A game that turned out to be fun :)

I did this game this week in all of my classes - honors and regular. I don't have a name for it yet, so if you've got an idea for it, let me know. Maybe someone else made it up before me, but feel like I discovered it on my own. Here's what happened:

0. I split the class into teams. I prefer groups 4 or smaller. Four is even a little big. The goal of the game is to get the most points.

1. I cut some scratch paper up into 1/8th sheets and pre-made a bunch of inequalities that students need practice solving. I had enough for about 1.5 per group.

2. I handed out a paper with an inequality on it to each group. Each team's job is to solve the inequality on a SEPARATE piece of paper and then bring their solution with the card to me.

3. I then sat at a desk with my handy-dandy 10-sided die of fate and a colored pen. When a representative of the team showed up with a solution  I would quickly look over it and offer changes they need to make it right. They then had to go fix their mistakes (even little ones.) A line quickly formed. Even simple mistakes puts you at the end of the line.

4. If a solution was presented to me that was correct, I would say so and roll the Die of Fate. Whatever number showed up would be how many points I'd write on their paper and initial. I would then give them a new paper with a new problem and they would solve that one. This continued until I decided it should stop (about 5 min before the bell to take care of business.) Winners got a prize - candy.

Comments: I absolutely love the random amount of points awarded. Difficult problems can end up being worth 1 points while easy ones can be worth 9. I think it helped my "un-engageables" become involved because even though they didn't answer as many questions, they could still win the game due to the random factor. I also gave them easier questions to start and worked them towards the harder ones. I also like how this game is very general: I can put whatever problems I want on the cards. Take that! classic worksheets. Why do a worksheet when you can play a game?

Concerns: It is difficult to monitor the class while you're looking over solutions. One team member could be doing all of the work.

Two weeks in and I'm already back to habit

I'm now two weeks into the school year and I'm noticing a lot of similarities to past experiences:

1. Having a top-down approach to pacing is bad for me trying to be better. Our district has dictated the scope and sequence for the year's standards to be met. With my math department we (they) drew up a calendar for when we're teaching what. This has been horrible for what I want to do: not be a traditional math teacher. I want students to discover things on their own. Our first two weeks was all about solving equations and non-compound inequalities. I wanted my students to decide on "rules" for solving equations by having them create equations and challenge each other to solve them (the one day we spent on it was actually a lot of fun and they came up with some great stuff!) But we couldn't fully develop the ideas and test them out because we needed to "cover" other things like solving inequalities. The result is my students have an incomplete understanding of solving equations and I had to do some crappy lessons using direct instruction methods which my students were immediately turned off by. I feel like my good plans can't fit in the top-down system... can't we focus on learning rather than teaching?

2. I'm some students' favorite teacher because I let them sit by their friends, and some students hate me because I'm not a traditionalist and don't just tell them exactly what to do. I had a few students tell me I was their favorite on the second or third day and this past Friday I signed at least two forms transferring students out of my classes.

3. We had a quiz that I know my students weren't ready for. Another interesting tradition that schools have: we give tests because that's when they're scheduled. Some people say it is so you can stay on schedule. I say we should just schedule better. Personally I'm a fan of giving students a quiz they're not ready for. It helps them see what they do and don't know - we just need to make sure they have an opportunity to redo it later.

4. There are a lot of things I want to do, but I don't have the time to do them all so I only get to do half of them halfway and so nothing works out close to what I planned and now my students don't know as much as they should. Wow, that was a long sentence, but it get's to the point. I need to choose my battles better. Maybe this isn't the year I have a complete problem-based approach to teaching. Maybe this is the year that we do a cool task once or twice a week while we focus on Assessment for Learning techniques everyday.

I think this is what I'll try: Focus on one cool task a week and Assessment for Learning. I am really new (2nd yr teacher) and I've got oodles of extra stuff to do: Go to district classes two nights a week, finish moving in, get all of my Master's Program homework done, and spend time with my wife. This is sounding like a good plan to me. And I don't have to be a traditional teacher during the rest of the week either. I can turn typical guided/individual practice into games which I love playing :) I think I'll actually use that Game Library that I've been building.

Pre-School Jitters

I'm starting my second year on Monday... and I'm scared out of my mind. I'm sure things will be great and I'll have students I'll instantly connect with, but I'm not sure of how many. Luckily I'm new at the school, so students haven't heard anything about me.

I'm also worried about how my ideas will pan out. Will my laid-back-ness make them completely unruly? I don't want to be a dictator, but will they be crazy without it? I don't know, but I'm going to stand by my philosophy that if you connect with the students, then good classroom management will inevitably follow because students will be willing to do what you ask. We'll see how it goes...

I'm also worried about trying out an Assessment For Learning classroom. (Read the book by the same name if you don't know what that looks like.) It is definitely non-traditional (yay!) but will it work with 30-36 students in each period totaling up to almost 200?

Well, most of these fears will either be realized or dispelled next week.... :s

Another book done: Assessment for Learning. And what I'm going to do about it.

So I finished another book on using formative assessment to change your classroom procedures. It is called Assessment for Learning by Paul Black and a bunch of other people. If follows a similar vein to Embedded Formative Assessment. It reads a lot like a research paper. They got a group of teachers together and had them come up with assessment strategies to use in their classrooms and they tried them out. The study covered the course of two years.

I didn't find this book as engaging as Embedded Formative Assessment, but it was definitely more real. This involved real teachers using strategies they collaborated on with real students. The authors were also real about the implications of their study: the teachers had success, but there is no "one size fits all" strategies that they can prescribe to all teachers. Everyone has different students and each teacher has a different style. So the strategies that one would use is different from the ones another teacher would use.

Reading this book brings me to my final conclusion before starting school next week: I need to pick a few (2-ish) strategies to try out and implement right away. I need to make changes slowly which is completely against my typical tendency to just go crazy with ideas.

My strategies to try first:

• No hands up. Pick students/groups at random.
• Provide feedback that is useful, meaning students will be able to make improvements on their work based on what I wrote.

Even this will probably be too much at the start. We'll see. I just need to remember not to give myself too much to do.

So what do you think? Do you ever want to try out a bunch of ideas all at once? What are your suggestions on not going nuts with all of the "shiny new toys"?

Article about someone else changing from a traditionalist

Read this article called "Never Say Anything A Kid Can Say." It is a lot about questioning techniques, but I wanted to focus on his shift from traditionalist to non-traditionalist point of view.

My favorite quote form this article is My definition of a good teacher has since changed from "one who explains things so well that students understand" to "one who gets students to explain things so well that they can be understood." I thought that was fantastic. We teachers aren't the best when we're talking, we're the best when we can get students to talk.

Book Review: Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam

I just finished reading Dylan Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment. I highly highly highly highly recommend it for all teachers - and no I'm not getting paid to say that (even though it would be awesome to get paid to say what I think about stuff.) First off, I don't know if you know this, but Dylan Wiliam is one of the world's leading experts on formative assessment and why it raises student achievement. This guys has done his research... and it's a lot. Most claims in his book are followed by a citation. The book has an impressive 17 pages of references - most of which come from peer reviewed research journals. He also did some of the research himself.

Soooooooooo many teachers have formative assessment all wrong, which is why I didn't understand it until I read Dr. Wiliam's book. There is no such thing as an assessment that is itself formative. Instead, you use an assessment formatively. Whether an assessment is formative depends on how you use it. Wiliam gives many examples of how to do such a thing.

I also like his framework for how to focus learning in the classroom. The 5 key strategies he suggests are:

1. Clarify, share, and understand learning intentions and criteria for success.
2. Engineer effective classroom activities that elicit evidence of learning.
3. Provide feedback that moves learning forward.
4. Activate learners as instructional resources for one another.
5. Activate learners as the owners of their own learning.

I'm finding it difficult to describe how awesome this work is. The research he cites explains a lot of the problems that are hindering student achievement in schools today. They also provide practical ways to solve those problems. Most of those strategies aren't even difficult, they are just uncomfortable for us to do because we have been doing things wrong for so long.

This is starting another project for me. I'm going to collect practical strategies to do the above 5 strategies. I've actually already started. Here is a link.

Once again, I highly recommend it. It is a great book for non-traditionalists and traditionalists.

Teaching Philosophy. CMI Framework = Awesome. Why all sides are better than one.

First off, check out this CMI Article. I think this is absolutely brilliant. It puts all the important philosophies to learning mathematics together. A major problem with most teaching frameworks is that there is always too much emphasis on something. Traditionalists emphasize algorithmic skills. Purists emphasize definitions and concepts. Application-ers emphasize models. 

After reading this article, I realized that we need to emphasize all of these things. Too much of any one of them isn't good. I think the Common Core gives us the right standards, we just need to teach them evenly.

So if I'm going to teach everything fairly evenly, what will be my approach? I still favor taking an application-er approach, but perhaps the other focii can be incorporated as to not lack the other things that students should learn.

Your thoughts? How can we emphasize everything? Is there a curriculum that does so?