Some perspective please?

Can you all help me get a little perspective here?

Today my students took the End Of Course (EOC) assessment for algebra 2. Last week my AP stats students took their AP exams.

Last week I knew before they left me that getting half of the multiple choice questions right and about half of each free response questions correct would mean they passed the course and earned their college credit.  Fifty percent was perfectly acceptable and within the reach of the vast majority (if not all) of my students, even though they did not have to choose to sit for the exam.

Today I sent my students into a testing situation encouraging them to do their best.  The scores were available immediately and my highest score turned out to be  student who got 39 out of 76 questions right.  The grade equivalent my central office sent informed me that this student would get an A, 92% on his report card.  I was mad.  I could not understand how getting just barely 50% of the problems right earned a student an A.

Why do I think this is acceptable in one situation and yet am angered in the other? Neither is really making sense tonight.

Summer 2013 dream list

Inspired by @gwaddellnvhs, I’m committing my summer to-do list to “paper” with the hopes that by writing it down I might actually get part of it accomplished.  I always bite off more than I can chew but hopefully this will keep me on track.

Item #1: Finish that pesky dissertation.  THIS WILL GET DONE. Period. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

Item #2:  Reading list:

•    Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan William (In progress. Thanks @druinok and @ pamjwilson for the twitter book chat).
•     5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematical Discussions by Margaret S Smith
•     Teach like a Champion (author to be posted later–it’s at school and I’m not)
•     The new Dan Brown book (comes out tomorrow)

Item #3: Summer travel

• Myrtle Beach with my awesome kiddo
• 2 days of robotic PD (I think I get to build robots)
• AP stats training at University of Louisville
• Trip through Washington and Western Canada (for dissertation writing–uh huh).
• Laying the Foundations training (pre-AP curriculum)
• TMC13 (short for TwitterMathCamp) in Philadelphia with one of my closest friends.

Item #4: Improve/create effective Learning Targets for whatever classes end up in my schedule.

Item #5: Develop/create 2-3 formative assessment “events” for each learning target designed in Item #4. As I am learning in EFA (refer to reading list) formative assessment must be intention and with an outcome in mind. When done on the fly it loses much of its effectiveness.

Item #6: make all that stuff I’ve posted on Pinterest–some for home and some for my classroom.

Item #7: put together my niece and nephew’s wedding quilt top. If I don’t get it done by Labor Day it will be their 1st anniversary present.  If you two are reading this, it’s really item #2, preceded only by that silly dissertation.

I think that’s about it.  No wonder summer seems so short.

Time for a brain dump

Random thoughts that might come in handy when I have to write the dissertation:

We are 4 weeks away from the end of the term, which means End of Course Testing.  At this point I honestly don’t know what to expect.  Some days I think SBG is going to shine, other days I just don’t know…

SBG in my class works like this:

I give the students learning targets, and make an effort to limit us to learning no more than 3 targets a week.  Some things, like converting a radical to exponential notation are not learning targets, but are built into larger targets, like, “I can solve radical equations”.  This keeps us from having a zillion tiny targets and, hopefully, lets the kids focus on the stuff that really matters.

Roughly once a week we assess the targets we have covered, and I try to limit each assessment to 3-4 targets, with 3-4 questions per target.  At first I was worried that this wasn’t going to be enough questions, but after the first couple of assessments, I think this is plenty.  To demonstrate proficiency, a student must pass two assessment of each learning target.  Since they are only completing 3-4 questions, I felt it was important for them to show me on more than one occasion that they knew what they were doing.  I guess this is my attempt to minimize the “cramitallinbeforethequizthenforgetitbeforeievenwalkoutthedoor” effect.  Grades are on a 10-9-8-7-5 scale, but the students just get letter grades.  A-B-C-NY (for not yet). I realize as I write this, that I am rambling.  My sincerest apologies, but I told you at the beginning it was a brain dump.)  So, Johnny gets two grades for LT #1.  In my gradebook they are labelled 1.1 and 1.2.  If he is happy with his grades, he can consider the target mastered; otherwise he can choose to take a 3rd assessment on his own time and if the grade is better than one of the other two, I will swap the grades.  All NY scores are required to reassess.

Whew.  This is harder to explain than I thought.  Writing a dissertation is going to prove interesting.

Students in the SBG classes took about 6 weeks to start to get the hang of the process.  Since I only have them for 12 weeks I would consider that a bit too late.  I’m afraid that I am going to have students in my room every morning and afternoon for the next 4 weeks.  I love helping them, but EVERY morning and afternoon????? I’m feeling office hours coming on.

It took the 2 different groups of students 6 weeks to figure out that some of them were on SBG while some of them were on traditional.  I’m expected parent complaints and phone calls to start pouring in within the next week…and I’m not really sure how to respond.  I want to let the traditional kids have the chance to retest to improve their grades…but I think that would really mess with my data. But I feel bad telling them they can’t retest.  We’re talking about GPA’s and scholarship money here.

SBG is taking a lot of time for assessment.

I have actually found grading SBG to be faster and easier than traditional grading.  I don’t have to worry about whether or not the mistake is worth one point or two.  I don’t have to worry about whether each question should carry the same weight, or if the last one is more important than the first 10 put together.  I just have to keep a clearly defined standard of what constitutes A, B, and C work.  Which has honestly been easier than I expected.

I can’t wait to see if this has any  impact on End of Course testing.

A good day to be me

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whiteboards

Some days are just good, ya know?  At the end of it, when all the kids leave, you just feel like good stuff happened.  Perhaps some of it was due to diligent planning, but heck, sometimes it just seems to happen.  Today, it just kind of happened.

In Algebra 2 we have been studying polynomial functions; to this point we are really just getting started, so everything is in factored form.  We completed this investigation (graph_polynomials) last week to introduce the students to end behavior and degree, root behavior, and general graphing (I did not create this, and have no idea where I found it.  If it’s yours, shout out and I’ll credit ya.  If you make it, thanks, BTW.  Great job.) I got them started on Thursday, then had to be out Friday so they worked on it without me.  That generally leaves me a little queasy to my stomach, but this time it worked out pretty well.  When I returned on Monday, I recapped the investigation, asking them what they thought they thought they should have gotten out of the activity and, while I’m not sure any one student came out of it with everything, as a class they were able to generate the same list of goodies I would have lectured to them about.  (Hallelujah chorus is playing in my mind right now).

I flashed an equation on the screen and asked them to tell me anything and everything they could about it and, again, no one knew it all, but together, they did.  Instead of harping on what they didn’t get, I chose to credit all the stuff they did know, and really highlighted the fact that while they might not have known it all on their own, TOGETHER, they totally rocked. Then, we filled in this Graphing polynomials foldable.  Actually I only guided them through the layout…they already knew what needed to go in it. Today, I pulled out the mega-white boards and gave each pair of students a set of equations to graph.  It took them a little longer to get going than I expected, but once they did, they took off with it.  I was able to get around to the students who needed the most help, and the others really communicated well and worked through the process together.  I heard great conversations about finding x-intercepts, knowing how the ends were supposed to act, and putting it all together to come up with a complete graph.

     

I guess the real test will be tomorrow when I ask them to do it on their own.  For now, I’m just going to enjoy what appears to be a successful set of lessons. Now, to figure out how to get from real roots to complex roots and standard form…the challenges never end.

Oh, and we got to throw inflatable globes at each other in AP Stats class.  Yep, today was a good day to be in room 413.

First SBG assessment

If you have been following, you are aware that I am implementing SBG in one section of algebra 2 so that I can compare the results of that class against a “traditionally graded” algebra 2 course.  This is the meat of my dissertation.  As part of the record keeping, this blog will most likely serve as a journal for the undoubtedly rocky road that lies before me.

It is 10:30 at night and I just created my first assessment.  It only took me an hour.  For a quiz.  Over 2 learning targets.  Goodness help me when there are more involved.  I certainly hope the process streamlines itself after I’ve done this a couple of times.

I think my biggest struggle tonight was structuring the quiz in such a way that the questions remained central to one standard, rather than encompassing both.  I don’t want to dissect Algebra in to such small pieces that my students can’t figure out what processes to use and how to put a series of processes and concepts together to solve a real problem, but I don’t want to clump several targets into one question, making it nearly impossible to locate the specific objective that might have tripped them up.

Oh, and trying to make sure I keep the questions appropriate for an honors level course.

I’m sorry for the ramble.  I hope that as this term progresses not only do my quizzes improve, but so does the manner with which I blog.  I’m too tired to even post the quiz for you to see…maybe tomorrow.

Starting over…in February?

The trimester schedule certainly has its challenges.  Not the least of these is the notion of “starting over” in the middle of February.  Mentally I feel like I should be in the middle of some deep and dirty math, but in reality I am meeting new kids and teaching classroom policies and procedures…again…developing relationships with new kids takes time and I feel like I’m trying to do it in a matter of days. I had to let go of some TOTALLY AWESOME students that I will truly miss.  I was fearful of the new crew I was going to get, but luckily I seem to be blessed with good students who (so far) buy into my antics.  Trading seniors for sophomores is scary, but to this point I must admit that I am pleased.

I know I have blogged about this before, but I really am reminded of the importance of saving some time at the beginning of a class (even in Feb) to create a welcome and open environment.  Once again I have offered my students time at the end of each day’s class to write down a question or observation they have for me.  I will photograph some of these and add them tomorrow, but suffice it to say, the students almost all seem to appreciate the opportunity to let me into their personal lives a little.  It takes a bit of time, because I respond to each student’s thoughts, but in the end the time it takes is far repaid later on.

This has been a total ramble, but that’s how my brain is working lately.  Thanks for indulging me.  Maybe tomorrow will be more coherent.

 

 

Blogging, take 2, or maybe 3…

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SBG

Needless to say, writing a dissertation while teaching a full time load does not leave much time for more personally fulfilling endeavors such as blogging and tweeting.  While the past 8 weeks have been the craziest, all the work has paid off and (with luck) I will be able to take it a bit easier until the end of May and only have to focus on the teaching aspect of my life.  Thank goodness.

Due to the nature of my dissertation, I’m certain the focus of this blog will shift and become more focused.  I will be analyzing the effects of standards-based grading on student achievement in Algebra 2.  All you SBG’rs out there, take notice.  I’ve probably been stalking you for the past two months and will most likely continue to do so for.  You have all given me great ideas and helpful suggestions for which I am eternally grateful.

Essentially I have created for myself (and a friend, who has agreed to be a guinea pig and venture into this world with me) an additional prep.  We will each teach two sections of Algebra 2 using two different assessment methods, one traditional and one SBG.  On the surface that seemed simple enough…teach ‘em all the same, assess ‘em differently, see who does better.  WHOA!! This whole SBG thing is proving to be more radical than that.  I foresee the classes turning into two completely different creatures very quickly.  Already the plans for the first day of the term are requiring some different strategies, just to orient the kids with the grading system.

I’m sure you’ll be privy to my many frustrations, but (I hope) also to the final results.  I’m open and receptive to any and all ideas, suggestions, and helpful criticisms.  I think I might be in for a wild ride for a while.

Since the main reason for this blog is my own reflection, I feel it necessary to list my “biggest fears” as this journey begins:

1.  What if the parents make my life miserable?  I’ll have the honors level kids and those parents can be rather difficult to deal with.

2.  What if the whole thins bombs out horrible?  I only have an entire DISSERTATION riding on it.

3.  How can I make sure to treat the two classes differently (with respect to assessment) while maintaining quality teaching to both groups?

4.  What if the kids talk to each other and find out one class is getting one method while the other one isn’t.

5.  What if this takes all my time and I don’t get to blog or tweet?

 

Conflicted about dual credit

I’m conflicted about a course I’m teaching.  Since we are on a trimester schedule, I just started a new term right before election day.  I have a sweet deal going on this term–all Seniors, all courses that will yield college credit, pending successful completion and/or success on a test.  AP statistics is going wonderfully well (lots of thanks to @druinok for all her help with it) and Intro to Education is a continuation from the first term.  I don’t know that I’m giving them a true college experience, but they are getting into classrooms completing observations and we’re doing a lot of talking about issues currently affecting education.  All-in-all I give myself a B in there.  But, then there’s college algebra.

On one hand, I have better long term plans in there than in any other course now or ever before.  I was able to present them with a calendar for the whole term with every section scheduled and homework assignments already made out.  Before I receive a ton of hate-mail, I don’t necessarily think this is the best thing, but based on everything I’ve been given from the community college I’m aligned with, this is the norm for their courses.  My directive is to present my students with an class as close to what they would receive if they were on the college campus as possible.  So I obliged.

The college uses an online program for all/most of the homework assignments.  Students get multiple chances to get a problem correct, and have a plethora of resources at their disposal if they desire extra help or tutoring.  Please, let’s not debate the fallacies of online programs…again, I’m trying to make my course like college.  They told me that is what they do, so I obliged.

I cannot give my students the same schedule.  I see my kids every day, the comm. college only sees them 2-3 days a week.  I have my kids for 70 minutes.  CC has them for 50.

Here’s where I’m struggling.  I do have a bit of extra time.  I see them everyday.  I HATE direct teaching-at least I hate doing it every day for the whole period.  I’m not dissing CC instructors–ya’ll are teaching in a completely different world than me.  I’m trying to shove my seniors into your world. But they are still seniors.  And I am still me.  I like groupwork.  I like interaction in my classroom.  I like activities.  How can I marry the stuff I like (and, honestly, the stuff that I think helps kids get some meaning from the math) with the community college experience I’m supposed to be offering?

Any suggestions will be appreciated and considered.

Oh wow…has it been THAT long??? *gulp*

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Interactive Notebooks

Well, I guess I’ve let myself get busier than I wanted to this term, and blogging has been left by the wayside.  I shall make an effort to do better next term.

Reflections on this term:
My school is on the trimester schedule (we used to be on A/B block–I don’t really know how I feel about it yet…that’s a different conversation for a different day) so today was the last “regular” class day with my students.  We have two days of finals, then I get a brand new group of kids and a new set of preps.

This term I had 3 sections of (non-AP) probability and statistics.  I started the term using Interactive Notebooks for the first time, thanks to a lot of advice and help from my twitter peeps.  I don’t think I maintained the left side very well…I realize that take some serious planning and, while I had a couple of shining moments, overall I struggled to find and grade effective assignments.  However, the right hand pages went over very well.  These too took some planning, but this planning caused me to seriously think about what I was teaching and what would be the most effective information for the students to record.  Instead of simply starting a lecture and writing until I got to the end, I had to focus.  Keeping each day to a single page wasn’t as hard as I originally thought it would be.  Using foldables also helped in that endeavor.  Students paid more attention to their notebooks this term than ever before.  They paid attention to what page we were on, what they needed to get from when they were absent, and (for the most part) tried to keep things organized and neat.  The foldables also provided “brain breaks” at strategic times during class.  Even offering just a couple of minutes to cut or paste provided the rest some of them needed before moving on.  Several balked at the “coloring” requirement, but I still think it makes their notes more interesting and memorable, so I’ll probably stick with that in the future.

My favorite unit of this term was when we covered correlation.  We started with the correlation stations mentioned in my last post.  This allowed students to get a “feel” for correlation before really studying it.  It also provided me with some great data to use as we went through the rest of the unit.  From the stations, we discussed (in very general terms) the idea of ordering our graphs…with a bit of *gentle* prodding, my students put the graphs in order, from the most strongly negative to the most strongly positive.  This provided an excellent launching point for studying the correlation coefficient.  Since the course was non-AP, we just used the graphing calculator to calculate it, and this led us straight into linear regression.  I felt a bit rushed, and the latter part of the unit didn’t go quite as swimmingly as the first, but I definitely have a good unit to build upon in the future.

I sucked at teaching probability. I gather activities from all over the place, and I dream of teaching probability in an engaging, but “fun” way–using real data, having students participate in simulations, etc.  I read blog posts from other teachers about all the fun stuff they do with probability…but I just can’t seem to make the leap from fun activities to the mathematics of it.  Drawing poker chips from a bag without replacement is okay, and if I had time I would have done something like that…but when I have to get from there to the methods for calculating the probability of dependent events, or conditional probability, I just can’t seem to do it.  Definitely a topic I need to keep studying and developing.

And I didn’t get through everything.  Not really sure how that happened…I thought I was on a good pace, but yet the end of the term came before the end of the material.  We made it through about 2 full units, and bits and pieces of two more. Twelve weeks really isn’t very long, in the big picture.

So, there you have it…my first twelve weeks in a nutshell.  Now I have to gear up to start over.  Next term I will be teaching AP Statistics and College Algebra.  I’ve been pouring over blogs and websites looking for good AP material for quite a while now.  I have a lot of random material, now its time to turn all that into cohesive units of study.  My personal “new term resolution” is to blog more so I will have a better record of what I did, what worked, and what stunk.  If you don’t hear from me soon, send a search party.

Correlation stations

Just in case you were wondering, I thought I should post something that shows that I really do teach.  So far all my posts have been rather non-classroomy, and I haven’t shared many teaching ideas…which was partly why I started this blog.  So…

Today in prob/stats we started our unit on bi-variate data.  Completely hijacking an idea from one of my new twitter friends, @druinok, I had the students work through a variety of stations requiring them to do different types of data collections.  The stations were:

#1.  Number of letters in your first name, Length of your hair

#2.  arm span, height

#3. day of the month of your birthday, number of days remaining in the month

#4. number of seconds in the pencil sharpener, length of pencil (graph shown below)

#5. swimming space, number of blocks (to build a bug swimming pool-using blocks of some kind.  Idea from “A graphing matter” by Mark Illingworth, Key Curriculum Press, c. 1995.) (graph shown below)

#6.  length of the side (of a rectangle of perimeter 24), Area of rectangle

#7. Shoe size, length of your hair

What was supposed to happen: Station 5 would be perfectly linear, correlation coefficient +1; Station 2 would have high positive correlation coefficient; Station 7 would have a hint of positive correlation, although it would be due to a hidden (lurking maybe?) variable.  Station 1 should have no correlation whatsoever.  Station 3 and 4 would both show negative correlation, with 4 being extremely close to -1.  Station 6 was thrown into the mix to give us a curved association, just for kicks.

What really happened:  I was reminded once again that high school students cannot use a tape measure and cannot create very accurate graphs.  Even the bug swimming pool, which required no measurement, did not turn out completely linear. (Note to self: get large sheets of graph paper next time.)

The pencil station was just annoying.  Sorry to my dear neighbors who were probably trying to get their kids to concentrate on something extra difficult. (Note to self…find something quiet that will generate moderately strong negative correlation). Even more upsetting than the aggravating noise, the graph did not turn out quite as I expected.  (This is why I should work through each station first…you’d think after 16 years I’d learn.)  The change in the pencil length was slow.  I had the kids record lengths after every 5 seconds.  In reality it needed to be more like every 15 or 20 seconds.

Most of the stations went quickly, but the arm span/height and the pencil sharpening stations slowed us down.

I only had one of each station available…For my large class (26 students) I needed to have two of each and smaller groups.  There just wasn’t enough work to justify teams of 3 or 4, but the space with which I had to work limited me to one of each station.  (Dear school board/administration/whoever can give me money: I need to get rid of my clunky, over sized, non-group promoting desks and get tables.  Thanks).

Because of my own laziness (and the desire to go to bed before midnight last night) I had to do all of the set up work for this activity this morning.  Consequently, I didn’t quite have it all set up when the first class walked in.  Trying to give directions while setting up the stations…not good.  4th and 5th periods were set up and ready, but we still used almost 60 minutes (out of 70) discussing the stations and collecting the data.  We did not have time to do anything with it today, so tomorrow will be spent discussing the similarities and differences between the graphs and the data.  We’ll then talk about direction, form, and strength.  Eventually we’ll actually look at the correlation coefficients and use these stations as a starting point for that discussion.

Good things:  I got to use my laminating machine.  Students seemed to be engaged in the activity.  Everyone was up and at least walking around. I think the kinesthetic and visual learners have some good stuff to refer back to during the rest of the unit.  I didn’t stand in front of them and lecture.  All in all, I guess it wasn’t too bad for the first go ’round.

Just for proof…here are the kids up and working.