First Three Weeks

So, it's been a while since I've written anything here. That's partly due to my other full-time job (tech coordinator for my building) dominating my time at the beginning of the school year, and partly due to not wanting to plan too far ahead until I saw how things were going with my students.

So far, things are going okay but not fantastic. I'm one day "behind" what I had blogged about (over-planned as usual, but not as badly as before) - so what I have for "Day 14" on my last post (which the plan was to teach today) won't happen until Friday, Day 15 (reminder that we don't meet on Thursdays). The students seem to be adjusting fairly well to my class (and, since most of them are freshmen, to high school), and they've done well as a class on the first couple of assessments.

On the not-so-positive side, they haven't quite bought in as much as I would like them to. It's been a struggle to get some of them to think and explore and inquire. That's not a huge surprise, but still disappointing. I'm hopeful that as we go along they'll want to sit back and receive less often and step forward and do more themselves more often. We'll see.

Here's the direct link to this year's class blog if you'd like to follow along, and note an additional page on this year's blog that pulls in the students' individual blogs. The two blogging prompts I've given have given me some interesting insights (including that it's going to be a struggle to get some of my students to blog in an Algebra class). Baby steps, I suppose.

Now that the beginning of the year madness with the tech part of my job has slowed down a bit (still there, just not quite as crazy), and now that I know my students a bit and can make some more informed plans, I hope to begin blogging again here about my plans for Day 16 and beyond.

Day 5

As a reminder, this is day five of my class, but it will be Monday of the second week since my class only meets four days a week.

The opener today is designed to build off the work we did on Friday as well as the video they watched for homework.

As they are working on the opener I will be walking around and looking at their notebooks to make sure they have the "Self-Check" problems from the video written down. This is somewhat of a philosophical dilemma for me. Last year I made the philosophical decision to not check whether they had watched the video. I explained to them that I expected them to watch the videos and that they needed to watch the videos in order to be successful, but that I wasn't going to look over their shoulder to make sure they did it. I continued to talk about this throughout the year, and it worked well for some students, but unfortunately other students had real difficulty completing these videos without me "checking up on them." So this year I've decided to backtrack a bit and check that they're watching the videos/completing the self-check exercises, at least at the beginning of the year. Then hopefully gradually back away from that throughout the year as they internalize that the videos are helping them. We'll see.

After they work on the openers individually, and then in their table groups, we'll discuss them as a class. Then today's lesson is to look at ratio, proportion and percent in the context of a sampling problem. We'll begin with a 3.5 minute video from Discovery Education on the Capture-Recapture Method of estimating animal populations. After watching the video we'll simulate the capture-recapture method using paper bags and two colors of beans (in the context of sampling fish at a nearby reservoir).

After working through the simulation, we'll then see if it took hold by completing three sample "application" problems. Assuming that goes okay, we'll then talk about how we could sample our class to try to predict answers for the entire school (or a class across the hall). The "freshmen" question is designed to get them thinking about what a good sample might look like (since my class is majority freshmen, this is not a good sample for the school, but might be for an Algebra class at the school). (Note: On all these images keep in mind that they are on a smart board and I'm using the window shade to control how much is visible at one time.)

If we have time, we'll then conclude with a quick skill review..

 

We'll then talk briefly about their homework for tonight, which is to complete the Solving Proportions and Percents Online Pre-Assessment. My plan is to use these in a very similar way to the way I did last year. Usually two class periods before an assessment I'll have the students complete a sample online pre-assessment. This gives them an idea of how they'll do on the actual assessment and gives them some time to get help/figure it out before the assessment that "counts." I ask them to write down the problems in their notebook and work them out, then click on "Check Your Work" to see how they did (and correct if necessary). I'll also give them an optional link if they'd like more practice, but it is completely optional.

A second piece of homework, but one that's not due until Friday (four days from now), is their first reflection piece:

Looking back at your first week in Algebra (and, for some of you, your first week at AHS), how are you feeling? What's going well or you're excited about? What's challenging or are you concerned about? Then I want you to set three goals for yourself for this semester. One goal specifically related to Algebra, one goal related to AHS in general (can be related to classwork, sports, activities, or something else at AHS), and one goal outside of AHS. Make these goals fairly specific, not just "I want to get a good grade." I'll be asking you to revisit these goals toward the end of the semester and evaluate how well you're doing on them, so make them be worthwhile and achievable.

Last year we did this in Google Docs, but this year I've decided to go ahead and have them blog them. I debated about whether I wanted these private (in Google Docs, so that they could perhaps be more honest and share more information), or public (Blogger, where they might feel somewhat constrained because it's public). Last year I really didn't have anything shared that I think wouldn't have been if they'd been public, so I want to open this up for all the usual reasons for why blogging can be powerful. I'll also let the students know that if they have anything they'd like to share but not publicly, to just let me know.

I'm a little worried that's too much homework, but I figure the pre-assessment only takes 10-15 minutes and the reflection isn't due until Friday (and they have Thursday "off" of Algebra), so I'm hoping it's not too bad.

As always, I'd appreciate your thoughts/suggestions on any of the above.

Day One

Today was the first day of school and it was kind of anticlimactic. On the first day of school each class has a class meeting during one period, and the freshmen class met during first period. Since the majority of my class is freshmen, I only got to see them for about twelve minutes before taking them to the class meeting.

I knew that going in, so I didn't plan a lesson, we just went over a few things about the class. When they walked in they found Algebra textbooks on their desks, each one with a slip of paper on it that had their name so they could find their desk (mostly alphabetical to start, helps me learn their names, but a few students were out of order because they need to be in the front). The paper also had the URL for the class blog on it and a message that that's where they could find the homework for tonight.

I greeted them at the door and said hi, then as they found their desks I had on the projector what they should do (find their desk, write their name and my name in the textbook, and that the freshmen would be leaving for their class meeting in about 10 minutes). After the bell rang I welcomed them and asked them to put their names in the textbook if they hadn't already as I went around and made sure I was pronouncing their names correctly.

Then we talked briefly about the weird schedule today and then I showed them the class blog and talked about each piece of their homework for Wednesday (our class meets four days a week, MWRF, so they don't have Algebra tomorrow). As you can see from today's post on the class blog, their homework was the following:

1. Bookmark the class blog on the computer they'll be using at home. I talked about how they'll be visiting it pretty much every day, so they're probably going to want to make it easily accessible.
   
2. Then they needed to review for the Math Skills Assessment. This is something the math department at my school does in the first couple of days of school for Algebra classes, to assess where they're at in terms of the basic computation skills they need to be successful in Algebra. As you can see from the Math Skills Assessment website, this year we asked students to work on it over the summer. As of this writing, we have 338 students who self-reported that they completed it (out of a freshmen class of about 580). That number probably includes a few who didn't and a few who filled it out twice, but there are also probably students who completed it and forgot to fill out the form.
   
3. Then I asked them to read through our Class Expectations and then fill out the form to indicate they've read them. I also encouraged them to have their class supplies with them by Wednesday. Some of the students had already completed this, as it was part of the email to their parents I sent out about a week ago, but most have not.
   
4. Then I asked them to write their About Me and get it to me as soon as they could. Again, several students had already completed this ahead of time, which was nice because I was able to refer to a piece of info about them in class when I was talking about the assignment. "I know so-and-so can probably dance just a little bit better than me. Of course, when I grew up Disco was popular, so all of you can probably dance better than me . . ."
   
5. Then the last part of their homework was to take their textbook home and place it wherever they study, take a digital picture of it, and then email it to me. We won't be using the textbook in class, so I want it safely home where they can use it as a resource when they need it.

Then we had a little time left so I took them on a "field trip" of sorts. We walked by the Math Office so they could see where they could go to get help if I'm not available, then we walked by my office (I'm not in the Math Office because of the rest of my responsibilities) and talked briefly about how they can get help from me (schedule it in advance if they know in advance and I'll put it on my calendar and make every effort to be there, but if they don't know in advance they can always drop by and see if I'm there - they just can't count on it because I'm so often out and about in the building). We also talked about our Study Center as another place they could get help, but I couldn't show them that both because we were out of time and that's where students who hadn't picked up their schedules yet were getting them.

It's hard to do much in 12 minutes, and I always hate the first few weeks before we get to know each other and they're so quiet, but the day went fine given the circumstances. Wednesday we'll start with an opener and then the Math Skills Assessment, and then we'll develop some expectations for each other. That last part will be the first chance to really start talking/working with each other.