be a lot of changes.  We have put together a plan on how to make the changes we need to over the next couple of years.  The first Common Core assessment appears to be in the spring of 2015 (2014-15 school year).

So what will the assessment look like?  Our state is part of the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC).  The other consortium is Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).  A brief summary of SBAC is here.  This one gives a more in depth overview of both SBAC and PARCC along with a possible timeline.  It also goes into more detail on what the tests will look like.

The SBAC assessment will include a substantial percent of performance and constructed response items and they intend to assess understanding, skills and processes.  This does not look like the usual state multiple choice test.  Some key points:

• Use computer adaptive technology that will ask students tailored questions based on their previous answers.


• Use one test at the end of the year for accountability purposes.


• Create a series of interim tests used to inform students, parents, and teachers about whether students are on track.

We have had some information shared with us on what the end of the year test will look like.  It will be adaptive.  If you are familiar with Aleks then you have an idea of what adaptive is.  Basically, when a student answers a question the next question is chosen based on what happened on the previous question.  This means part of the assessment will be on a computer.

A preliminary break down of the item types include: 22% selected response, 41% technology-enhanced constructed-response, 14% traditional constructed response and 23% performance (1-2 class periods).

Here are some example items SBAC had in their grant application.  Looking through them you see some of the usual MC questions.  What is new are the constructed response (our state dropped constructed response a few years ago due to cost).  Some of them involve using an applet.  The last example is one for the performance question.

Based on the example constructed response and the performance task some folks are in for big changes.  This is not the usual memorize and regurgitate questions.  If you have not yet done so, there is going to be some changes in what you ask students to do in your classroom.  Educators have talked before on what we ask our students to do vs what other countries ask their students to do.  Like many of you, I too went straight to my grade level in the Common Core to see what the standards were.  Looks like we need to pause and talk more about the Standards for mathematical Practice starting on page 6.

One question comes to mind, for our school how do we get 1400 kids on computers?  It was mentioned the first couple years will be a transition with schools able to choose to go the "paper" route until technology is updated.  With states slashing our budget, who is paying for it?

I am curious to see how this plays out.

Update (May 4):
Came across some additional supporting materials at Tools for the Common Core Standards.  It has information such as progression of topics through the common core as well as a more interactive display of the common core.

Update (May 5):
CCSSM and Curriculum and Assessment: NOT Business as Usual  An article  from the NCTM president outlining the Common Core.

Furthermore, these standards include both Standards for Mathematical Content and Standards for Mathematical Practice, and students’ mastery of both the content and the practices will be assessed in the designs being created by the two assessment consortia.

NCTM President J. Michael Shaughnessy

He mentions how many conversations are focusing on the standards themselves when we should be looking at the practices.  He includes some additional resources.

• Presentation of assessment plans from both assessment consortia.  More detailed info than what I summarized in the post.  Also gives some reasoning and explanation.


• Performance tasks are available to the public from the MAP project on the MARS website and can be downloaded for noncommercial use.


• Another collection of assessment tasks from Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative.


• NCTM assessment resources from the Assessment Sampler series.