Baby Blogging Steps

I've made some tentative steps into having my Algebra students blog. So far they've had three posts I've asked them to do:

1. Reflective Blog Post #1 - Reflect on their first week or so of school and set some goals.
   
2. Explain Direct and Inverse Variation
   
3. Explain Solving Equations with Variables on Both Sides

Some students have done a nice job, some not so much, and some haven't blogged at all. I haven't really done this well in the sense that I'm not devoting any class time to this (I'd like to, but don't feel like I can make the time for it), but it's a start. You can check out the Student Blogs Page on the class blog if you want to read and comment on some of their blogs.

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 3

Day three is when I give the common assessment over the Math Skills (this is the only thing all year where they are not allowed to use a calculator). I plan to start with an opener that has several problems that involve the four skills areas on the common assessment. The basic structure of my openers is that they are projected on the smart board as the students come in to class. I ask them to be in their seats and either start them before the bell rings or be ready to start as soon as the bell rings. They work on them individually for a certain amount of time (varies depending on how many and the complexity of the openers), writing them down in their notebooks. Then I ask them to take a few minutes and discuss their results with the other members of their groups (again, typically four in a group, with one or two threes to make it work out even). Then I ask for volunteers to come up and work them out on the smart board (which I then post to the class blog - sample from last year) and explain then to the class. (I go back and forth whether to ask for volunteers or just pick randomly making them all responsible for being ready and "forcing" them to come up - your thoughts?)

After we work through the openers, I'll then give the common assessment (roughly 15 minutes, although I remember last year it took some students significantly longer than that). Then, based on Dvora's comments on the previous post, I'm considering shifting some of the culture/class expectations piece to today. I'm thinking that after the assessment I may take them to the computer lab (assuming MAP testing hasn't started yet and I can get into the lab) to help them get into their Google Accounts. All of our students have Google Apps accounts, and for students that were in my district last year they may remember how to login, but I also have three students who are new to our district. Once they get logged in I'll help them with their basic Blogger setup (mostly display name and creating a reflective blog for my class), then have them read (and eventually comment on, although we may not get that far) a post on the class blog talking about culture and expectations. This may enable some of a conversation online even if they aren't quite comfortable enough yet to engage in a face-to-face discussion.

Their homework will be to check the online portal for the results of their assessment and, if necessary, make plans to re-assess over any of the areas they did poorly on. (While I'm probably going to tweak it some, here was my assessment plan for last year.) Students sign-up online to re-assess (again, here's last year's sign-up form), and they only need to re-assess over the area(s) they did poorly on (so I'll divide the assessment grade into four portions: adding and subtracting fractions, multiplying and dividing fractions, integer operations, and order of operations). In addition, depending on how far we get in class, I may ask them to comment on the class blog post about culture and expectations (perhaps not "due" until Friday as we don't meet on Thursdays).

We would then be setup to really begin "Algebra" on Friday.

Take Two

Well, okay, that didn't work so well. I started out with the best of intentions but, for a variety of reasons, I just couldn't keep up with it. So, a new plan for this coming year.

What I'm going to try to do (at least for a while, we'll see how it goes) is begin to blog about my plans for next year. This summer I'm going back over my lessons from last year and trying to figure out where I should tweak a lesson, where I should do a major overhaul of a lesson, and where I need to come up with a completely different lesson. I hope that by sharing that process here that some of you will help me become a much better teacher (my students thank you in advance).

Obviously you won't know my students or my school and, like all teachers, I'll adjust on the fly as the lesson (unit, year) goes along based on what's happening in the classroom with my students. But by front-loading my planning process I'm hoping to come up with even better ways to help my students learn and understand Algebra, as well as try to model what being a transparent teacher looks like (at least for me). So, for anyone still out there, I'll periodically be posting over the summer (and throughout the year) as I begin to work my way through an entire year of Algebra 1 plans.

It's Been a While

So, obviously, I stopped blogging there for a while. Partly for the usual reason (time), and partly because I felt like I was simply repeating myself, which wasn't helpful to anyone out there or to me (which, selfishly, is the main reason I was writing here).

But several folks in a variety of settings have mentioned lately that they found value in this blog, and I've been feeling the need to think about this more in public again, so I'm going to try to start blogging here again on a semi-regular basis. I don't think it will be on a daily basis (well, each day my class meets, so 4 days a week basis) - my original goal when I started this year, but I'll try to make it fairly regular. And while I suspect I may begin repeating myself again, I'll try to stick with it.

So, if anyone is still out there, stay tuned. Hopefully this post won't be at the top of the page for too long.