First Days of School

 There are just not enough hours per day in August to get everything done!  I either need longer days or the ability to go with less sleep :)  

There are a lot of things I like about my school and a few things that I don't, and the Back to School week falls under both of those categories!  We report to school on Monday / Tuesday, off on Wednesday, and kids come on Thursday.  I love that day off to get things done (like a pedi with my mom), but with all of the required meetings, it feels like there is so much to do in a very condensed amount of time.

But Thursday came and so did the kids, whether I was ready or not...

On the first day, we do...

• Posters around the room
• Name Tents
• And Math of course!

You can see some of the posters in the photo and on each table is a small container with some post-its.  They answer the 6 prompts and go around the room putting their answers on the board.  The 6 prompts are:

• A goal I have this year is...
• Our classroom should be ____ every day
• I learn best when...
• Mrs. __ can help me best by...
• Math is important because...
• To be successful in math this year, I need...

This activity infuses a bit of color as well as gets the kids up and moving around from day 1.  

After that, we work on their Name Tents, which has been written about quite a bit in the MTBoS, so my only change is that I don't print the form on the inside - I just have the kids draw a line down the crease and then two perpendicular to that to create 6 spaces for writing.  This was the first year (ever?) that everyone folded their name tent correctly!!!  (YAY!)

Finally, it's time to do Math!  This year, I tried a new-to-me activity using pentominos because I wanted to do something Geometric.  While I liked the activity, I found that it more challenging than I expected.  

The original task asked the students to use all of the pentominos to build a 10x6 rectangle, then to try again to build a 12x5, then again for a 15x4.  Next year, I think I'm going to work on some better scaffolding for this as the 10x6 was tricker than expected!

Thankfully, it did allow us to talk about Productive Struggle,  the importance of persevering, and why I like to use manipulatives a lot to test out theories.

So for next year, I think I would modify it using one of these two resources:

• Better scaffolding of the tasks, similar to the challenges shared here by Sarah Carter
• Using these puzzles by MathsKo

That pretty much ended Day 1, and I was happy to celebrate the day with a mini-bundtlet from Nothing Bundt Cakes that was delivered by our Student Leadership group!

Then, on to Day 2.  My goal with Day 2 was to introduce students to some of the structures we would be using this year...

• Open Middle - Using the digits 1 to 9, find the sum of 3 digit numbers that comes closest to 1000.
• Whiteboards - Using "The Answers Are" task from Building Thinking Classrooms
• Setting our Group Norms (see previous post)

All in all, it was a GREAT couple of days of non-curricular tasks, but then it was on to an insanely busy weekend to prepare for Week 2. 

Teaching Diary

This summer, one of my #eduread books was Why Don't Students Like School by Daniel Willingham.

I really got a lot out of this book and it will definitely be on my "revisit" list as I loved the classroom implications for each chapter!

But the last chapter is the one that really got me personally.

The final chapter in the book is titled "What About My Mind?" and differs from the rest of the chapters in the book as it focuses on how we as teachers can grow professionally and continue to learn throughout our career.  Some of the suggestions are things I've heard of before, such as video-taping yourself or inviting observation, such as the Observe Me movement, but one suggestion really stuck with me - a Teaching Diary.

I'm a paper person in general - I love writing my lesson plans down, I brainstorm on paper, etc, but a Diary?  I have never (successfully) kept a diary in my life!  Heck, my childhood diary still has more than half of its pages empty and I wrote in it off and on from age 7 to ???.  What makes me think I can keep up with a Teaching Diary?

Well - maybe I can't, but I'm at least going to try :)

I purchased a super cute composition notebook, glued a table of contents and various calendars into it and am determined that it will go with me to (most) meetings as a place to record ideas, glue in handouts, etc.

But the biggest benefit - hopefully - will be the weekly recap pages. In the book, Willingham says...

"... don’t expect that you will really remember how well a lesson plan worked a year later. Whether a lesson goes brilliantly well or down in flames, we tend to think at the time that we will never forget what happened; but the ravages of memory can surprise us, so write it down."

So I decided to try it.  In my pretty mew notebook, I developed a weekly recap page where I can jot myself notes about how each day went, the pros / cons / changes for next year. 

I can't promise that I'll keep up with it, but baby steps, right? :)

Do you keep a teaching diary?  How do you have yours set up?

Made4Math - Geometry Fun!!

It's been a while since I've written a Made4Math post, but I have a feeling this year will be a year FULL of new files and fun stuff :)

I am having a BLAST teaching Geometry this year.  The last time I taught it was about 10 years ago - before the #MTBoS entered my life and before I knew Interactive Notebooks even existed!!

This weekend has been kind of crazy.  I left school on Friday thinking I would get *so much* accomplished... HA! :)  By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, I thought I might get an hour of work in while waiting on my mom to come down to go shopping.... I tinkered with it before she came down, then again after she left.  Before I knew it, I had spent close to 3 hours making a single flipping foldable!!! :)

Of course, I had to tweet it out last night... I am pretty darn proud of this thing! :)

I swear I printed it about 20 times before I got it to line up correctly and figure out how to "flip" it correctly on my printer!  Here's what the actual file looks like:

Download the file - PDF version

Once I had it figured out, I had to make a blank template for next time.  Here it is in Word format. :)

Today, I got on another kick of creativity and started working on this week's lesson plans.  We have a modified block schedule that has a traditional 6 period day on Monday, Thursday, and Friday and a block schedule that meets on Tuesday and Wednesday.  That means that tomorrow we head back to a block day with 100 minute periods.  

On block days, I try to do a lot of activities and I like to have the kids up and out of their seats at least once during the period to restart their brains.

For Geometry, one of the activities we will be doing tomorrow is a "Find Someone Who".  This is an activity that is often used as an ice-breaker, but I like to throw in a concept-twist.  The idea is to help my students remember all of the symbols and vocabulary we've worked on for the past week :)

Here is the PDF file if you want it! :)

Hope you've all had a wonderful and productive weekend!  

First Week Recap

Kids came back to school on Tuesday and we hit the ground running!  By the time Friday rolled around, I was exhausted!  However, this exit ticket answer really validated my efforts this week:

(This is going to be a long post.. sorry about that, but I really want a record of the activities I did this week)

My Theme for 2014-15:
Every year, I find a quote to guide me that year.  This year, my focus is on student engagement, active learning, and formative assessment.  After I find the perfect quote, I make it pretty and then put it in a photo frame next to my computer.  This year's theme:

I keep this quote next to my computer in order to have it close by when planning lessons.  I also share the quote with students so they can help keep me accountable.

Day 1:
When students walked in on Tuesday, there was a post-it pad on each table.  Instructions on the board asked students to take 6 post-its and answer the questions around the room.  I picked up the post-its at Dollar Tree.  They were packs of 4 different colors, which worked out great since I have 4 periods of AP Stat this year!

The 6 prompts said:
Qualities of a good teacher...
Qualities of a good student...
My goal for this year is...
This will be my BEST year of math because...
I learn best when...
Mrs. T can help me best by...

After completing the post-it activity, students created their nametag, which helps me learn names, get to know something about them, and provides a way to do exit tickets for the first week.  Our main activity of the day was the Kristen Gilbert story, which is a great way to get kids excited about statistics.  By the end of the day, my feet were killing me, but what a great first day!

Day 2/3:
Our school is on a modified block schedule.  On Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, we see all 6 classes for roughly 55 minute periods.  On Wednesday and Thursday, we see 3 of our classes each day for 100 minute classes and our Advisory class. 

When students walked in, they had to locate their nametag from the day before.  Each day, I randomly place them around the room so they can meet new people.  I teach in a very large district and this is a way that I can make sure that students get to know the other people in our class.  Overall, I believe it aids in classroom community, even though it makes it very challenging for me to learn names! :)

We spent the first 45 minutes or so setting up our notebooks.  During this time, we also talked briefly about the syllabus, my classroom expectations, and I shared with them my theme for the year.  I told the students to hold me accountable for more student DOING and less teacher TALKING. 

Then we were off to Chapter 2.  Each chapter, I give them an "information sheet" with the essential questions, the vocabulary for that chapter, and some reading questions from the textbook.  The students numbered off in their groups 1-4, then each person was assigned a question to answer by skimming/reading the text. 

After about 5 minutes, students got out of their seats and went to an assigned corner to talk to the other students with the same assigned question.  This allowed the students to feel more confident that they had the "right" answer before going back to their original groups to be the "expert" on that question.  This was a great way to incorporate the textbook without being overwhelming and it provided students a way to get up and move/talk with peers, thereby restarting their brains for learning.

Back in their home groups, they shared out the answers to each question, then we discussed them as a class.  We took a few clarifying notes on the "Ws" and then we were back to the students "doing" instead of me talking. 

Each group received a problem where they were asked to identify the "Ws".  The answers were on the back so the students could gauge how well they were doing, then we rotated to another problem.  The exit ticket for the day was a "6 word memoir".  To read some of their exit tickets, check them out HERE.

Day 4:
When students walked in today, they were again seated with a new group of people, and this time their warmup was Problem Set #1, which had 2 additional problems on identifying the Ws.  I gave the students 7 minutes to work the problems, then they had 2 minutes to share answers within their group, then 1 more minute to check their work with my answer key.  We briefly talked about the "Curve of Forgetting" and how doing this as a warmup boosted back their knowledge on the Ws and moved it to more long-term memory. 

Then we started in how HOW to collect data from an unknown population.  One suggestion is take a census, so students became "census-takers" and were asked to count the number of Gs in a story.  Here's 6th hour's results:

Students were shocked at how many different answers they had and even more shocked when they were told that no one had the right answer!  I wanted them to reflect on what they learned about a census from this activity, so I introduced a new thinking routine to them.  I asked them to "Pause and Think" and write down 2 things they learned from this activity.  After giving them time to process via writing, then they had to "Turn and Talk" and share their learnings with a partner.  After each partner shared out, then as a table group, they had to select one thing that their table would share out to the rest of the class.  The general consensus of all 4 sections was that "counting is hard!" and that "a census isn't as accurate as we thought it would be."

I then shared @gwaddellnvhs's graphic of a population/sample and talked about how a sample of the population does just as good of a job if the sample is representative of the population.  We watched this excerpt from the Against All Odds series on the Literary Digest poll of 1936 to illustrate the point that large samples do not always yield better results.  To finish out the hour, we again cracked open our books and summarized by answering a few questions on our Chapter 12 Introduction Sheet.

Favorite Comment of the Week:
On Friday, 5th period, I had a young man ask to use the restroom.  I looked at the clock and said, "You only have 2 minutes left in class.. can you wait?"  His response was, "Oh wow!  I had no idea class was almost over!  It went so fast!"

:)

Block Scheduling and Chocolate - A great combo!

Tomorrow is my last day of Geometry End of Instruction exams. This week has gone so quickly with block scheduling! On the positive side, my Geometry students said they felt prepared for the exam. Since we did not have official "review" time, that made me feel a bit better about the week. Of course, from many years as a teacher, I also know that "feeling good" does not translate to high scores! LOL

I had planned to test in my AP Stat class, but with only 6 more class sessions until the AP exam, I decided that I would rather do an activity. Bonus - no grading!!! wooohoooo!! hehe. Looking around my room, I had some left over M&Ms and remembered seeing an AP review activity on Mrs. Smart's website. I started with her idea and tweaked it to fill up a 2 hour review session for various inference methods. Since I typed this up tonight (after a 2 hour nap), it's still pretty rough, so please excuse any typos. :)

Everything I learned about Inference...

The end is in sight! One month left at the HS - only the final left at the Uni... where, oh where did the semester go???

Update: This activity went extemely well!!! The kiddos were actively discussing the problems and stayed engaged for 2 hours - excellent :)

Extreme Frustration

Ever feel like the world is plotting against you? This morning I sat down on the couch, ready to grade, and realized that my answer keys were at the high school, which is 30 minutes away. Since it would take more than an hour to recreate the keys, I decided that I would head to the HS and run by the hospital to see my dad on the way back. So far so good, right? I get home, start grading and make fairly decent progress over the course of the afternoon. About 5pm, I decide I had better start working on this week's lessons. It is now 9pm and I am still trying to print the paper that I started trying to print at 5. I am *so* pissed off at my printer right now. I have a huge HP LaserJet 5 with duplexer that is totally possessed by demons. Every time I try to print, it has different issues. What works well one day won't work at all the next day. The total inconsistency is about to drive me INSANE!!! (Note to self: I do love my hubby for finding this printer because when it works, it works well - the duplexer is awesome - but I swear it's possessed by demons!!!)

Both at the HS and the Uni tomorrow, I am teaching Chi-Square tests. At a workshop I attended last summer, we had done the VARK learning styles test and analyzed our data. So that's my plan tomorrow - if I can get the stinking thing to print. I plan to do a Goodness of Fit test to see if all learning styles are equally represented and then a test of homogeneity to see if there is a difference between males and females.

This week is going to be interesting. At the HS level, we start our End of Course tests and the Geometry test is 1 week away. I will not get through the Geometry curriculum before the tests and have to hope and pray that my students do okay on the material we have learned. The AP exam for Stat is only 3 weeks away, I have 2 chapters left to go and lots of praying there too.

*sigh* Now if only I could get the printer to print.....

Melts in your Mouth... Not in your Hands :)

Everything I learned in Stat class, I learned from M&Ms :)

Some days, that statement feels so true. From univariate data (weights of bags, proportion of colors), to probability, and finally to inference, most topics in Intro Stat can be related back to M&Ms.

This week at the Uni level, we will delve into inference for proportions. As my Uni students have already figured out, I much prefer using real data to just putting problems on the board and droning on and on :) This week we will learn to do confidence intervals and hypothesis tests using M&Ms.

M&M Activity Sheet

At the HS level, when we covered this information, I chose not to do M&Ms and instead did a "globe toss" using a blow-up globe from Oriental Trading company. The students had a lot of fun tossing the globe around in the commons area and using the data generated to learn how to do a CI and HT for proportions. To top off the chapter, I gave a quiz a few days later. With the quiz, they each got a bag of Skittles and had to do the CI and HT for their bag. While it was a pain to grade, the kids enjoyed eating their quiz data :)

Globe Toss

Skittles Quiz

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On a different note, I have no idea how many people have actually read this blog (other than Jackie - my lone commenter *grin*), so I don't know if the material I am posting has been useful to anyone out there or not. The AP Statistics community is fairly small and mostly rely on the ap-stat listserv to communicate with the other Stat teachers out there. However, I have found it rather interesting to post my lessons and commentary for my own documentation if nothing else. By updating the posts with what worked and what needs to be modified, I am hoping to use this like a journal as I teach the same lessons next year, tweaking and improving as I go.