2016: A Personal Reflection

It is basically a New Year's Eve tradition that I try to take a few minutes and reflect on what all has happened over the past year, both positive and negative. A lot happened this year in my personal life that was tough for sure. My grandfather passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's in July. There were also some tough personal issues in my family, which I will refrain from giving more details. I recently wrapped up my toughest semester of teaching since my first year. I felt myself becoming jaded and disillusioned, and that is not who I am as a teacher. The positive side is that I feel ready and more confident to take on the new semester.

However, 2016 provided some positives that I would like to reflect on.

• I got to visit two new states and a territory this year: California, Minnesota, and the United States Virgin Islands. So, I am officially over the halfway mark (26 down, 24 to go). 
• I went to California, and I got to experience some cool stuff while I was there, such as seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time, eating In-N-Out, Hollywood (gross!), the Griffith Observatory, Santa Monica Pier, Disneyland, and the Warner Bros. Studio Tour! 
• I finally got to go to St. Thomas (not once, but twice) this year! For those of you that may not know, my girlfriend was born and raised there, and her mom still lives there. So, it was nice to finally see where she grew up! I also realized that going to the beach wasn't so bad after all. Now, I guess this means that I have some sort of an aversion to stateside beaches. 
• I had the opportunity to attend Twitter Math Camp in Minneapolis and make some new friends and finally meet some of my Twitter peoples in person. I also got to see Minnehaha Falls and the Mall of America while I was up there. I also had the opportunity to meet Dan Meyer, who is a rockstar in the world of mathematics education. 
• My girlfriend was inducted into the Phi Alpha, the National Social Work Honor Society in October at the University of Tennessee. 
• I was ranked a level 5 for the first time in my career. 
• Our school finally received some technology in the form of Chromebooks. 
• We decided on December 30 to adopt a dog from the animal shelter!

So, with that, as much as I hate to admit it, I am ready to see 2016 go and see what 2017 has to offer! I am hoping for more travels, professional growth, and happy times and experiences with the ones I love!! 

WODB Projects and Plickers: Fall 2016 Edition

EOCs are over, and the Christmas/Holiday break will greet us in just four short days. However, the semester isn't over yet, but it's time to have some real fun and create our own WODBs! I first did this project last semester after integrating WODBs in my classroom. Toward the end of the last semester, I did WODB Wednesdays, and I integrated Plickers into my WODBs. This semester, I have kept the WODB Wednesdays, and students have become accustomed to them. 

Now it was time for this project to repeat themselves. After having nearly two weeks of testing between English, math, science, and history, my students needed something light, yet creative at the same time. So, I gave them Friday to create their WODBs. I have them pick something mathematical or something of their interest. Students then find four items and must be able to describe why each item does not belong. Then they submit the project to me. I then take their project and set it up as a question in Plickers so that students would have a chance to respond.  

Here is the link to the Google Doc. The link to last semester's blog post is in the first paragraph. 

How was this project similar as last semester? 

• I basically used the same assignment sheet and rubric. I took out a couple of the categories in the rubric, though. 
• I allowed students to use their own interests to create the project. 
• Students were allowed to work individually or with a partner. 

How did the project differ this semester? 

• Each student received a Chromebook in September, so the assignment and criteria were posted to Google Classroom 
• Students submitted their assignments to me via Google Classroom instead of email. 
• I gave feedback through their assignments in Google Classroom 
• I was able to assess and give feedback faster. 

How will I alter the project for next semester?

• I think I might require a mathematical WODB and a non-mathematical WODB. 
• I think I will require each person to do a non-mathematical WODB and have students do mathematical WODBs in partners. 
• I will tweak the rubric more to make it slightly more stringent as I didn't assess tough this semester. 

My Reflections/Thoughts 

• Overall, I was impressed with the products that my students created. 
• My biggest complaint was that some students didn't go far enough in explaining their reasoning and/or only gave one reason per category. 
• This is a fun project that my students seem to enjoy as it allows me to learn more about them, and it allows them to make the content relevant to their lives. 
• I was especially impressed with one of my classes, as many of the students were explaining their reasoning with each other and adding to each other's thoughts.

So, I will be quiet, and I will let my students' work start doing the talking. Let my students and me know what you think! 

Focus and Directrix Centers

When our state went to "new" standards, they added the standard about having students write the equation of the parabola when given the focus and the directrix. I have intentionally avoided this topic for a couple of semesters for the following reasons.

1. Our textbooks and the resources I had available did not have enough information on the topic. 
2. I was convinced that this topic shouldn't be in the Algebra 2 standards. 
3. I hadn't seen focus and directrix since I was in Algebra 2 when I was a freshman, which was 2003-2004. I guess I contradicted myself with number 2. 
4. I wasn't confident in my skills. 

Now, enter the MTBoS and a plethora of new resources. I had read a blog post by Sam Shah a couple of months ago, but I was getting distracted and bogged down with solving quadratic equations. So, I decided to put this topic to the side and come back to it at a later time. Now, here we are in late November, and I felt that I was ready to try to present the topic once again. I had looked at a practice test for the End of Course exam, and I noticed that there were two questions relating to focus and directrix, so I knew I owed it to my students (and to myself) to teach them the concept. 

I started by noticing that Delta Math had some exercises relating to focus and directrix. So, I decided to give them a try. I started by looking at the examples that were given and then practiced a few problems on my own. I originally was going to put Delta Math on the Promethean board and work some problems there and then have the kids work. Then I had an idea of something that I hadn't done in a while. I was going to create centers. 

Centers were one of my instructional strategies that I used the first couple of years of my teaching career, but I hadn't done centers in over a year or more. I used the snipping tool from my desktop in my classroom to create the three centers. 

1. Finding the vertex, p-value and direction of the graph given the focus and directrix on the graph 
2. Finding the vertex, p=value and direction of the graph without the graph. 
3. Writing the equation of the parabola given the focus and directrix. 

I had originally planned to time students with each center for them to get practice, and then kids would "rotate" the centers and stay at their group tables. I had a very odd number (13) in my first class, so this activity didn't go smooth at all. I had let them pick their own groups, which was a big mistake. I had several students working, and I had one group where most of the students were not doing the work. I am embarrassed to admit that I went and stood over them for a couple of minutes, and only two were working. They still didn't get to work, so I went on to the other groups, who were working fine. I don't think that I was explicit enough in my directions, possibly. I don't think that the groups got enough practice. I do want to mention a positive here. I noticed a couple of kids came up with the idea to use the coordinate planes on the back of the whiteboards. I was very happy with this realization! 

It worked like a charm in my other class. I had 18, which made for perfect grouping, of six groups of three kids each. I set the timer for 11 minutes, and students had practice with all three centers. Most were engaged with the material, and kids were working cooperatively in their groups. One issue that I noticed was that some kids were getting x and y confused when plotting points and of x and y on the coordinate plane. However, we fixed this pretty quick. 

I definitely want to do the focus and directrix centers again with this topic. I also want to find ways to make my centers more engaging and for students to have more accountability within the centers so that I don't have problems like I did with a few kids in one of my classes. I think that one start may be to have the groups already made beforehand or use Visible Random Grouping (VRG). Another way may be for students to have a preprinted answer sheet. I did check students' work periodically. So, maybe I need to be more consistent with that. 

If you would like my centers activity, please feel free to email me, comment with your email, or tweet to me @jschool0218. Now, let me leave you with a few pics. 

Quadrilateral Social Media Project

After we finished out our unit on quadrilaterals, I wanted the kids to do something project oriented, and I also wanted some updated student work on the walls. I had first heard of this project on Julia Finneyfrock's blog, and let me tell you, if you haven't read Julia's blog, go check it out! Anyways, Julia's blog led me to Tina Cardone's blog, which led me to a Google search and at Mrs. E Teaches Math's blog.  So I took some info from all of the blogs and created my own sort of project.

Here is what I required (loosely)

• Sign up for a shape (which I only allowed four students per shape, and it was first come first serve) 
• Make a social media profile 
• Twitter
• Facebook 
• SnapChat 
• Tinder (although it's hard to swipe right on paper) 
• Instagram 
• Dating Profile 
• Take 5 self portraits/tweets/etc. 
• Have around ten facts about quadrilaterals, but if it was 7-8, I was still okay with that. 
• Make the project neat and nice 

When I gave my students some creative freedom and made the project somewhat more lenient, I was pleasantly surprised, impressed, and proud of how creative my kids were and the product that they created. I even had several students ask to create real profiles on Twitter and Instagram, which I allowed. I am even going to post some on our school's Facebook page and on my own personal page. 

I definitely will do this project in the future, but I probably would do a couple of things differently. I think I needed some more stringent guidelines, but I think that might just be my very strong detail oriented personality trait coming out there. I also think that I wouldn't allow creating real social media profiles because it is harder for them to create their own pictures and harder to get their ten facts in with five portraits and to show interaction between profiles. 

Here is the handout for the project, and I am going to leave you with some pics of their projects. Let me know if you have done this project before, and I would love to see any of your kids's projects if you have done or will do this project.