MTBoS Blogging Initiative: Better Questions #2 (Through Effective Bell Ringers)

After writing the first post about questioning, I had another thought about writing. I had a quick epiphany about giving my students problems and scenarios without necessarily one right or wrong question and/or answer. My students have not been used to this at all, and I have had to preface by making statements like the ones below.

• "There isn't one right or wrong answer here" (when doing Which One Doesn't Belong?)

•  "Which would you rather do personally (when doing Would You Rather?)

I had been thinking about ways to redo my First Five (which is what I call my bell ringers). Since Tennessee has went to a new state test this year, there have been relatively few practice questions that I can use as bell ringer problems. So, I decided to revamp my First Five. I will write a more detailed post later about that. I was partially inspired by the work from Marissa over at La Vie Mathématique on what she had done with her Warm-Up routine and tweaked it. So, stay tuned for that.

Anyways, let's get on topic.

Here is an example of a scenario we did with Which One Doesn't Belong.

Students were told that there wasn't one right or wrong answer, and I tried probing several for their reasoning. I asked for volunteers, and several hands went in the air. I was able to ask probing questions on this so that way I could better understand their thought process.

Example conversation in my Algebra II class. This isn't the direct quote, nor do I have students' names from the TV show Friends. I did this to protect identities.

Me- Which one do you think doesn't belong, Ross?
Student-I think that it is 123.
Me-How come?
Student-It is the only choice with three digits.

Me-Which one do you think doesn't belong, Rachel?
Student-27 doesn't belong in my opinion
Me-What made you choose 27?
Student-It doesn't have a 3.

Me-Which one doesn't belong, Chandler?
Student-I think that 31 doesn't belong.
Me-Could you tell me more?
Student-It is a prime number and not divisible by 3.

This allowed me to ask questions to help students understand their reasoning more, and this exercise also allowed for students to be able to have productive discourse.

Let's check out another example of a problem from Would You Rather.

Here's the scenario.

This is a type of problem that leaves a lot of room for questions. Let's look at students' questions.

1. "How far is the airport?
2. How long are we going to be going on the trip? 
3. How much is parking per day? 
4. How is parking calculated? 
5. Where are we going? 
6. Will my car be safe at the airport? 
7. When are we going? 

These questions allowed me as the teacher to be able to gain some insight into what my students were thinking. This also allowed for students to be able to critically think about the problem. Many of my students have never flown before, so this was an unfamiliar scenario for some. Our closest airport is an hour away, and this airport is small and has few direct flights. It's one of the more expensive airports to fly from as well. The Nashville airport is two and a half hours away, so many people fly there because the tickets are a lot cheaper! 

To help students who have never flown before, I gave three scenarios that I had experienced. 

#1: In July 2014, I went to New York City to see one of my best friends, and another one of our friends was coming in from Seattle. I checked tickets from Knoxville and Nashville. It was $160 cheaper to fly from Nashville, and I had a non-stop, round trip ticket from Nashville to LaGuardia. It was better for me to drive, park my car for a week (which cost me $72), and drive to and from Nashville instead of flying from Knoxville. 

#2: I flew to Dallas, Texas in December 2014 to meet up with my two friends from NYC and my friend from Seattle, and we drove to Fort Hood to our friend's wedding. It was about $160 cheaper to fly from Nashville than Knoxville. Once again, I got a direct flight. I paid my $36 for parking, and that was done. 

#3: My girlfriend went to St. Thomas to visit her mom and family for Christmas. Instead of driving herself to the airport and parking her car for 2 and a half weeks, her dad took her to the airport, and I went and picked her up. She flew from Knoxville because it was more convenient because she could catch connecting flights in Atlanta to St. Thomas. 

These scenarios allowed for those students who had never flown before to conceptualize the scenario better. I know I went on a  tangent here, but these scenarios allowed for questions between students and allowed for more background knowledge to answer the questions. 

I have been impressed with the quality of questions from my students doing these activities, if only I could remember the questions haha!!! 

MTBoS Blogging Initiative: Better Questions (When You Don't Possess All of the Answers)

Here we go, Week 3 of the MTBoS Blogging Initiative! This post for the initiative deals with questioning. This is a pretty tough one for sure. I try to be cognizant of how I do questioning, but I very seldom can remember specific questions.

When I am lesson planning, I try to be aware of the misconceptions that students have with the concept. However, I am not a believer in scripting out questions for students for a couple of reasons. My first reason is that I have been teaching for four years, and, although this sounds arrogant, what teacher has time to script lessons? What is more important? Scripting questions that you may or may not remember or designing solid lessons and engaging students with questions? The second reason that I do not script is that I know myself well, and I am not going to remember those specific questions.

Anyways, I am off my tangent now.

I want to talk about being able to approach student questions with honesty. There have been several times where students have asked me questions that I honestly did not know the answer to. I am a believer that teenagers can smell BS a mile away. So, when I am asked a question that I honestly do not know the answer to, I am honest with them. I simply say "That's an amazing question, but I honestly don't know the answer (or have a good answer)." Then I respond by saying "However, let's look it up (or I will look that up)."

I find that students are able to respect this more. It lets the students know that I am fallible as their teacher and that I do not possess all of their answers nor all of life's answers.

Let me describe an example, though.

This was during my second year teaching and first year teaching Algebra II. I was teaching and introducing rational expressions and equations to students. I had a student ask the infamous question "When are we ever going to use this?" I simply responded that I didn't know. During my planning period, I decided to google the answer. I learned a lot about where rational expressions could be used. I came back to class with an answer to that student's question. I honestly think that he was shocked that I had researched it. Let me add a disclaimer that I dread teaching rational expressions more than any other topic. My students have struggled with the multi-step problems, and sometimes, I don't get time to get to teach the topic. Students also struggle with finding common denominators since many of my students were either not taught (or cannot perpetually remember) how to find common denominators in elementary and middle school.

Since writing this post, I have thought about another post to write on questioning, so stay tuned for that.

MTBoS Blogging Initiative: My Favorite...Interactive Notebooks

As I am home on this snow day, I am thinking about the next post of the MTBoS Blogging Initiative. There are many things that my students and I enjoy about our classroom, but the one favorite thing that I feel that my students enjoy are the interactive notebooks. 

I began doing interactive notebooks in the Fall of 2015. A friend and colleague of mine had discussed doing them, and I was immediately inspired. I turned to the Internet, Pinterest, math blogs, and my own small creativity. One blog that I really relied on was Math Equals Love. I will admit that I used a lot of her resources since this was my first semester doing them. 

At the end of the semester, many of the students said that I should keep doing interactive notebooks while no students said that I should stop using the interactive notebooks in class. Last semester, I had students do an interactive notebook and a practice notebook. After reading student feedback, I decided to not do the INB this semester, and students glue in their First Five (bell ringer) into their INBs. 

It goes without saying that INBs have helped transform my teaching. Somedays we do foldables, somedays we take notes, and sometimes I give students notes that they are able to graph or fill in the blank. 

Pocket folder 

Snow Days 1,2,and 3

This week was somewhat of a total bust in the classroom to be honest, due to no one's fault.

Let's go over the timeline

M: MLK Day-This was a definite needed day off of school.

T: Two Hour Delay (school started at 10:30). This meant that I didn't have 1st Block Geometry, and my 2nd Block Algebra II class was cut short 20 minutes.

W: Snow Day #1-We woke up to 3-4 inches of snow on the ground, which is more than enough to close schools in east Tennessee (for more than a day, even)

R: Snow Day #2-I teach in a rural county that is hilly and mountainous, so snow takes a while to melt. Coupled with that, temperatures did not get above freezing on Wednesday. Therefore, roads could not melt to get school buses.

F: Snow Day #3-School was cancelled once again due to a system that was coming in later in the afternoon, so no one wanted to take a chance. The town where I live/teach received a few inches of snow. I decided to stay at my girlfriend's house 30 minutes away, and we received nothing. This system was weird. My mom lives about an hour and a half away, and she has around 6-7 inches. However, she was in a car wreck on her way home from work (due to no fault of her own). I am tickled to death that she was in a SUV with two other police officers who were transporting her home when it happened instead of her small Kia. I also talked to my family two hours north in Kentucky, and they have over a foot. Go figure.


I will pause between sections and let you see some pictures.

First snow of the season (January 20, 2016)

The street and the cars

Here I am measuring the snow (using precision) #Mathnerd 

Fun snow picture! Forgive me, but I had not showered or shaved when this pic was taken.
Therefore, I look like complete crap. 

So, what did I do that was productive? Let's go ahead and answer that...nothing. What did I do with these days, though?

Wednesday: My girlfriend and I finally finished Making a Murderer on Netflix. I recommend you go watch ASAP (especially when you have time). Also, we played in the snow. We then watched a couple of episodes of the TV show Square Pegs, which was on from 1982-1983. Yes, I wasn't born until 1989, but I love old stuff. I found the complete series for $3 at the used book store in Knoxville last weekend.

Thursday: We went out to Walmart and Chick-Fil-A because we were too lazy to cook. Also, I needed to pick up some school supplies. My church was nice enough to make a donation to our school to buy school supplies. I picked up a hand sanitizer bottle for every classroom as well as a plethora of glue sticks and stuff for Interactive Notebooks.

Friday: We went out to Kroger (when it was still above freezing and raining) and got groceries. We watched an episode of Frasier on Netflix and Meet the Parents. I began reading Why Not Me by Mindy Kaling. My girlfriend and I played this card game called Mexican Gin and watched a documentary.

Saturday: We finished this season of Todd Margaret, which is a hilarious and strange show about a man who goes to the United Kingdom to sell energy drinks and the stuff he gets into.

Notice what is absent here. Schoolwork. That will be done tomorrow since church was cancelled for tomorrow. Since some parts of the county where I live/teach received 6+ inches, we may not even have school until Monday.

So, we will just enjoy the time off and go with it. Stay warm!

MTBoS Blogging Initiative: A Day in the Life

I have decided to participate in the MTBoS (Math Twitter Blogosphere) 2016 Blogging Initiative. The first prompt is to describe A Day in the Life of a Teacher.

However, this prompt first made me think of the Beatles song, A Day in the Life, which has nothing to do with the prompt. Nonetheless, here is the link to the song.

I am going to do Monday and Tuesday of this week, since I had different events both days.

Monday:

6:55: Wake up
7:40: Arrive at school. During this time, I prepare for the day and make sure everything is neat and organized.
8:30: 1st Block Geometry. We finished the lesson on midpoint and distance formula, and then I had students begin a distance and midpoint formula task.
10:00: Announcements
10:05: 1st Block dismisses. I might just have enough time to go to the bathroom.
10:10: 2nd Block Algebra II. We started working on solving quadratic equations by factoring. By the end of class, several students caught on, but I was not confident enough to move on to new content.
11:40: End of 2nd Block
11:45: 3rd Block Accelerated Algebra II. We finished up solving quadratic equations by factoring. By the end of the class, I felt confident that the class had mastered the standards. We will be moving on to competing the square tomorrow.
12:30: Lunchtime!! I am very fortunate that Tennessee has mandated duty free lunch for teachers, whereas many states still do not have this privilege and right. I go to the teachers lounge where I teat lunch with my "Lunch Bunch" as we call ourselves.
1:00: Back to class. Where did the time from lunch go?!
1:45: 3rd Block Ends
1:45: Breaktime. I usually spend break visiting with teachers and students. I had to cover duty for one of my friends for a few minutes. Then I went and chatted with students for a few minutes.
2:00: 4th Block is my planning time. I recorded some grades in the grade book, I made copies of a foldable for my Algebra II class, created a review for my geometry class for their quiz, and created a spiral review worksheet for my classes to reinforce skills. At 3:15, I had to cover for another teacher's class so she could go to an appointment.
3:30: Schol is dismissed, and I went back to my room for tutoring. I had one student stay, and we worked on several problems over a couple of objectives.
4:40: Leave school and head home. Thankfully I live just a few minutes from school.
4:50: Arrive home. I started working on an evaluation lesson plan for my evaluation next week. Then I finished my spiral review sheets.
5:30: Stop working to make dinner. My friend Phyllis from Mississippi called me, and we chatted a few minutes (as I am cooking dinner).
6:00: Eat dinner while watching an episode of Parks and Recreation
6:20: Do dishes and other house chores
7:00: Finish chores and make a phone call to my mom then read on Twitter
7:30: Go to a friend's house and hang out
9:30: Return home and chat with my girlfriend
10:00: Work on blog
10:30: Settle down and watch and episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
11:00: Bedtime


Tuesday

6:55: Wake up
7:40: Arrive at school.
8:00 Math Department Meeting
8:30: 1st Block Geometry. We reviewed, gave a quiz, and then students finished a task.
10:00: Announcements
10:05: 1st Block dismisses.
10:10: 2nd Block Algebra II. We worked on solving quadratics by factoring again. I was much more pleased at the end of class about how much students were understanding this.
11:40: End of 2nd Block
11:45: 3rd Block Accelerated Algebra II. We started the say doing a Complete the Square guided discovery activity before lunch.
12:30: Lunchtime!! We had a discussion with about 8-9 teachers, which usually doesn't happen. It was good.
1:00: Back to class. We finished completing the square guided discovery activity, and I went through the whole process. They caught on pretty quickly!!!
1:45: 3rd Block Ends
1:45: Breaktime! I went and talked to one of the substitute teachers who is a friend of mine.
2:00: 4th Block is my planning time. I told one of my coworkers that she could bring her class (of 12 kids) to my room so she could go to an appointment. They worked while I gave feedback on geometry quizzes.
3:30: Schol is dismissed, and I went back to my room and chatted with the other math teachers.
4:00: Leave school and head home. Thankfully I live just a few minutes from school.
4:15: Arrive at home and finish evaluation lesson plan.
5:00: Worked on blog and chatted with my mom.
5:30: Cook and eat dinner
6:30: House chores
7:00: Play on Twitter and read
7:30: Go to basketball game at school. I attended the last quarter of the girls' game and the entirety of the boys' game. We won!! Go Bulldogs! I then stayed and chatted with a couple of people until after 10:00.
10:10. Arrive home and watch some TV before bed.
11:00: Bedtime

MTBoS 2016 Blogging Initiative!

I, Jonathan Schoolcraft, resolve to blog in 2016 in order to open my classroom up and share my thoughts with other teachers. I hope to accomplish this foal by participating in theJanuary Blogging Initiative hosted by https://exploremtbos.wordpress.com/. 

You, too, could join in on this exciting adventure. All you have to do is dust off your blog and get ready for the first prompt to arrive January 10.

2016, A New Year, A New Semester

Well, we've been in school for two days, and, so far, it's not going too bad. I wanted to share some of the happenings that have been going on the past two days.

Geometry

I had the students make a foldable with the basic definitions of geometry (points, lines, planes, parallel lines, skew lines, collinear, coplanar, ray, line segment). I will attach a picture later. We also did another foldable on the types of angles. Once again, pictures will come soon.

Today we did a Kahoot, which is this neat tool where students can use their cell phones to answer questions, and it gives immediate feedback. Also, there are tons of Kahoots that have been shared by many people, and that's been helpful. So, I had the students go into groups of 2-3, and one person needed to have a smartphone that connected to Wi-Fi. The kids seemed to enjoy it, but there were some technological issues. One student wasn't able to connect to the Wi-Fi, but his partner was able to do so. Another group wasn't able to submit their answers, but they were confident they had the right answers. All of the students seemed to have a good time, but I had one student who did not want to work with anyone and did not want to do the activity. That was a disappointment for sure.

Algebra II

We've been discussing complex numbers in Algebra II. I used this neat foldable from Julie Reulbach over at I Speak Math, which has been a blessing, since it covers so many topics with complex numbers. I have also integrated this with my Complex Numbers Powerpoint. We worked on adding, subtracting, multiplying complex numbers today, and most seemed to catch on pretty well. We are going to do more work on multiplying tomorrow because substituting -1 in place of i^2 is throwing some for some loops. Also, basic math is also getting in the way, which is where effective feedback comes in handy. I feel more confident in their abilities to solve problems involving complex numbers.

All Classes

I stole a great icebreaker idea from Julie Reulbach, which allowed students to write three things about themselves, and other classmates introduced each other. I even participated. The kids seemed to enjoy this, especially being allowed to throw paper in the classroom. After this, I showed them a "Facts about Mr. Schoolcraft that You May (or May Not) Want to Know" Our librarian just happened to stop by my classroom as I was showing this to students, and he even emailed me and said that he loved the powerpoint. If you want a link to it, just shoot me a comment or email.

I hope your new semester and year are off to a great start!!!!