Saturday, May 9, 2015

New Homework Structure

My current homework structure is based off of @iisanumber (Kathryn Belmonte)'s presentation last year at #TMC14.  Here is her write up on Math Maintenance.  I used it to create a structure for homework for my students.  Five problems, every night Monday through Thursday.  On Tuesday we discussed Monday night's problems as our warm up.  Here is a picture of what a week's worth of homework might look like:


Things that were going well:

  • spiraling in the review, so things didn't get "old"
  • consistent structure
  • quick, approachable homework for my students
Things that weren't going so well:
  • there was so very clear evidence of copying
  • many low students were not completing it regularly
And then, recently at a training by my local Area Education Agency (@ghaea) they shared this document with us:  Teaching Strategies For Improving Algebra Knowledge in Middle and High School Students [large PDF].  This is a compilation of research surrounding teaching secondary mathematics by the Institute of Education Sciences.  My understanding is that they summarize and compile all the research out there to make conclusions in one place.  Making it more accessible to educators who do not have time or resources to find all the research that is out there.  Pretty great resource for us to be taking advantage of.  Unfortunately, there is not a whole ton of secondary mathematics education research out there, so even the recommendations they make based on the research have only minimal to moderate evidence to support them.  Sad day.

Their first recommendation is the one that caused me to change my Math Maintenance.  It is:  "Use solved problems to engage students in analyzing algebraic reasoning and strategies."  This can be done in many ways, one of which is to juxtapose a correctly solved problem with a similar problem for them to complete.  This forces students to look at a solved problem, think through the reasoning, and then apply it to a new (but similar) problem.

At our training we were asked to think through ways that we could apply this in our classroom, and math maintenance seemed like a good place to start.  Hopefully it will make it more accessible to all learners, while simultaneously making it more rigourous.   Here is an example of what it looks like now.



Students who have successfully completed Math Maintenance in the past have been telling me that it is now harder, and I think that is a big win.  They went from having to repeat the same thing over and over to having to actually think through what was happening in that type of problem.  Students who had problems completing Math Maintenance like to have one that is already completed to look off of.  I think that means this is a double win :)

Could you see yourself doing something like this in your classroom?

-Kathryn

Update 8/19/2015:  Now by popular demand, here is a folder where I uploaded all of my Math Maintenance assignments from the past year.  They are all dated based on last year.  I will not use these exact documents this year, but create it to cater to our current learning.  Also I didn't start the new structure until the spring, so most are according to the old structure.  And finally, these are the electronic versions, sometimes I write on documents before copying out for my students.

13 comments:

  1. Wow, this is excellent, Kathryn. I love the idea of using the first column as a correct example but making them justify it so it's not just text to be ignored on the paper. Also, your progression from "why" to "try" to "critique" is a great way to point out misconceptions! It's so nice to see how you've amped this up for your kids. Hope you're having a great school year!

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  2. So good. Thanks for sharing this. I've shared to our Math Ed community (https://plus.google.com/communities/106364254296651187923).

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  3. Thanks for sharing! As I reflect on my year for changes to make for next year, homework is one of the big areas. I love your set up and adding in the correct and incorrect problems is a great way to encourage and force some higher order thinking from students.

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  4. It is so great when teachers think in the systematic way, allowing students to convey the whole process of getting the information. At Homework-desk.com, we are trying to impement the same, adding the usage of various tools and apps to engage students more into the studying process.

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  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  7. would you be willing to share your spiral homeworks?

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  8. Forgot to include my email if you would be willing to share... jbriggs@madisonk12.net

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    1. Jamie,
      Thank you for reading my blog! I will work on creating a public folder for these documents. Give me a bit of time to put it together for you!
      Kathryn

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  9. I would love a copy of your spiral homework too! If you get the public folder together, please let me know. dye@platteville.k12.wi.us

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  10. Thanks for making such a cool project. I've been checking the site for the Windows version, but I never left a comment about it. I know you are working hard and doing it for free so you shouldn't feel rushed or anything. I hope you can continue this type of hard work to this site in future also. look at my profileBecause this blog is really very informative and it helps me lot.

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    1. Thanks for the reminder! I emailed it out, but forgot to post! Here is the link to the google folder, but all the docs are on Word, so you will have to download them to view it properly.

      https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2jWQV_ymx42fmVxdjRxbVo5dkJqU005RXV3RGoxRDE5Nm5yWTlkSDlJZlJ4YXJqNkJGT3c

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