#TMC16 Day 2

Sunday brought on another day at TMC16. After learning so much on Saturday, I was ready to see where Sunday took me.

I went back to my session on "Just Enough intervention" to close gaps in students' knowledge, and we discussed pre-assessments. Like many other teachers before me, I assumed that we pre-assessed at the beginning of a unit or course then gave students the same test at the end of the unit. We discussed how reassessments need to be designed and administered.

Here is what I learned about giving and creating solid pre-assessments

• Don’t pre-assess on what students do not know becuause it does not give relevant information.
• Pre-assess on what students should have learned in previous years.
• One skill per question
• Short (one page)
• For students who have perseverance issues
• Double sided, lots of white writing space
• One skill per question (do not mix skills in one question)
• As little language as possible
• Completely low stakes (what you know and what you don’t)
• No penalty to doing poorly (other than knowing what you need to know)
•  Know where deficits are extremely quickly

However, this is the most important piece of info that I learned. **If you are not going to do anything with the data, then do not give the pre-assessment.** Wow! What a powerful statement! That blew my mind when I heard this. 

Then I went to Anna Vance's (@TypeAMathLand)session on Make it Stick. This is a book that is at the top of my list to read, but I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy. It's the very, very end of summer, and I am down to necessities. So, maybe here in a few weeks, I will get a copy. I took notes frantically during this session, and Anna did a great job summarizing the main points of Make it Stick while describing ways that we as teachers can apply Make it Stick in our classrooms. 

I learned that we oftentimes are bad judges at what we think we know and what we don't. We discussed retrieval of info as well as giving students spaced and interleaved practice. I definitely want to have students do a better job of retrieval as well as designing assignments that are considered to be spaced and interleaved practice. I guess I should explain those terms. Spaced practice is where students are given a few days before being assigned the skill to practice, and interleaved practice is where students are given mixed types of problems in practice. Reflection is another important piece, and I think that having students reflect at the end of our lessons was a common theme at TMC16, and I, along with many of the attendees, need to do a better job of closing our lessons. 

The last session was from Jonathan Claydon (@rawrdimus) on Hack it to Pieces. We took pieces of curriculum and searched for common themes and standards to group instead of doing the same progression in our courses. For example, grouping graphing together, equations together, etc. I want to eventually be able to do this, but with so much happening between TMC and school starting (Friday, July 29), I wasn't able to pull it off this semester, but maybe I can for the next semester. 

I can't forget My Favorites and the keynote! I enjoyed Dave Sabol  (@Dave_Sabol) discuss Math and Maps along with Voronoi diagrams along with the Jason Davies website. Check it out! I also enjoyed listening to Heather Kohn's talk on the engineering design process and how we are often guilty of not doing engineering projects in math class. Guilty as charged! I also liked Anna Blinstein's presentation on Feedback meetings. I would really love to try this idea as well, but I would have to really think about how to most effectively implement this. I also like Connie Haugneland's stories about Rwanda and Sam Shah's Explore Math. 

Last but not least, I cannot forget Tracy Zager's Keynote. I liked how real she was with all of us and discussed how important it was for elementary and secondary math teachers to work together. The most important piece of her keynote was to not skip the close of a lesson. 

After the conference, I went with a group from TMC to Minnehaha Falls and on a little hike to the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. 

Quilting with Geometry Presentation at TMC16

I was really fortunate to have the opportunity to present on Quilting with Geometry at Twitter Math Camp 16. I had submitted the proposal around Christmas last year, and I honestly thought I would have zero chance of my proposal being accepted. I was nervous, and I tried to not think about it. One night in January, I had to work the ticket gate at a basketball game. I happened to check my email on my phone during a dead time, and I received an email from Team TMC, telling me that my proposal had been accepted! I literally jumped and down and shouted "YES!" in the gym lobby. I had a student ask me what had happened. I was so thrilled that I was going to Twitter Math Camp in Minneapolis!!

July 16 was here before I knew it. I was nervous for part of the day about my presentation, and I tried to keep calm. I went to the room where I was assigned to present. When I got to the room, I realized that I needed a dongle to plug in my laptop. I panicked and had someone to tweet out to get a dongle for me.

No one showed up with a dongle, but that was okay! I had four great participants that attended the session, so we turned the session into a group discussion around the quilt.

I am attaching the presentation and a couple of pics if you would like to see. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!!


Quilting with Geometry TMC16 Presentation

#TMC16 Day 1

After the Desmos Preconference had ended on Friday, I was already pumped for Twitter Math Camp to start on Saturday. We began the day by having an opening session from the incomparable Lisa Henry (@lmhenry9) who allowed the morning session presenters to give a quick "elevator speech" on their sessions.

I wound up choosing the session by Michelle Naidu (@park_star) on using a "Just Enough" approach to intervention. I will give a brief descriptor of each day's session in each day's blog post, but the first day's session discussed what differentiation is and is not. We, as a group, discussed what accommodations and modifications were and how they were used.

One idea that Michelle used that I really liked was the bullet point method. We were grouped and sent to different chart paper areas around the room. We were asked to write down the difficulties of implementing differentiation in our classrooms, and we were required to use a open bullet point. We used this in later days to fill in our comfortability and level of understanding. I thought this was a good and quick way to formatively assess.

Another idea in the session was to do the snowball activity. Someone writes an idea on a piece of paper, crumples the paper and tosses it in the classroom. Then another student or group participant picks up the paper and can respond, write a question, or add an idea to the paper. Then that person tosses the paper again and writes another idea or question. Then the ideas are shared out loud. This was another idea for formative assessment, and I really liked the idea that it was anonymous.

Yet another great idea in the session was for teachers to take their standards and print them out on cards and sort into common groups for structuring a course. I really liked this idea. Also, go and check out #TMCdifferentiate to read our feed.

Our first session of My Favorites was right after lunch, and I really enjoyed listening to Jonathan Claydon (@rawrdimus) talk about Varsity Math, Hedge (@approx_normal)  discussed Snagit, and Deb Boden (@debboden) discussed Pac Man Transformations. I really liked what Hedge said about TURDs. Wait for it...Truly Unfortunate Representations of Data. 

Then we had Jose Vilson give the keynote address after lunch. Mr. Vilson discussed issues with math and social justice. I liked when Mr. Vilson said that we all share students, regardless of whether we do so or not. I also liked how he mentioned that standardized testing is having many negative consequences on low income school, which makes me extremely, extremely sad. Below is a slide that Mr. Vilson shared with us, and I wanted to share it with you. 

“Showing Your Work” Meets “Doing The Work”

Math teachers ask critical questions

Math teachers ask these questions of themselves and others

Math teachers prepare for teachable moments

Math teachers expect non-closure

Math teachers stand on principles of inquiry and openness

Math teachers allow for multiple pathways

After all of this, the day was far from over. I went to Julie Reulbach (@jreulbach) and Julia Finneyfrock's (@JFinneyfrock) session on Pear Deck. After this session, I felt much more comfortable with Pear Deck, and I can't wait to use Pear Deck in designing student lessons!! After this session was my own session, which I will discuss in the next post.

Desmos Conference #descon16

Where do I even begin? I had the incredible opportunity to attend the 2016 Desmos Pre-Conference at Augsburg College in Minneapolis last Friday, July 15. There was so much rich information that I need to reflect on what all I learned, but let me just share a bit at first. When the conference began, I was intimidated because I only knew one or two people in the room, but I calmed down once I saw free Einstein Bros. Bagels! I wound up meeting several people throughout the course of the day, which helped me to calm down. But, let's talk about the learning.

Dan Meyer was our special guest, and he helped us kick things off, starting off with a video recording message from Eli, the founder of Desmos. Then we were introduced to Voice Over, which is this awesome new feature that has been recently revealed by Desmos, which is an adaptive tool for students who are visually impaired. It helps students type in equations, and students are even able to "hear" the graphs being graphed out. Everyone in the session was amazed by this. We also heard from Michael Fenton from Desmos, and I even chatted with him for a few minutes.

We were divided into groups, and I went to the intermediate group. We worked with others, and I finally learned how to do regressions, thanks to help from Joel Bezaire (@joelbezaire) and Hedge (@approx_normal). There were so many more things we learned, but some of it was a review. I also learned how to create lists, (which are evidently a thing in Desmos). I helped my group make folders and text notes, so I was glad to help out and contribute something.

After a nice pizza lunch, we heard from Sara VanDerWerf, who is the president of the Minnesota Council of Teachers of Mathematics, (MCTM),  who talked about how powerful of a tool Desmos is as well as how to be an "evangelist" for Desmos and math education. She also discussed how we as educators and a society have much work to do to make sure that our our minority students achieve as equally as Caucasian students. Although my students are Caucasian, it saddens me that we have so much educational inequality in this country.

After lunch, Christopher Danielson took us through Activity Builder, which is another awesome Desmos tool that can be used to engage students. We also learned how to do...wait for it...card sorts, which is a newly released tool for teachers to create card sorts instead of having to use paper and do it all by hand. I created a Card Sort on Arithmetic, Geometric, or Neither, where students have to clarify sequences by one of the three. Feel free to use and check it out! Also, Thanks to Julie Reulbach (@jreulbach), there is a spreadsheet on Card Sorts for teachers to use. Here is the link to the spreadsheet.

I learned a ton from the conference, but I forgot to mention the coolest parts..Free Desmos socks AND meeting Dan Meyer (along with his awesome selfie skills)!!!

Summer Thus Far!

Well, school has been out for two weeks, and I am just now able to decompress from the school year.

Let's see what I've done thus far.

-Day Trip to Fall Creek Falls State Park, which is between Knoxville, Nashville, and Chattanooga. It is the highest waterfall east of the Mississippi River. I had never been before, and it was less than two hours from where I live. So, Alex and I went there to hike and sightsee.

-Not long after that, Alex and I went to Savannah, Georgia, for four days. Her sister used to live in Savannah, so we did a lot of walking around the historic district. We also went on a carriage ride, a riverboat cruise, drove to Tybee Island for the afternoon, as well as wander in Bonaventure Cemetery.

-After getting back from Savannah, I had to go to two days of Chromebook training at our Central Office.

-Thankfully I have been able to rest the past couple of days and be lazy. I have become hooked on this TV show called The Real O'Neals. I have also watched a lot of South Park as well!

-I finally started working on my presentation for Twitter Math Camp as well as some other things for the beginning of school.

Here is what the rest of the summer entails
-Visiting my mom and grandma for a couple of days. They live about an hour and a half from me.
-Cleaning out closets and clothes in my house
-Trying to do some lesson planning for next school year
-Going to West Virginia to a family reunion
-Flying to St. Thomas to spend two weeks with my girlfriend and her mom. I only get to see her mom once a year, so that will be nice. I also have never been to St. Thomas.
-After getting back from St. Thomas, I will fly to Minneapolis to attend and present at Twitter Math Camp.
-Once that is over, it will be almost time to return to school.


Anyways, I promise to get some lesson planning done this summer, but it's hard when the state hasn't decided on a testing vendor nor do we know if our standards are changing next year or not. :(

Have an amazing summer!!

Student Surveys

After seeing several posts from others out in the Math Twitter Blogosphere about doing student surveys, I decided to give it a go myself. I rushed to the library to book the computer lab. To my surprise, it was open the next day. I looked at a survey from Julie Reulbach, and I created my own survey using her questions.

Before going to the lab, I instructed students to be honest with me and assured them that the survey was anonymous. I was really interested in seeing the data so that way I could help improve myself as a teacher and prepare future students for my classes. The data showed that most students thought I was understanding, graded fairly, wanted them to succeed, and explained the topic clearly. So, I was somewhat content with that. I had an outlier on the lowest end, but I still respect their opinion nonetheless.

I asked students what I could do to explain topics more clearly. Several students suggested more games, projects, and hands on activities, with which I definitely agree. A few students said to spend more time on concepts. I agree with this, however, the state standards make that very difficult due to the volume of standards and the lack of time. Many of the students rated me a 3,4, or 5 on having interesting lessons, and my data was somewhat normally distributed on the challenge level of the class. I also asked students what they could've done to be more prepared for this class, and some said doing a review of Algebra I before diving into Algebra II, and several said "nothing."

Quite a few of the students said that I should keep letting students play trashketball, keep my positive and engaging attitude, and keep being a savage (which is evidently a compliment). Students said that I need to slow down (with which I agree), give more free time (definitely not agreed), and playing more trashketball. Several students suggested that I assign less homework, even though I might assign 10 problems per week at most outside of class. Some suggested more free time, although I said that nor extra credit were options I was willing to start doing. Students said I needed to stop being so uptight, to stop apologizing for everything, and "letting turds talk a lot."

Now, its time for the moment you have all been waiting for, from the mouths of teenagers themselves. Take it away, kids.

What should I stop doing? 

 How would you describe this class? 

What advice would you give to future students? 

What is one word you would use to describe this class? 

-For those of you who do not know, Alex is my girlfriend, and my students (for some reason) are obsessed with my personal life.  It's amusing nonetheless.


Hope you have enjoyed!