Test Before Break

The dilemma is Spring Break and having the students remember what it is that we were working on before they took 9 days off.  It came to me on the drive home while listening to Pandora.  The song "Story of My Life" by Social Distortion was the song.  I ended up getting into it just like Tom Cruise got into the song "Free Falling" .

I researched YouTube and was able to find a link that showed the lyrics.  As a class we listened and watched.  Afterwards, we broke it down to how each of the verses or as my kids corrected me, the sonnets, were set up.  We determined whether or not it had to rhyme, how many sentences were in a sonnet, and how the syllables went along with the tune.

The kids were wrapping up a unit on Right Triangles.  It turned out to work perfectly.  Since there were only 5 students who showed up in class and 5 different topics we talked about, each student chose a topic and began putting together their song.  They worked for the entirety of the class, asked very good questions, listened to the song more times than I could stand, helped each other, laughed and learned.  They did this while most other teachers were watching movies.

The good that came out of it is that students were getting a chance to step back and focus on the topic.  They didn't complete the song due to poor planning of time, but this turns out to be a good thing.  We will complete our songs on the Monday we get back, giving the students a renewed focus as to where we were before they left.  One student who missed a class that week picked a topic he was not in class for.  So he had to learn the topic before he could write about it.  Naturally, his classmates helped him with this.  I had them focus their energy this time into the meat and potatoes of the lessons as opposed to the poems that we did and most of them simply just wrote about how they feel about the subject matter.

The feedback that I got was mostly a positive one.  The students' only gripe was that they weren't able to choose the song that they would write to.  They wanted a rap song.  I told them my car driving story and they were pretty much SOL once I heard that on the radio.

We are going to wrap this up by recording it and if it's any good, we will post it on YouTube.

Pic of Garden from earlier post

Unfortuanately, I forgot to take a picture of it while it was hanging up.





Poetic Assessment

Twas the night before Thursday and all through the house, all the ITSers were stirring, with rhymes for each verse????.  Well you get the point.  So, I went to school the very next day, and because we had just finished a unit, it was test day!!  Yay!!!!
In class I have been using a website produced by Henrico County that has everything you need to know for Geometry.  Already produced worksheets and powerpoints, along with some other connections.  The only things it is missing is the assessment pieces.  So I, who am a newby when it comes to teaching Geometry, have been pairing up the lessons from online to the sections of the book.  This way I can draw questions from the assessment pieces from our book.  Well, after each test, the students have made it clear they didn't like the format.  I have now changed it up 4 times for 4 tests.  So I decided to use the same types of poems that we used in class the night before to help in the assessment.  We paired up and the kids were to come up with four different types of poems for the material that we have covered.  Since it was their first time, I wanted to go light on them in terms of grading.  They did a great job!!  They were laughing and actually having fun.  I had them read them aloud and it was fun to see how humble they became.  For the majority, they were able to draw some of the basic concepts from the lessons and put it into words.  For some, they were able to take the tougher concepts and produce fun little poems.  It really helped me see where the students were in their understanding.  Many obviously hadn't crossed from their middle school understanding of triangles to the deeper concepts.  One group focused on their frustration of having to learn these things.  I finished up the assessment with an 8 question multiple choice test.  Given that I may use this form of assessment again, I will make sure that I will bring up their old poems and let them know a little more specifically what I am looking for.  It also would've been nice if I had time to produce a better rubric.  The one I handed them was a little rushed and only covered the basic understanding of the poems.  I needed to make sure they covered the specifics of what they had learned.  Whatever the case, the students had fun in a math class.  That in itself is an achievement.

Hexagonal Informational Garden

So I broke a bit of the golden rule in class, but it was worth it.  I know when designing a lesson, we are supposed to connect each lesson to something into the real world and try to connect it outside the school walls.  This time I decided to stay within the school walls and tell the kids the truth.  They were helping me with the bulletin board since I was in charge of this months display.  Ugh!!  I hate my turn on the bulletin board.

We've been talking a whole lot about draw tools and paint tools in our evening class.  Naturally, I strayed right towards that, but not before I thought about how to implement it.  In Geometry, there are two draw tools that have been all of the talk for geometry teachers, SketchPad (paid) and Geogebra (free).  I took the time to introduce them to the tool.  I gave them a short step - by - step instruction sheet that would help them explore some of the basic tools and teach them how to create a cube using the tools.  What was great is that the instructions implemented the techniques used in creating the figure just as we had previously done using other tools (compass, ruler, protractor).  So the connection was made with the students.  They also become really familiar with terminology such as points, line segments, rays, parallels, and I can keep going, but bottom line is each tool has a picture with it.  This really helps them treat these basics like second nature because of the repetition of use.

So, to make a long story longer.  I have a bulletin board.  I took the students through some of the basics on how to start creating the hexagon.  I then showed them how to transfer their picture into paint and use the fill tool, resize, and change colors.  Ultimately, they had a choice.  Once they followed the directions on creating a hexagon using a certain design, they were to either print it out and color it with their own style or put it into paint and use the paint program to do the same thing, then add a stem onto it so it became a flower.  They were then to grab a snap of information (I told them to google "cool infographics"), and paste this to their hexagon.  I showed them a finished product that I had done previously and that is all it took.  So the criteria was for them to create the two designs I had showed them for credit, then they can create their own flowers on their own time for extra points, ultimately helping the HEXAGONAL GARDEN GROW throughout the month.

In a quick wrap up, the students actually leaned more towards using the paint program to color their pictures. They loved the fact that they could choose the information that went onto their flower.  They loved to design something that was going to help out.  Their fluency in the program was exponential.  They helped each other in design and navigation.  They started to see the benefits of the constructions that we were doing previously without the software program.  The 'Norton approved'  think out loud approach to showing them the software  was definitely the best approach.

The Essay Looms

It is now that I have to create my essay for the Telecommunications lesson plan.  It always takes me a while before I can get the gears rolling on a cool idea that will make my lesson jump out at the kids.  Once the idea starts to flow, I'll be fine.  As it is for now, I'm letting it fester in my head and hopefully it will be ready to jump out onto paper tomorrow,...................since there is no time to waste.

I'm using an awesome simulation program for the lesson, but it already has an authentic problem attached to it.  I find that this lesson plan is a perfect opportunity to implement this particular simulation into my class, but it is really hard to think of an authentic problem on top of an authentic problem.

It is a Crash Scene Investigation site that walks through how to solve a problem if one were an investigator.  I think that it is going to have to be on the lines of training for a crash scene.  Part of my outcome is that an actual investigator is going to come in and speak with them.  Maybe I will spruce it up a bit and have the investigator actually walk through an actual accident.  She/He could answer questions only thought of by the students that would enable them to determine who is at fault, what caused the accident, and what illegalities, if any, were present?  If they were good trainees, then they would be able to follow all of the math and science behind what the presenter is saying.

Wow, this blog thing definitely helps straighten out some thoughts.  Cool.  Thanks blog. :0)

Your biggest fan.
Jason.

Renewed Approach

So as it was, my students weren't going to be able handle project based learning.  With attendance being the main issue, trying to have groups that are consistent is challenging.  I have restructured the way I've approached my lessons.

Over the past quarter, I noticed that the students want to be in charge of their learning.  If I were to go up to the board and try something traditional, you would see heads go down within a minute.  Not that I'm that boring, but that's what probably landed them in my school in the first place.  These students want to be doing something at all times.  Note taking from my lectures is not "doing something" apparently.  I think there is something beneficial to group discussion and I'll come back to that in a moment.

I have put my students on a computer based learning program.  Attached to all the lessons are quizzes to show some sort of mastery.  The kids get the instant feedback that they seek and are constantly doing something.  This is where it gets pretty cool.  I have given them a pace at which they need to follow and complete X amount of lessons in a certain amount of time.  I have also associated GAMES with about 1/2 of the lessons in which they to complete a level in which I have established.  I am now able to walk around the classroom and sit with students and give them one on one tutoring.  If they show they have not mastered the lesson after taking the online quiz, I review with them how to do the particular problems, and then have associated worksheets that they are to complete before they get credit for that lesson.

The best part about this is that the students are now working at their own pace.  Although I have to put a certain pace to the class, (because of SOL's), it allows them to concentrate on their weaknesses and fly through their strengths.

My goals are these:

• Have students who show mastery help out others that may struggle in small groups
• Use the beginning of class to have the students work out in groups a real - life problem that either teaches them something new or uses some of their old skills.  This will be about 15 minutes at the beginning.  Then discuss some of the techniques they could have used from the things they learned.
• Have students BLOG about their new learnings after each section that they complete.
• Connect concepts to the real world
• Review challenges etc.....
• Create projects (like the things we are learning in class) that will bring the majority of the concepts together.

My Head Hurts

JASON THINKING

So, I'm sitting here trying to think of a webquest...................................and sitting....................................and sitting..................................you get the point.  I've never designed one before, but I've used them.  I've also seen a ton of webquests out there for graphing lines for algebra and so I knew I didn't want to do that.  In fact, most people attack that area of the subject when creating online tools.  It's good because that is an important part of the curriculum, but the focus of these lines usually is on the same thing, slope and y intercept.  Whatever, I'm not going to do that anyway.  Well, here I am thinking of something a bit more ambitious.  Unfortunately, this is where my brain always takes me.  I don't want to reinvent the wheel, I always seem to want to invent the wheel.

I'm now thinking of the area of algebra that I want to learn more about, but also want the students to understand.  The area of quadratics.  In taking a test this week on linear systems, I used a webquest that focus on buying a car that would be most efficient.  I had one of the students say to me, "I didn't know this is what these things were for".  It dawned on me that we hadn't covered the word problems or real world scenarios in that particular class because of time restraints.  We only went through process.  I figured at that moment, I would make sure that I apply the concept of real world at the beginning.  It's really not hard to understand the mathematics and what it means, it is hard to actually recreate the algebra behind all of the data collection and graphs.

AND NOW my quest begins.  A quadratic problem that would give the students a good idea of what they are doing at the beginning of me actually having them learn the processes.

Thus far, my first problem was to take all of the ideas in my head and focus on something that they would find interesting.  After looking at some of the word problems that others had posted I've settled on traffic accidents.  Students will look at different demographic areas such as age vs. AA members, texting vs. age, cell phone calls vs. age, age vs. accidents.  I think that I will have appropriate links for them to find the information, but I haven't found anything great, but I've found the information.  Now, I'm stuck on the Introduction.  Do I go with a game show theme or do I go with helping out a family member letter?  UGH!!!!! Ultimately, I would like them to be able to write a letter to someone that actually could use this information to help apply laws.  If my students were able to make a change, that would be pretty cool.  Since my little part in class was to look at the collaboration, I thought this was a great idea.  So I have definitely included that as part of the quest.

The hardest part of this is in making sure that if I actually want to use this, I've found myself doing a lot of research on quality websites.  Again, I've found the information, but I would like for them to actually have to use some sort of database or something to have to search for it, not really just read an article and collect the info out of it.

And so it is, my head hurts.