I *heart* Fall Break! :)

Whoever decided that teachers and students needed a break in October should be declared a Saint! I love teaching, but after a while, you need some down-time to relax, catch up on sleep, veg on the couch, clean your house, etc. We had parent/teacher conferences on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and then had the rest of the week free - yay!!! Of course, as with every break, I started the week with such great plans to catch up, etc and instead it turned into several days of relaxation and in general, not being very productive at all!

Wednesday after conferences, Partner Teacher and I went to one of the local watering holes and spent the afternoon mapping out the rest of the semester. What a great feeling to know that we have a plan! We've had a lot of success this year, but also some set-backs, specifically in terms of long-term retention. A great example of this was this past week's test :(

Last week, when both of us were gone on Friday, we had assigned this "Partner Problems" Worksheet. The idea was that students could work with a partner and check their answers, but they had to work independently on each problem since the problems themselves are different. On Monday, they had additional time to study in class and then they took a cumulative 9-weeks test on Tuesday. Overall, we were NOT pleased with the scores! Some students did well, some not so well, so both Partner Teacher and I were pretty bummed. After grading the tests, we both realize that we have to work on the retention factor of skills.

Tomorrow, students will be getting a couple of new papers to add to their binders. First will be a test analysis sheet, where they will go through their test, see what skills they really need to work on and see if there's a pattern in their weaknesses. Students will be able to come in to make test-corrections for partial credit, but as always they will need to show evidence of remediation first. This idea came from this week's chapter of #sbarbook on how to give feedback to students. Sadly, I wish I had caught these issues before hand, but I knew that some major issues would be absolute value and parallel/perpendicular lines and tried to warn them ahead of time :( Sigh!

Next, to address the issue of retention, we've decided that the quizzes will have a previous knowledge section that will contain one previous LT skill. We will not tell the students which skill it is, but plan to tell them which quiz it was originally from. This previous knowledge skill will start everyone everyone with a fresh slate for that skill and will be able to be remediated/reassessed like any other skill. I'm still struggling with how to keep up with this in my paper gradebook, but I'm hoping to figure it out soon :)

I would love to hear your ideas on how to increase long-term retention and how you give students feedback on their weaknesses on a test.

Taking a Me Day :)

For the first time in my 13-year career, I took a personal day to sleep in, clean house, read, and relax. It has been simply amazing :) At the moment, I'm taking a break from reading Monday's chapter in #sbarbook - "Never Work Harder Than Your Students" by Robyn Jackson. The section I just finished was about "Demystify the Process" in terms of clearing up student confusion and anticipating problems before they start. I had to take a break to jot down a few ideas and process it myself.

This chapter's principle is about providing proper support to students BEFORE they fail instead of waiting until AFTER they fail to provide remediation. One of the keys in providing this support is to anticipate student errors, misconceptions, and confusing topics/instructions. In the section I just finished it says we often assume students know how to do things like study, read a textbook, etc, but that we rarely take the time to teach them how to do these things, to break down the process into clear, concrete terms. This got me to thinking about how this same principle applies to teaching. (While there are many examples I could come up with, I will pick on a current issue in many districts.) A common buzzword around here is "using data to drive instruction", and the upper admin that expects this to happen just assumes that we know how to do it, but has never provided explicit, clear, concrete instructions on what/how they expect us to do this. While I have a vague idea of what they mean, no instruction has been provided to allow me to clearly understand their expectations.

Another point that is made in this section is that we rarely sit down with our students and explain the "why" of doing something. Students have become adept at many academic processes, such as writing a lab report, etc, but how many of them really get the "why" of the lab report? Do they really understand what they are doing, why they are being asked to do it, and how it can ultimately help their learning process? Again, I related this to being a teacher. Teachers are often given top-down directives to do this program or to implement this process, and they do it because for the most part, teachers are rule-followers. But how many of us really understand the "why" of these programs and processes? Are we provided the information that really gets us on board with how these programs can help our students and ultimately help us become a better teacher? I recently commented to Partner Teacher that while we had experienced a lot of good things from implementing SBG, a key part of it was that it was "grass-roots". We took the time to do the research, read books/blogs, really understand the "why" of how it would help us and our students. If SBG had been a top-down mandate without the "why" provided by the research, would we be experiencing this success or would it be yet another program that we felt forced to implement?

Finally, this section also brings up the "Yes, but...." I have to admit, I really like this feature of the book. You can tell that the author truly spent time trying to figure out the common comebacks and excuses and gives her best shot at counteracting them. This "Yes, but.." asks if being so explicit, hand-holding our kiddos through the process, explaining every nuance of an assignment, is that the equivalent of "dumbing down our curriculum"? Her response is a great one - that being concrete as you introduce a process allows students better understanding and provides the foundation for abstract thought as they progress through the material. In my classes, both at the high school and at the university, I often start a chapter or lesson with a hands-on lab activity that walks the students through the thought process of that objective. Then as they gain more competence, I ease off the step-by-step instructions and provide them opportunities to stretch their brain. This concrete to abstract process provides them the support to be independent learners.

Now off to finish the chapter and take a nap :)

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale....

It's been a while since I posted and each day I think "ya know, I should really post about how things are going", but then I get busy grading or planning or I'm just not feeling it for whatever reason and it gets pushed off my radar for another day...

But today it feels right... Two years ago today, my step-daddy passed away and this was one of the places I turned to share his story. That was probably the start of my realization that I actually had a few readers out in the blog-o-sphere and someone really cared to read my random posts. While I still miss him greatly and always look for him when I go to my momma's house, that's not the tale I came here to share today...

Today's tale is about my school year so far. I am having probably the best professional year of my career and that simply feels amazing. But then, I walk outside of my classroom and the weight of the demands from the outside world crushes me. So instead, I stay within my little comfort zone that is my room and Partner Teacher's room and figure I'll stay as under the radar as much as I can :)

After school today, Partner Teacher makes a comment that we need to start making a list of the good and the bad of this year, so here goes...

• At first, I was concerned with the time it seemed to take to grade the SBG quizzes, but now that I have my system down, I *heart* that I grade about once a week and have more free time for planning cool lessons.
  
• I adore how easy SBG makes parent contact. When a parent emails to ask what Junior needs to work on, it's so simple to put the responsibility back on Junior's shoulders, where it needs to be.
  
• My students and parents like that they know detailed information about where they are.
  
• It only takes a kid one reassessment to really see the benefit of coming in. Last week, we had a quiz on transformations and 2-variable inequalties. One young man really struggled and did rather poorly on it, he asked to stay after on Tuesday, we worked for about 20 minutes, I sent him home with some practice problems and today he asked to reassess. Each of those objectives he raised from 0.5 to a 3 or a 4 - HOORAY!!!
  
• A system that seemed very strange to the kids just two months ago, now seems totally normal and they wish other teachers used this method.
  
• While I can easily see how SBG works in a process oriented class like Alg2, I struggle with how to implement it in an application class like Stat. I still have no idea where to even start to set up SBG in there.
  
• I do worry about concept retention, but I think that was an issue in the traditional system as well. With the new 9 weeks, we are going to have a "Previous Knowledge" standard that is from a previous assessment - haven't worked out all the details yet, but we'll get there :)
  
• I'm constantly amazed at how much my kids are willing do, even when there's not a grade attached to it. Today we did the graphing inequalities worksheet from Dan Greene and they loved it!
  
• Even with all of the great things happening, it's been an insanely busy year. New textbooks, 3 preps, wrapping my head around SBG, night class, all combines to make me feel absolutely exhausted on a daily basis.
  
• I also worry about their ability to work with more than a couple of concepts and/or their ability to work when the problems are all mixed together and not labeled with their Learning Target ID. I'm still working on that one....
  

Overall, I do have to declare our foray into SBG a tentative success. I really appreciate the support that I've gotten both on this blog and via twitter as we've gone through this journey. I <3 my PLN :)

I *heart* Activities!

This year has already had some ups and downs, but I'm enjoying it so far. We have new textbooks, which is always a challenge, but since this is my 2nd year in Algebra 2, I'm feeling more confident in my ability to try new things.

Last week, we taught two lessons. One was on domain and range and whether something was a function. Sunday night before I was to teach it, I got a brainstorm of an activity and immediately messaged Neighbor Teacher about the idea. I love working with Neighbor Teacher because she is always willing to try my harebrained ideas :) We often tease that if we could just meld our minds into one, we'd be unstoppable! Anyway, we got together after school on Monday to brainstorm and I had a stash of Graph Paper index cards. We ended up making 6 sets of domain/range cards for us to use in our classes the next day. For each card, the kids had to figure out the domain, the range, and whether it was a function. It went very well! Here's a picture of the cards:



The next lesson was about standard form and x/y intercepts. Years ago, we used to teach an activity based algebra lab class, so we started digging through those card games, etc and low and behold, we had a matching game for standard form, graphs, and intercepts. So again, we put the kids in groups and had them match them up. It's great to hear the kids talking math!!!

This week was our first test in Algebra 2. All of the concepts we had quizzed on were on the test. The kids had their quizzes back, had opportunties to reassess, etc. I was determined NOT to do a test review worksheet because I want the kids to learn how to study based on their personal weaknesses, not just regurgitate a test review. I encouraged them to make a practice test from the level 2 questions on their quizzes. I told them to work the homework problems from their weak areas, etc. Again, Neighbor Teacher and I brainstormed how to review and she came up with the idea of practice cards per learning target. So last weekend, I made 3 cards per Learning Target, each with 3 questions on it. I made 2 complete sets of these cards and the kids really seemed to like the targeted review. See a sample of the cards here:



Of course, the title of this blog is "Teaching Statistics", so I suppose I should share an activity from there too :) This next week, we will be covering Contingency Tables and Marginal/Conditional Distributions. I got yet another brainstorm last week while driving home and when I got home, I just had to type it up :) I am really trying to reduce my "talking time" more and more each year and make things as self-guided as I can. A friend of mine field tested it today, but I haven't heard yet how it went, so use with caution :) It can't be that bad - it's an M&M Lab for goodness sake! heheh So click here for the activity :)

We have staff development tomorrow then off for a mini-vacay with the fam - I'm hoping to have more brainstorms and more to share with you when I get back! Until then, have a happy and safe holiday weekend!

SBG: The Actual Implementation

For those of you who have read back a few posts, you know that my summer was spent researching Standards Based Grading (SBG). After lots of thought-provoking discussions both here and via my Twitter PLN, I kept creeping closer and closer to the final plan that I would actually implement once students arrived.

On the first day of school, I avoided any serious talk of syllabi, grading, etc, and instead chose to do some math. In Algebra, this was a "Graphing Stories" activity, while in Statistics, we looked at the court case of Kristen Gilbert, an "Angel of Death" nurse. The next day, though, it was time to get to the district required stuff - syllabus, pre-test, handing out textbooks, etc. In Algebra 2, I discussed SBG, but they really didn't get it much then. I told the Alg2 kiddos that we would have a quiz on Monday and it was material they would be held accountable for, even though I did not teach it. I handed each student an Assignment Sheet that listed Chapter 1's objectives and practice problems for each objective. I told them the quiz on Monday would cover Lessons 1.1-1.3 (a total of 5 objectives), so I would suggest they look over those practice problems over the weekend for those objectives.

The, Monday came... I gave my Alg2 classes a quiz over 1.1-1.3 and also went into more detail on how SBG worked. Each objective had it's own section on the quiz and had 3 problems of varying degrees of difficulty. I explained that if there was a section they struggled on, they could remediate and reassess. That night was a shock to my system though! It took me 5 hours to grade 58 quizzes!!! I went through first and marked all of the perfectly correct problems with a C and then then back through the others with more detail. It was a time consuming process to say the least! One thing I discovered was that either their arithmetic skills are lacking or they are very careless, because there were a LOT of minor errors! On Tuesday, I handed back the quizzes and explained to the students what the scale (0-4) meant and how it would show up on the online gradebook. Pretty much, here's an idea of how the scale works:

4 = 100% correct on all three questions = 10/10 in GB
3.5 = all three correct, but with single minor error = 9/10 in GB
3 = two questions correct, or all three w/ multiple minor errors = 8.5/10 in GB
.
.
.
0.5 = no questions correct, but valid attempt made = 5/10 in GB
0 = no attempt at all = 0/10 in GB

When I handed them back, I had the students write their scores on their assignment sheet, and then went over this scale, I explained that they could reassess any skill they wanted to, BUT, they had to show proof of remediation first. They could bring in their completed practice problems, they could go to a tutor and bring back proof, they could do a variety of things, but they had to show me that they worked on that objective before I would allow them to reassess.

Thankfully, my "Partner in Crime" - the teacher next door that is just an amazing person to work with - is trying SBG with me, so we sat down and ironed out some more details after seeing how long this process had taken. We recognized right away that we would need to have some rules in place to keep ourselves sane if we were to do this all year. Here's some of the guidelines we came up with:

• Show remediation/HW when you appear for reassessment. If seeing a tutor, the tutor must sign off (with date) on your remediation work/notes.
  
• Students can’t get tutoring and reassessment during the same session. (We don't want students storing info into short term memory)
  
• Reassessment days are limited to Mondays and Wednesdays before and after school and during Homeroom period, all by appointment.
  
• Appointments must be made 24 hours in advance, and you must let us know which LT's you plan to reassess.
  
• In one session, only LTs from the same quiz may be reassessed.
  
• LTs should be reassessed in a timely manner, typically within one or two weeks of original quiz return.
  

After handing back their quizzes, I taught the first official lesson of Alg2 - solving absolute value equations. The next day, I gave a "Checkpoint" of 2 abs value equation questions. When students completed the Checkpoint, they raised their hand and I picked up their paper. As a class, we then worked the problems together so kids would immediately know how well they did. We also talked about if they struggled on the checkpoint, that was a key indicator to them that they needed to make sure and practice on that objective. Then, that night, I looked over the Checkpoints and wrote feedback on them (not a grade) so that students would have a permanent record to refer back to. This process continued for several days and then it was time for another quiz. The quiz over Lessons 1.4-1.6 had 4 objectives plus a Previous Knowledge section. Each of the 4 objectives had 3 questions each and graded by the above scale. The PK section also had 3 questions, one each from 3 separate objectives from the previous quiz. The PK section is not reported in the gradebook, it is only for information. After quizzing, we continued on to Chapter 2 and instead of giving traditional tests per chapter, we plan to test periodically over a chunk of learning targets. We want the studets to get away from the idea of "this chapter is over, we tested on it, now we can forget it".

That brings us to now - this week we will be testing for the first time and as part of that, will be teaching the students HOW to study for a math test. Overall, this process has been rewarding, but a lot more time-consuming than I had anticipated. I have really liked being able to see where students have struggled specifically, and it's been interesting that almost every student has had at least one objective that they did very well in. Before, that success would have been hidden in the overall score. I've also appreciated the feedback from the parents and students when they see their scores and knowing what exactly it is they need to work on. There are still a few kinks to work out (especially in terms of time needed to grade), but I'm getting there :)

Now, off for a pedi and relaxation time! Have a great day :)

What a Whirlwind Week!

Holy Moly - I've already been in school for 2 weeks!!! Where, oh where, did the time go? :)

The Good:

• During our pre-service days, the meetings were short and time in classrooms was maximized. Even so, I still was in my room until 8pm the evening before kids arrived! Had a meeting with my evaluating principal to fill him in on SBG, just in case of parent questions or concerns, and his response was very positive.
  
• On the first day with kids, we did math - it was great!!! The kids responded very positively, realized they would be working in partners and expected to work the whole hour right away.
  
• When I did finally go over the "rules", the kids were staring at me blankly when I talked about SBG - so then on Monday, they took a quiz over Order of Operations, Simplifying Expressions, and 1-variable Equations. I did not teach the material at all, just quizzed it (previous knowledge). Went over SBG again and light bulbs started going off - "You mean we don't have to get a bad grade?" was a common question :)
  
• When I handed back the quizzes the next day, I was very pleased to see how easy it was for me, the kids, and their parents to see which Learning Targets they truly needed to work on. Instead of throwing away their quiz like in previous years, the kids actually started reworking the problems, trying to find their errors! They got together with other students for help, came up to ask me, etc - SCORE!
  
• On a daily basis, we have been giving "Checkpoints" of 2 or so questions from the previous day's lesson in Algebra 2 - it's been eye-opening to say the least. I am grateful for the opportunity to identify errors early on, and the kids know that if they struggled, that's a sign they need to make sure to do the practice problems for that LT, before the LT Quiz.
  
• My students have been AWESOME so far in all of my classes. They have been willing to work hard, working problems, discussing with their partner, and overall great in their engagement during class.
  
• My adaptation of "Rolling Down the River" for Stats really seemed to work well. I think my kiddos have a better understanding this year of Stratified Sampling vs. Cluster Sampling than ever before.
  

The Bad:

• Due to budget cuts, class sizes are pretty large all around. I have 30 kids in my 6th hour Algebra 2! Sadly, many teachers have way more kids than I do :(
  
• I did not anticipate the time it would take to grade the first quiz. It took me about 5 hours to grade 55 Algebra 2 quizzes. The next day, Partner Teacher and I sat down to clarify our grading scale to help that issue.
  
• I was not prepared for the inconsistency of the student responses for seemingly basic problems - I thought we had done a good job of identifying Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 questions for each LT
  
• Writing feedback on the daily "Checkpoints" is also time consuming, but very worthwhile I think. I hope as the year goes on, it will get easier :)
  
• A summer storm fried the VGA ports of the projectors in my hallway, so I'm making do with an ancient inFocus and a laptop that is so old, it has an interchangable CD/Floppy drive.
  
• I've struggled so far to find my "mojo" - pretty much, I've been planning the next day's lesson the night before - that isn't going to work for me for much longer! :) So if you happen to have some spare "mojo" lying around, please send it my way!
  

Overall, I've had a pretty good two weeks, but I'm just plain ole worn out. I feel asleep last night at 8pm and woke up this morning at 8am... I'm already ready for Labor Day - I need the break!

Ready or Not...

The time has come yet again... time for new markers, shiny floors, and curious teenagers is upon us. Next week marks the official end of summer for me, with kids returning to the classroom on Thursday. With that in mind, it's time for me to put on paper all of the changes I plan to make, mainly so I can come back and remind myself periodically about the goals I had from the summer :)

• SBG - As any reader of this blog should be able to figure out very quickly, one major change for this year will be Standards Based Grading (SBG) in my Algebra 2 classes. I'm not going to hash it all out again, because most of the posts this summer have been about SBG :)
  
  
• Daily Warmups - Until I started really analyzing my classes this summer, I did not realize how much my daily warmup routine really bothered me! My previous routine was to give a handout on Monday with previous knowledge problems that the kids then turned in on Friday. While it was a great idea, it ended up more as a copy-fest for points :( This year, I am assigning partners based on the seating chart and will be doing problem solving and critical thinking in Alg2, with one day being a weekly multiple choice partner quiz in prep for our state exam. In Stat, they will have a different warmup on different days of the week, but again, they will most be with partners.
  
  
• Feedback - I need to greatly improve on how I communicate to kids on where they are and how they can get to where they need to be. In my mind's eye, I see this happening a lot through "Quick Checks" (a quick HW like problem that they solve and turn in) or "Exit Slips" (a quick journal style prompt). Whatever I end up doing here, these feedback opportunties will allow me to see where kids are at, make comments on how they can improve, but they will not be "scored" in the sense that kids will get a number grade on the top of the paper.
  
  
• Problem-Based Learning - I really like putting my kids in groups to "cuss and discuss" their way through a problem. I would like to gather more resources on good problems for both stat and alg2 that my kids can explore with their partner/groups. I find that in most cases, the discussion that occurs within the groups is way better than most of my lectures :)
  
  
• Writing - I really would like my kids to have pencil-to-paper more often, whether that is working problems in class, a journal prompt, blog "scribes" in stat, etc. I have reaffirmed my belief in how much is learned through writing this summer. I started this blog for my own reflection and though I will never profess to be a "writer", there is something about writing and getting thoughts down on paper that is just powerful beyond words. I want to pass this on to my students as well and help them discover this nugget of truth.
  
  
• Bookclub - One of the most powerful things to come out of this summer was the professional bookclub we started on twitter. We've read "Classroom Assessment and Grading that Works" by Marzano and currently are reading "Formative Assessment and Standards Based Grading" also by Marzano. Our next book is "How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students" by Brookhart. While I love to read, I sometimes find myself putting things off. The bookclub is great for me because it keeps me accountable to a group of other professionals for reading and discussion. Of course, once school starts, our pace will slow down some, but I'm eager to continue learning with this amazing group of people!
  
  

I know this year has potential to be very busy and overwhelming, but I'm really excited about the changes I plan to make. This year will pose it's own challenges in terms of budget and morale, but I'm determined to make it a good year and I know with the support of my PLN, it will be!

What are the changes you plan to make in your classroom?

Let's make it a great year or not.... the choice is YOURS! :)