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Archive for the ‘POI’ Category

Math Teachers at Play #25: Sharing

16 Apr

My life is changing in many major ways.  I just got engaged.  I just bought a house with my fiancé(e?).  I’m getting ready for the summer as a camp director, and preparing to start my own software company (seriously!).  Tomorrow I leave on a 7-day hiking trip in Missouri  with 8 students, and won’t be able to check on my house, my staff, or work on the science fiction class I’m teaching in 10 days, and I’m really not ready to go.

Despite the toll these changes are taking on my time, I’m happy to host the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival, edition #25.  More and more, the web is becoming a tool which people use to learn, teach, and learn by teaching (and teach by learning!).  Much of my own expertise as a teacher, as a programmer, and as a camp director has come from the internet, and my journey into the blogosphere this year has given me a chance to give back (and to grow from that process).  This blog carnival was one of the first hubs of interconnectivity I stumbled upon in my search for quality contributors to said blogosphere 1.

I also want to take this opportunity to share all of the files I’ve generated this year.  I’m proud of them as a record of my progress, but you’ll be disappointed if you expect a continuous style or theme.  You’ll see my philosophy change from unit tests to SBG tests, you’ll notice when I got my CPM books, and when I ran out of steam for my notes templates and slide decks.  Please feel free to use, alter, and redistribute any of my work.  My ego says “and link back to me here” but I don’t think I actually even care about that.  I hope you can use them!  Sorry: they’re all in Office 2007 formats.

And now, with all of my sentimental blathering aside, the Carnival itself! The theme this month is sharing connections. I’ve arranged every blog submitted according to the number of subscribers that google reader tells me it has. Those without a lot of connections are listed first, so veteran bloggers can take a while to check them out and leave some comments. Those with many connections are listed later, so that newcomers to blogging can start with some popular blogs with already-active comment sections. If you’d like to submit your own article to next month’s carnival (hosted at math hombre), make sure you do so at blogcarnival.com before May 20!

Thanks for keeping this community strong by writing, reading, and commenting on all of the great math ed blogs out there.  It’s really something – and what a great way to set an example of life-long learning for our students!

Riley

  1. I can’t believe how comfortable I’ve gotten with these ridiculous words ↩
 
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Posted in POI, Uncategorized

 

Teaching note-taking with notes templates

15 Feb

One of the questions I struggle with is “what is my class for?”  This has been a question forever, of course: is my most important lesson about Algebra, about being ready for college, about independent thinking, about forming a community, about the connection between me and my students?  It’s easy to get bogged down in this but it’s also easy to see that the answer is not Algebra alone.

One of the other things I try to teach my students is the skill of taking notes, and my approach revolves around templates for notes for each class.  At the beginning of the year, their templates will be almost completely filled out, and colorfully organized.  I use the trick of leaving everything but the f____ l____ of some words blank to give kids some ownership of the notes but to simultaneously make sure that kids have really important points written down.  There are spaces at the top and bottom of each template for a title (a super-short summary) and a summary of the class (a couple of sentences max).

A complex notes template

A complex notes template (click to download pdf)

As the semester progresses, we talk occasionally about what from the class would be important to remember, and how the students could have guessed at what material to write on their own notes template.  On a couple of days in the second or third month I give them the notes template at the end of class, and we take a little time for them to realize what they missed, and what they included on their own notes that I didn’t.  And the templates get simpler.

A simpler template (click to download PDF)

Creating these templates for class every day is a fair amount of work, but I find that focusing around the template can actually help me focus my lesson.  And, in those halcyon days of my imagined future self, in which I am following the same sequence in two consecutive years and sipping white russians and reading Robertson Davies instead of working frantically until 10 PM and still going to bed unsatisfied, these notes templates can be reused.

I don’t have data for you about how well these work.  I don’t grade the notes and I don’t control any part of the experiment.  Some students say they like them, and some don’t.  I can tell you this:

  • When a student comes to my office hours and asks a question, I can ask him to pull out his notes on the subject.  If he can’t do that, I’ve immediately identified a problem in his work habits.  Better still, it’s a problem that we can manage and check in on the next week.  If he can do that, he is empowered to help himself, and good study habits are fortified.
  • I am showing kids what it means to take good notes.  They can compare their own notes to mine.  I am no longer just expecting them to figure this skill out and getting frustrated when they don’t.
  • The kids who keep all of the templates in order have a binder they can really be proud of.  It looks nice.
  • I don’t have to give kids a ton of time to accurately copy complex diagrams or equations.  I just put those things on the template.
  • You can really supplement a powerpoint presentation with the right stuff on a complementary handout.  And there are some fun classroom activities to be had by subtly changing a few of the handouts in ways that students won’t notice right away :D

I’d love to hear of any other ideas for teaching note taking, or any responses to mine.  My method is based on the Cornell notes system.

 
3 Comments

Posted in POI, bag o' tricks

 

Involving students in assessment

13 Dec

The norm is for the teacher to write a test, lead a few lessons, describe what will be on the test, and then administer the test, right?  Students are not involved in making the assessment that will determine their grades.  My form of summative assessment changed drastically this year, but it still does not address this issue.  From what I hear from other teachers (you?), there’s a lot of room in all of our classrooms for more student involvement in assessment creation.

The tempered radical recently wrote about the benefits of explaining to students exactly what the point of each lesson is.  It’s the kind of thing that seems so obvious when you say it like that, but this is relatively new research pointing at this stuff.  In the November 2009 issue of Educational Leadership, “The Quest for Quality” references research from 2006 and 2009 to make the radical claim that “students learn best when they monitor and take responsibility for their own learning.”  It goes on to say “This means that teachers need to write learning targets in terms that students will understand.”  Sam Shah wrote about an experience talking directly with students about what it means to think and act like a mathematician that was so powerful for him that he considers it a genesis for himself as teacher.  And meanwhile, I think I’m totally rad for talking with students about what they want out of my class.

It’s incredible that this stuff is new, right?

Some teachers are on to this already.  I read about teachers developing rubrics with their classes, and others having students write questions from which the teacher will select his favorite three, etc.  These teachers are already reaping the benefits:

  • students feel (are) respected
  • students feel (have) ownership of the assessment, which gives them a new responsibility
  • students know a lot about the assessment before the lessons are all over, which seems, you know, better.

These benefits are obvious and supported by research.

So, if you use an assessment scheme based on written tests (like I do), what are the best ways to get some of these benefits?  I want to experiment with having kids write and critique their own questions for sure, since this seems easy to implement and, at its worst, is a form of review.  I already ask them to assess their progress towards their personal goals.  What else can I do?

I am hereby declaring a new goal for the first month of next semester: I will find a way to include each student in the act and process of his or her own assessment, at least a little.  I’m aiming high – I don’t mean that I will include “the class” in creating “the assessment.”  Whew.  There’s something to think about on the 14-hour drive home for Christmas!

Please leave comments if you have ideas.  I just set this kind of big goal, and to be honest, guys, I don’t know how I’m going to meet it yet.

 
7 Comments

Posted in POI, assessment, philosophy

 
 
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