Unit Dividers - #MTBoSBlaugust Day 15

 

It's Monday, y'all!  And we're halfway through the month!  I'm not doing so great on my Blaugust challenge, but I'm sticking with it and giving it my best shot.  Thank you to all of you who are participating in the challenge!

I love Back to School time for the fresh start, but to be honest, BTS is one of my least favorite times of the year!  So many new names and personalities to learn, setting up the class culture, and all the administrative stuff that comes with a new year just wears me out!  I'm ready for a few weeks from now when I know student names, my rosters aren't changing every day, and we're in a groove with regard to class procedures.

BUT - I did finally figure out my Unit Dividers this weekend - Go me!!

With the switch over to my new school last year, I had some issues with my notebook that I wasn't super happy with.  Our homework was online, so the notebook was mostly a place for notes, but that meant there wasn't a great delineation from unit to unit.

I knew I wanted to do some sort of divider and I had it on my to-do list ALL.SUMMER.LONG, but the procrastinator that I am, I didn't actually DO anything about it!  

I looked at so many blogs and asked on Twitter to get examples, but I ended up settling on this pretty simple template - a blank table of contents, and a set of objectives / vocabulary for the unit.  Of course, it helped that I was just out of time to figure it out - we are setting up our notebooks tomorrow and starting curriculum on Wednesday, so it was "put up or shut up" time.

We'll see how it goes! :)

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If you are interested in joining in the #MTBoSBlaugust fun, here's a post with some prompts to help you out!  The idea is just to blog / micro-blog during August to help us focus and reflect on the year ahead.  Please tag your post on Social Media with the hashtag #MTBoSBlaugust so we can support you in your blogging journey!

#MTBoSBlaugust - Thinking About Notebooks

If you've known me for any length of time, you probably know that I love organization and one of my favorite parts of my class are the student notebooks.  Every year, I have kids that that overwhelmingly tell me that they find the notebook so helpful as they prepare for the AP Exam and even have kids email me a few years later to tell me about asking their parents to mail the notebooks to college for their college stat classes. 🥰

I first learned about Interactive Notebooks (INBs) at TMC12, when Megan presented about them and we all quickly fell in love.  I jumped in with both feet in the Fall of 2012 and have never looked back...

Until now.

COVID-19 is causing quite a disruption in my classroom procedures, y'all!  Assuming we are back in person, student desks will be moved into rows, as separated from each other as possible, so no more groups of 4 students working together.  There will be no shared supplies, so there goes my table buckets with scissors and tape and glue sticks and my table folders to pass out papers...

So, what do I do?  I turn to the Twitters of course! :)

Read the entire thread here

Before I figure out what to do, I needed to think about what my big goals were for their notebooks.  I mean, other than organization, what's the reason for them?  And honestly, the biggest thing is to have an easy reference for the key ideas for the course.  I try to organize the notebook so that the left side has the daily notes and on the right side is the daily problem set.  The notes are often in a foldable or some other guided format, mainly because stat questions are really lengthy overall.  

So with that in mind, here's what I am thinking so far...

• If we start in person - For AP Stat, create a semester long booklet with the essential questions / reading guides to go with our textbook.  This ensures they have the big ideas for each section in an easy to find format.  If we have to pivot to remote learning for either short or long term, they already have a guide for continuing our course.

• If we start remotely - If I don't have a chance to see them at all, then I want an easy to follow notes format that can be used consistently with a variety of lesson formats - Desmos / videos / lecture.  I also want it to be something that they can easily replicate on notebook paper or print out a blank template if they choose.  I want to make sure it has the elements of the WSQ (Watch, Summarize, Question) format from Flipping with Kirch, plus an area for referencing their textbook and the daily lesson objective or essential question.  Right now, here's the format I'm playing with:
  
  
  
  

  
  I settled on this generic format because in the spring, I did a digital notebook on Google slides and while I liked it overall, it really needed to be printed for full impact and I cannot reasonably ask my students to do a lot of printing if we are in an extended remote situation.  I've tried out the format above with a sample lesson and it worked okay, but it's still in beta testing. 🙂

How are you handling the notebook situation for Fall 2020?  I've been lurking on a digital NB group on FaceBook and I've already decided that I don't have the time or patience to do something too fancy, but I'm eager to hear your ideas!

#MTBoSBlaugust - Rocketbook Hack

This month, I am participating in a blogging challenge called #MTBoSBlaugust.  To read posts from other participants, click on the logo above.

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I LOVE a-ha moments!!! :)

This post might not make a ton of sense, but I wanted to share it with everyone since it's back to school time and this might be a hack that helps you out!

If you've not heard of Rocketbooks, it's a text to digital notebook where you can write on the notebook, color in a little circle at the bottom to choose a destination, snap a photo with the RB App and your notebook page gets sent to the folder automatically!

Hubby had actually purchased a RB notebook several years ago from the Kickstarter campaign, but I hadn't used it and honestly didn't see a ton of use for it until I read Julie's blog post about Rocketbook hacks.

Then my mind was racing! :)

This year, I had already planned to upload solutions to the daily practice problems but to be honest, taking photos (or scans), uploading them, etc was really more work than I wanted to deal with.

So here's my hack... :)

I took a printable Rocketbook page, cut out the inside part and laminated the frame.  I put it on top of a green piece of paper so you could see the frame since my table is white :)

Since it's laminated, I can use a whiteboard marker to color in the correct circle based on which course I'm working with.  That circle tells the app which Google Folder to save the scan to, then automatically uploads whatever is inside the black frame to that folder.  I just have to color the circle and scan using the app - it's that simple!

Now why in the word would I go to all this trouble??

Here's why...

And this is the BRILLANT part!!!

I just put my little laminated frame right ON TOP OF my INB and it will scan it!

OMG - is that not the coolest thing ever?????

#micdrop


Now I'm on a hunt to find out all of the RB hacks I can figure out!  What ideas do you have for this hack? :)

#Made4Math - Cover Sheet

This month, I'm participating in a blog challenge called Blaugust.  To see the list of participating blogs, click on the logo above. I would encourage to you please cheer on our participants with either a tweet or a comment on their blog during this month. It can be hard to blog on a daily (or even regular) schedule! :)  If you would like to join the blogging challenge, you can still sign-up anytime!

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Back to School!!!  Where, oh where, did summer go???

Anyway, I don't know about you, but when I get an idea, I often fixate on it until I get it done.  So this weekend, I'm working on my to-do list, getting my syllabus done, working on pages for my notebook, etc, when I open up last year's Geometry notebook and here's the inside...

Last year, I saw a pin on Pinterest with these little Protractor Pockets.  I have always given my students their very own protractor printed on transparency film but a lot of students would lose them, etc.  So when I saw the pocket idea, I thought it was *brilliant*

However, the inside cover isn't quite as pretty as the pocket, but I dealt with it.  Until today, when I tweeted out a question about reference materials that people had posted in their room.  My original thought was something like a Perfect Squares Poster or something and I had this 8am brainstorm that I would re-decorate my room - which is such an awesome idea with just a few days to go, right?  /sarcasm

But, then I had an even BIGGER brainstorm... What if I made a reference sheet for the inside of the cover with important stuff that they should know already from previous classes and/or things that they would need to reference over and over and over again??

And this was born:

As with all of my brainstorms, I don't know how well it will work, but if you want to try it out with me, here's the pdf :)

Happy Monday, y'all! :)

#GradeSmarter - Unit Plans

This month, I'm participating in a blog challenge called Blaugust.  To see the list of participating blogs, click on the logo above. I would encourage to you please cheer on our participants with either a tweet or a comment on their blog during this month. It can be hard to blog on a daily (or even regular) schedule! :)  If you would like to join the blogging challenge, you can still sign-up anytime!

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Happy Friday and welcome to Day 3 of Blaugust!

I've already written a couple of posts based on this book, specifically geared toward homework, but Ch 3 was another one that hit me pretty hard.

In the introductory paragraph of Ch 3 comes this gem:
"Maybe it's just human nature - we crave some element of predictability and find comfort in knowing a little about the future."

As I pondered this quote, I realized how true it is.  I *hate* surprises and I like having a plan in place, so why shouldn't kids be the same?  I have kids that are very busy - jobs, athletics, multiple AP classes, etc, so why shouldn't I do all that I can do to help them know where we are going so they can maximize their schedule?

Years ago, I provided my students a monthly calendar that listed everything - lessons, homework, assessments, etc.  Over the years, I got away from that and started posting the weekly calendar in the classroom as well as on Canvas, our Learning Management System, but in general, kids still seemed shocked when assessment time came around... "Wait - what??? We have a Quiz today??" 

So this chapter on Unit Plans seemed like perfect timing.  We are switching to new books and as a result, I have spent part of my summer looking at the various structures I had in place and how to make them better and one that I definitely wanted to work on was the Chapter Info Sheet.

Here's the old info sheet:

The info sheet was the chapter divider for each chapter and it listed the learning targets, the vocabulary, and was supposed to act as a reading guide for the chapter.  Except that my students really didn't read the book that much and I can't really blame them - even though our textbook was extremely readable, there wasn't much of a need to read given our in-class activities and the INB.  As a result, this info sheet ended up as something we put in every chapter, but it wasn't really used to help move learning forward.

And then I read "Grading Smarter"...

I already knew I wanted to change the Info Sheet, but now I wanted it to be useful, I wanted it to have a roadmap of where we were going.  So, here's the result:

The new info sheet template:

This new info sheet will have the daily calendar on the front, which is somewhat tentative, but I try to stick pretty close to my pacing guide.  Assessment dates will be provided as will daily assignments. That way, if a student is absent, they know where to find out what we did and hopefully if they are going to be absent on an assessment, can make plans to take care of that early!  On the inside will be the learning targets for each section and a vocabulary rating chart.  One thing I think I will like is that this info sheet will literally be a guide to us throughout the chapter.  As we finish a section, they will flip here to do their self-assessment of the learning targets, a quick reflection question (like maybe 3 new things you learned, etc), and a vocab rating.  At the end of the chapter, we will do the same thing with the Chapter Summary on the front (like a 3-2-1 or some other summarization strategy).

I'm really excited that I finally have this template in place because it's been bugging me for weeks that I wanted something else but just didn't know what to do!

So what do you think?  Poke holes in my plan... Can you break it and help me make it better?

#MTBoSBlaugust - Day 8 - Busy Day!

It has been a crazy busy day around here, although I will say that I have very little to show for all my hard work!  It's "tax-free weekend" in my state, so I knew I didn't want to go out shopping today, so I worked in my office on my school to-do list.  :)  I didn't get much crossed off, but I'm pleased with my progress so far!

Thinking about my notebook:

Title Page

I started the morning thinking about changes I wanted to make to the INB.  I knew that I wanted to move the Table of Contents to page 2 because as the notebook gets thicker through the semester, it gets harder and harder to write in the table of contents when the ToC is opened to the inside.  As a result, I needed something for the first page!  I know!  A Title Page!!  I do not understand why it is so difficult for seniors in high school to write their names on their notebooks, but hopefully this title page solves the issue.  After some looking at Pinterest, I decided to use the "Who I Am" that was inspired by the MTBoS several years ago.  

To download the file, click HERE.  Note:  This is a view only file, so you'll need to save it to your computer to edit!

These will be on the student tables when the kids enter the room.  They will work on completing this as I go around the room meeting the students.  When we set up our notebooks, this will be on page 1.  I hope students will enjoy reading back over their day 1 thoughts at the end of the year.

TI84 Page

While browsing Pinterest looking for Title Page ideas, I ran across an idea from MissCalcul8's blog that used a TI84 template to remind students of their calculator functions.  I'm excited about this idea and can't wait to add it to our stat notebooks!  Here's the prototype I did today and I would also include page numbers for the student to reference:

Thinking about Assessment:

MC Mondays

One of my other goals today was to think through how MC Mondays would work.  Here is my current thinking:

The front would have 5 Multiple Choice questions.  At the beginning of the year, it will include questions from our previous End of Course exams regarding stat/prob questions.  The back is a blank template that will be used each week.  On Monday, the kids will answer the 5 questions on the front and turn that in.  On Tuesday, we will do the Analysis and Reflection as our warmup.  

The back is adapted from the TPS Review Guide written by Jason Molesky and Michael Legacy.  I did change their "Simple Mistake" column to "Type of Mistake?" after being inspired by MathEqualsLove's blog post this morning.  The Reflection part I'm thinking will probably change to a 3-2-1 structure:

• 3 things that I need to remember for future assessments (could be anything from content details to distractors to computation, etc)
• 2 ____________________ (I'm stuck on this one... ideas?)
• 1 concept that I need to review and my review plan

I'm not tied to any of these, so if you have ideas, please pass them along!

Thinking about Day 1:

Kristen Gilbert

After a lot of tossing back and forth ideas for a new Day 1 activity, I decided to stick with my beloved Kristen.  I did find a great article written by George Cobb and Steven Gehlbach about Nurse Gilbert for any of you thinking of using this activity in your classes.  For Day 1's homework, I've decided to do the AP 2000#1 because it also ties into the idea of "Make a Picture" and it's very accessible for kids right away.  I want to set the tone from Day 1 that this is going to be a class where you have to read, think, and write.

So much left to do... but I'm happy with the progress I made! :)

Keeping Track of SBG via your INB :)

This year was my first year using Interactive Notebooks (INBs) in my math classes. This year was a pretty rough year overall, but the INBs were one really bright spot in my year. I can't pinpoint why it was a rough year - I mean, I didn't have any major life occurances, but for whatever reason, I just never really meshed with a lot of my students this year. As a result, I was 95% sure that I was going to skip my yearly ritual of asking students for feedback and just close the book on this year and be done. However, at the last minute, I decided against this plan and the student responses actually shocked me. They were overwhelmingly positive, particulary about the notebook. The students loved that we were creating their own personalized textbook that they could keep as a resource forever!

There were some suggestions for how to improve the notebook, and one of them had to do with Standards Based Grading. I have read quite a bit of research on SBG and one piece even detailed how important it was for students to track/graph their grades. As a result, one of their pages in their INB is devoted to keeping track of their scores.

Here was the 2012-13 version:


The idea was that when I handed back a quiz, students would immediately flip to this page, fill in the info at the top with the quiz number and Learning Target (LT), then color in the boxes to indicate their score. When they reassessed, they could color on top of it to see their improvment. This idea did not work as planned, mainly because I wasn't consistent with reminding them to go to this page and also because students struggled to see their improvement.

After feedback from my students and rethinking this idea, here is the 2013-14 version:


This time, I wrote out all of the objectives for the year so that the students could see the year overall without a ton of flipping back and forth. This also has space for them to write an original score (which I'll have them colorcode), and space for the reassessment score. In my AP class, most students only reassess once, so I only put room for one reassessment.

I'm hoping this increased user-friendly-ness will help both my students and myself keep better organized when recording their scores.

How do you have students keep track of their grades?

Made 4 Math Monday #8

Week one is done and honestly, it kicked and punched me around quite a bit! On our first day with kids, I was so worn out that I came home and took a 3 hour nap! This weekend was a flurry of getting things ready for my night class and finalizing my lessons for my high school classes. Needless to say, you will definitely see a change in this week's #Made4Math based on what I needed to make for my classes :)

Click here to submit YOUR #Made4Math Project

Click here to submit YOUR #Made4Math Project
My #Made4Math this week is devoted to my Notebooks.

Project #1 - The Table of Contents
I've seen many ToCs out there, especially now that INBs have become so popular! However, I wanted one that could fit easily into the notebook without too much cutting. One of my science buddies had learned about INBs last year at our AVID training and she was kind enough to share her ToC with me, but it was in Excel and honestly, I'm majorly stupid at Excel. So I made this one in Word:

What I love about it is that it makes a mini-booklet so there is no cutting involved!


Project #2 - The Rubric
That same science teacher friend was very generous to share her grading rubric with me. I hate to grade and it flat out scared me to think about grading tons of notebooks often. She has her students peer-grade the notebook, with the rule that someone different must grade your notebook each week. Then they bring the notebook up to her for her to record the score. I took her files, tweaked them a bit and made them into a half sheet:

Project #3 - The SBG Tracker
One of the things that I loved in many of the notebooks I've seen is that students keep track of their scores. I had made something for this back earlier this summer, but I wasn't crazy about it. Enter in my awesome Algebra 2 co-conspirator and an awesome score tracker she made. I again tweaked it, putting it on the inside of a mini-booklet, then the SBG grading scale and reassessment rules on the outside.

What I love about this is that student scores are kept private when doing the peer grading!


So there you have it... not the most creative #Made4Math that I've done, but definitely a very necessary collection of "need to make" for me.

Your Turn!!! What did YOU make this week??
Ready to check out some other awesome creations? We want to see YOUR name here.... :)

Click here to submit YOUR #Made4Math Project
Bowman Dickson, @bowmanimal - Teaching Beliefs in Poster Form

@aanthonya - Fibonacci Bees

@coachpate - Pirate math scavenger hunt

@_CindyWallace_ - Scratch Off Cards

@csteketee21 - Calendar

@reminoodle - Spiced Up Syllabus & Foldables Supply Boxen

Simplifying Radicals @noraoswald - Slope Spinner

Sarah - Trash to treasure desk chair

Julia Cole - Planning Calendar

@Alwildadaughter - Beans and more syllabi

Julie Reulbach, @jreulbach - Math Motivation Classroom Posters

Justin Lanier (@j_lanier) - Math Heroes - a painting I made for my classroom

Breedeen (@btwnthenumbers) - Habits of Mind posters

Making Paper Airplanes - Hanging Folder Holder

@4mulafun Jennifer Smith-Sloane - Math About Me Project

Megan Hayes-Golding (@mgolding) - Online Exit Tickets

Radical Rational - Blind Draw - Geometry

Math Tales From the Spring - Please Use the Restroom and Water Fountain Before Math Class Poster

Beth Ferguson - Made 4 Math Monday – posters

@rachelrosales - Thinking Log stems

Sherrie @luvbcd - Classroom Door

@MsMac622 - Teacher Survival Kits

Sqrt_1 - Two pizza boxes and a hot glue gun

@crstn85 - Made for Math: Calendar and Classroom

@misscalcul8 - Posters and Clothes Pins and Markers, Oh My

@mathymissc - MATHO!

Finding EMU - Monster Whiteboards

A "Duh" Moment

I don't know about you, but every so often, I have a thought (well, technically I have thoughts more often than that...) that just hits me upside the head with its simplicity. This is one of those times...

Back in June, I posted about using Interactive Notebooks in my classes this year. Well, June (and July) came and went and I really didn't do anything more about it. I attend @mgolding's wonderful INB talk at Twitter Math Camp and then again last week at the Global Math Department meeting, but I've not really sat down and put pencil to paper and how I planned to use these things.

In Algebra 2 at my school, we don't start with review material. We start with Parent Functions, transformations of parent functions, and review linear equations as it comes up. In fact, you may recall this picture from my June INB blog post:

At last Tuesday's Global Math Department Meeting, @mgolding announces that this week's meeting will be about foldables and @jreulbach will be giving an encore performance of her Twitter Math Camp presentation this coming Tuesday. (YAY!)

So all of these thoughts are swirling around in my head and during Wednesday afternoon's naptime, I have the thought... HEY! That table can be a foldable!!

I took the table AS-IS, cut around it, folded it in half, cut the flaps, and labeled it. Now kids can "quiz" themselves one function at a time..

Seriously - it was that easy! Makes me wonder what else I've used that had easy foldable potential that I've ignored!

UGH! *Smack!*

So Simple, yet I'd never thought of it before... *sigh*