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.

#TMC14 Things I Shared

Sarah Martin (@Sarah3Martin) and I met with the administrators from our school to share some of our highlights from #TMC14.  I figured I'd give an overview of the things I shared as it will be a good summary of TMC.

Talking Points (shared at TMC by Elizabeth)


Talking Points was the biggest take-away for me.  If you haven't already, please go here and print off the instructions and one of the talking points and find 2-3 other people and just DO IT!  I am so excited to try this in my classroom.  I love that talking points gives ALL students a voice and requires ALL students to listen to their peers.  This is something we need to teach to our students, and talking points is a great way to facilitate this.

Math Maintenance (shared at TMC by Kathryn @iisanumber)

Kathryn used Math Maintenance as bellwork, but I am seriously considering using it as homework this year.  It would help me to review older material with students regularly and to prepare them for what is coming in advance.  It might also help me prepare students for a re-assessment on an older learning target to ensure retention.

Here is Kathryn's post on Math Maintenance.

Desmos Lessons

I shared desmos.com and a little bit of what it can do as well as teacher.desmos.com.  Mostly I shared their vision for providing these things for free forever.  It isn't to the point yet where it can do everything I need, but the idea that there are people out there talented at creating this sort of thing for our students is awesome.  And I believe it really helped to demonstrate to my administrators what kind of people go to TMC.  It was a picture of how awesome our community was.

My Session

I shared a little with them about the session I led on intervention strategies.  I wanted them to know that I appreciate the opportunities they have given me, and that not all teachers get those opportunities, but those are signs of how we care for our students.

After hours productivity
One thing that makes TMC stand out from other conferences (not that I've been to a bunch of national math teacher conferences) was that the after hours talk was productive.  Outside of sessions it was always possible to find someone to discuss teaching math with you.  At breakfast, lunch, supper, and well into the night there was always a good conversation to be found.  And usually you had to choose which one you wanted to participate in the most, which was often a big challenge!

Sarah will be shared about Embodied Mathematics, plickers, Nix the Tricks, and Formative Assessment Strategies.

What was really cool about sharing with them was watching their attitudes change as they heard more about TMC.  They were willing to admit that "Twitter Math Camp" didn't sound like much more than a super-fun weekend with geeky people, but at the end they were astounded and excited by everything we had learned.  They were shocked by the wonderful community of math teachers that we have found and how that community can help us become better teachers.  I think each of them walked away with something that they were still pondering and wanting to share with others.  I call that a win!  (Even though they might still think we are strange for enjoying talking about teaching math every minute for 3 1/2 days!)

-Kathryn

Thoughts on Day 1

I've been having trouble processing #TMC14, so I turned to twitter:

And I was astonished at the results.  In our morning session we discussed wanting to stay connected and use twitter to keep us a community throughout the school year, but I wasn't actually expecting such a wide response!  The conversations that came as a result of this involved many people and consisted of over 100 tweets (not all of them involving me).  It gave me so much to think about and I am grateful for all who participated.

Last year I did this on the first day, which worked great for last year, but I'm not sure I want to do the same this year.  I really want them engaging in math in groups right away, but I want them to do it in a productive way!  So I got lots of ideas from people, but I need to explain my situation a little better than I can in 140 characters.  Here is what I have to deal with:

• We start school on a Thursday, so I only have 2 days of school that first week.
• On Thursday we will start with an assembly, so I will likely have about 30 minutes with students, regularly I have 51 minutes
• My admin expects that the syllabus be passed out on the first day
• I'm not going to read the syllabus to my students on day 1 (or likely any day)
• I am going to be doing talking points weekly, on Thursdays for bellwork, but I don't want to wait until a week after school has started to do talking points
• I want to get their ISNs started, so they see that I value it
• I don't want to have to teach a bajillion procedures/classroom structures on day 1, but I want my expectations to be clear when I have them engage in those things
• I greet all my students at the door day 1 (and try to everyday), so I need something to engage my students right away while I'm in the hall greeting
• Our first unit is a "bootcamp" unit on numbers and operations, I would like to tie into that so that what we do has value to them

OK, that's enough bullet points.  It really left me with a few options that I have spent some time thinking through:  syllabus scavenger hunt, syllabus talking points, or some other activity (like Tabletop twitter shared by Jasmine Walker as a "My Favorite" at #TMC14) in addition to gluing the syllabus into ISNs.

I think I have officially decided against syllabus talking points, as I'm not sure it would be a great place to start talking points.  I really like starting with the first one that Elizabeth had us start with, which was "talking about talking".  I think it would be a good place for students to start with talking points because the statements relate to the activity.  So I guess I'm thinking about saving that for Friday (day 2)...

Another idea for an activity that I had was a number sorting activity.  Each student would receive a number (any form of a real number) upon entering the classroom and in their small groups they should order from least to greatest.  Then when I finish greeting everyone and giving attendance I would come in and give a little more instruction (perhaps encouraging them to use "I think...because..." statements) prior to having them order all numbers from least to greatest.

Thoughts?  I'm still processing ideas and reading about quality group work, so not sure I will make a decision yet.  However if I do end up wanting to do the number sorting lesson I need help choosing good numbers!  I think a lesson like that calls for a lesson study structure, but I could be wrong as I still have little understanding about lesson study.

-Kathryn

Morning Session from #TMC14: #gwwg14

So I actually had to close twitter in order for me to start this post.  I've been wanting to write about all the amazing things that happened at #TMC14, but my brain is on overflow!  I'm pretty sure that a concise organized summary of EVERYTHING is not going to happen, but I did want to share how amazing our morning session with @cheesemonkeysf was, because it was awesome!

However, now that I've been home a few days, I can already feel myself giving up hope on implementing some of the things I learned about.  It's crazy how when I was a part of the community at #TMC14 it all seemed so easy and now that I am home it all seems so much more difficult.  So as @lmhenry recommended, I'm going to share some of the things I would like to implement, and find someone to hold me accountable.  I'm going to do this, #MTBoS, but only with your help!

I debated for days before going to #TMC14 which morning session would be best for me.  I took @ddmeyer 's advice before he gave it, and chose the selfish option.  I choose to join the Group Work Working Group.  I felt that I had a handle on Algebra 1 content (not necessarily on how to teach it, but hey) and knew that what I needed most was to be able to get my students to interact together with the content.  I was terrified the first day, because it was definitely the choice that was outside my comfort zone!  However after the first day, I knew I had made the best choice ever!

One of the big take-aways for me was "talking points".  It gave everyone a voice and demonstrated that all voices were equal, and thus opening me up to listen to others in a way I'm not sure I ever have.  (Read about @cheesemonkeysf 's write-up on talking points here:  Talking Points Activity.)  We liked talking points so much that we tried them several times, including even taking the opportunity to observe others who were doing talking points.  We even started to create our own talking points specific to math!

One of the things that we heard over and over again was that in order for group work to be successful, as teachers we need to consistently push the authority back onto the students.  It sounded crazy at first and I know that I didn't fully listen to all that statement implied.  However, hearing it again on Saturday, it finally made sense.  But, I won't lie and say it sounds easy.  It's scary.  Really scary.  In fact, I'm worried I'm going to be too scared to try it.  It is so different from what I'm used to doing in class.  It's outside of my comfort zone, but for my students I need to.  I need talking points ingrained into my classroom so that all students have a voice.  And that they can use that voice to earn and demand respect from their peers, and support each other in that process.

Main point: my goal is to use talking points and other "restorative practices" (ask me more later... I'm only throwing that phrase around because I heard it during our session and want to know more) as the center of my classroom management.  Elizabeth said that things like that have worked at her school, and so I am very excited to try them for my classroom.  (And really scared--read above.)  I also hope that it is something my entire school might pick up on and use because I think it could really, really, really help.

Shoot, no picture, so @ddmeyer isn't going to read this!

-Kathryn