A Group Test after the Test...Here's How It Went

I tried something that I learned by reading a conversation on Twitter this summer.  I would only be guessing at who was having this conversation, so if you read this and it sounds familiar, let me know so I can give you credit.  Anyway, the conversation was about tests and retesting.

What I found interesting was the idea of retaking the test as a group the day after they take the test individually.  The group has limited time, say 15-20 minutes, to complete the test.  I tried this with our first skill quiz in Algebra this year.

My reasons for trying it were to:
1) help students see that they are not the only ones with a question,
2) allow peers to work together and think through the quiz, 
3) to give me and opportunity to listen to how students were explaining the math to each other, and
4) to make sure that everyone had a copy of the quiz in their math binders with the problems worked out (some students will never bring back the signed test to put in their binder).

I have two completely different groups.  My first group is a higher ability group that doesn't enjoy being quiet and still for more than 10 seconds.  This has been a challenging group so far.  My other group is quieter, but as a group, they struggle a little more to understand the material.  They present a different type of challenge.

I say this because there were two different outcomes for this activity.  In my first group, I walked away feeling "meh" about the process.  It took a lot of work to get them started and on task, even with regrouping them so that students that did well were placed with students who didn't.  They were also more argumentative with each other in a nonproductive way.  I struggled to convince them of the value of their work.  We will try this again on another quiz/test, but I am thinking to take it another way.  I am thinking of making it an error analysis activity and using mistakes that students actually made on the test.

My second group had a totally different experience.  They got right to work, helped each other, and talked about the questions.  I heard thinks like "I thought you had to..." and "But why wouldn't you..." while they were working with each other.  This was completely beneficial for them.  I also was able to answer questions that stumped the entire group, which made for a great dialog between the students and I.  I felt like this group walked away with understanding of what they did wrong and what still needed more practice.  It was a good use of time and we will try it again in the same way.

In sharing this technique, others thought that I should do this before the quiz/test.  I don't think that it is a bad idea by any means, however I have two concerns.  My first concern is that the only way that they will review for the test, will be the group test.  I want them to know how to study for math without me giving them questions.  The second concern that I have is that the questions are standards based and more open ended.  I am a novice at writing questions this way and am just not confident I can write three or four questions that I really like, so I can do a practice test, test, and re-test.  I'm not ruling it out, but I'm just not ready to go there, yet.

Some Thanks...

The teacher workshops are completed, the room is set up, and the lessons are written.  It has been a long and exhausting week, but for the first time in a long time, I am feeling calm going into the school year.

This sense of calm comes from so many people who probably don't even know that they have helped me over the summer tie some loose ends together, rethink how and why I do things, and help me realize that all of us have the same issues in the classroom.  Everyone has the student who won't stop talking.  It's not just me.  Through the stories that they have shared, I have begun to feel that I'm not alone when I feel like I am swimming upstream.  So I want to take a moment as my school year begins to thank some of them.

First of all, I want to thank those who inspired my classroom bulletin boards this year.  Thank you for inspiration when I had none.

My favorite is the Star Wars themed growth mindset posters from Paul's (@TeacherPaulP) blog TeacherPaulP which I combined with Sarah's (@mathequalslove) idea, from her blog Math=Love, to put up sayings from a fixed and growth mindset.  I added Darth Vader and Yoda to the mindset phrases to keep the theme.  I will enjoy saying "Use the Force" this year when I hear fixed mindset statements.  

Next, I have to thank, Sarah (@msrubinteach) from Everyone's a Genius for the idea to do the loop-da-loop for how you learn a skill.  Looking forward to using it to remind students that learning is a process.  

Finally, Pam's (@pamjwilson) blog, the radical rational, had an awesome bulletin board for displaying sentence starters that I totally just did my best to recreate.  I am hoping that this will be well used by my students!

Besides all of the help with decorating, I need to also give some thanks to The Global Math Department for the truly awesome professional development that I attended this summer.  If you haven't attended a Global Math Department webinar yet, please try one.  It's free and that is every teacher's favorite word! 

MTBoS and everyone I met and worked with at Twitter Math Camp are awesome.  I am excited to become more and more involved with the both groups.  It is amazing how technology in general has made it possible to sit on my couch and talk to teachers all across the country.  I feel like I dated myself with that statement, but it's so true!

And speaking of sitting on my couch, I want to thank those who monitor the chats on Twitter.  I like to lurk during #msmathchat and Justin (@JustinAion) and Adrienne (@shlagteach) do an awesome job.  I know there are other groups and other monitors, but I haven't explored all of them yet! 

Thank you to everyone for your inspiration and willingness to share what you do! 

Goals for 2014-2015 Academic Year

I go back to work on Monday for teacher workshops and getting the classroom ready for the new school year.  I have been lacking motivation to go and spruce up my room this year and I know that I will have a lot of work.  Fortunately, I did not have to take everything down off of my walls and bulletin boards.  So, it is more about trying to make the room look fresh for the new school year and I have plenty of ideas to make the freshness happen. 

Each year that I have worked with my principal, he has asked for the staff to write their personal goals for the academic year.  I have been working on what mine will be.  I've narrowed it down to theses three:

1) Blended Classroom:
At the end of last year, I felt that the goal for next year was going to be flipping the classroom.  That is still a goal, but it will be much more of a blended classroom than I originally thought it would be.  There are a lot of reasons for this. 

The biggest factor to sway me is that I am going to "unit-fy" the Saxon Algebra I book.  I found that as I "unit-fy" the text, there were places that I could actually give myself time back.  I especially found that there were lots of places to make a foldable that contained ideas from several lessons from the text. 

I will still make tutorial videos for students throughout the year.  I will also assign some of them.  I am just not quite ready to be fully flipped.  Maybe that will change as the year progresses.

2) Standards Based Grading:
I want to make strides to do this better this year.  I have spent a lot of time matching units, lessons, and standards and melding them together to hopefully be cohesive.  I have developed a self tracking sheet for students to keep in their INB this year.  I started units in Jumprope (it's a free on-line SBG grade book).  Still playing with the grade book and will see how it works.  I like the reports that it will make for me.  I think it will help parents transition into SBG.  I am also in the process of making syllabi for each unit.  All of this has meant less time for making foldables and putting together INBs.

However, none of this will work well unless I am more diligent about getting the corrected work back to the students.  Feedback is an area I have struggled with my entire career.  I need to improve and by focusing on making standards based grading work, feedback has to be timely.

3) Less Time Explaining; More Time Doing:
My last goal ties into the blended classroom.  I want to spend more time doing math and talking about math.  I have already gotten a subscription to Mathalicious and I want to subscribe to Yummy Math.  Both sites have lots of interesting problems, are real life based, and are very, very reasonable for the teacher budget.  Especially, if you are like me and will be paying out of pocket to access them.  

I want the students to do more thinking which means I really need to keep the classroom focused on collaboration.  I am hoping that the problems I find on both of these sites (and others sites I find throughout the year) will help me to foster that collaborative feeling.  Time will tell.  Plus, I can plan all I want, but until I have students in my room trying to do these activities, I won't know.

Well, those are my three goal.  I think that is enough.  I also feel like I will be able to measure them by the end of the school year.  Success is hopefully in my future!

A Final Thought on TMC...

Oh boy!  I have been reading a lot of blog posts about TMC.  The biggest discussion has centered around a post by MrKent800 entitled, "I'm a Fraud".  There is a lot of discussion about this and posts in response to it.  If you haven't read it, go and read it. 

I read the post by Mr. Kent and felt sorry for him.  I wanted to offer words to sure up his confidence, because I don't think that one conference makes you feel the way that he did.  Other things have to have been happening in his classroom and professional life.  I also empathized with him a great deal because even last year, there were times when I wanted to throw in the towel and quit teaching as well. 

The thing is, when teaching is a part of you, you cannot just turn your back on it.  Yes, you get tired – to the point of exhaustion.  But, even at exhaustion, I am willing to try one more thing.  Do one more thing.  This is because I haven't completely given up on myself.  I know that I can do better.  I can be better. 

I am striving to be the best that I can be.  I use other teachers who I work with or who I religiously read their blog, to help me define what the best is.  Each person that I was a bit star struck by at TMC has helped me to refine, shape, polish, destroy, and rebuild what my definition of best is. 

I know what my strengths are and what my weaknesses are.  After fifteen years in the classroom, I know what weaknesses probably aren't changing.  I need to find ways to counter my weakness so that it does not hold me down and keep me from changing, or at the very least, trying to change. 

As I think about TMC and consider the reflections of others, I am realizing that I can't change the world.  But, realistically I don't think I ever truly believed that I could.  I just want to help the people in my little corner of it embrace the possibility of what can be.  I don't believe that I am great at it.  I just keep talking about what I know, what I believe, what I want to create and hope to achieve by it's creation.  I don't expect miracles.  I don't even expect huge amazing changes because I have come to realize after working in many different situations that I am the only one who can change.  If others chose to follow my example, so be it.  As for me, I will continue to seek out people who inspire me, challenge me, and support me.    

Twitter Math Camp 2014 (TMC14)

Last summer, I had been blogging for about 4 months when I read about Twitter Math Camp (TMC).  I had read a wrap up post or two (OK, maybe more than that) about TMC and thought it sounded like a really cool experience.  So, I wanted to make sure that I was able to attend this year and check it out.  As a first time attendee of TMC, I wasn't totally ready for this experience and this is why:

1) No Lurking Allowed!  It's Time to Share and Collaborate!
I am such a wall flower in new situations and I like to sit back and just observe.  Well, I tried that and within the first 5 minutes of the whole event starting, one of the organizers, Shelly I believe, approached me and asked why I was standing against the wall all alone.  I was shocked by this!  I fumbled through a nervous answer.  I had never been to any other conference where people had been concerned that I was alone.  I had been to a lot of events where I could just blend into the background and not be noticed.  I knew networking and meeting people was a huge part of the TMC experience, but I had planned to ease my way into it.  Didn't happen that way and that was a good thing!  I shook more hands, exchanged more smiles, and met more people than anywhere else that I have ever gone. 

Also, I have never been to a conference where I spent three morning session blocks with the same people all three days.  This is the hidden gem in TMC for me!  This was what changed the TMC from being a conference to being a collaboration.  Teachers were creating, asking questions, defining, debating, reshaping, and collaborating everywhere.  This is how community is built – in the exchange of ideas and rallying around a common cause.  Everyone at TMC was there to learn something from each other and to support each other in making mathematics education better.  It was hard not to start talking to someone about something.  Also, it was a room full of 150 passionate math teachers and where else you sit and talk with any person in the room about math?!

2) Star-Struck and Finding New Stars!
I wanted to go to TMC partially because I had been reading the blogs of many absolutely amazing teachers.  I wanted to be able to sit and chat with them and glean their knowledge for next year.  Well, it took all of my courage to tell Sarah, from Math=Love, that I loved, loved her blog.  I have stolen, I mean borrowed, so much from her.  I sat one person away from Julie, who writes I Speak Math, at a session and couldn't tell her at all how much I enjoyed reading her blog.  Then, I had an entire session with Katheryn, from i is a number, and said nothing!  I was NOT expecting to be so tongue tied!  So disappointed that I failed to introduce myself to the people I admire and strive to emulate in my own way.  But then, you meet all of these other great people.  People that you can't believe you never knew existed and are amazing!  I know that my blog reading list has just lengthened and I am really going to have to get better at Twitter.

3) The Hotel is Like Vegas!
I didn't stay at the hotel that almost everyone else stayed.  I was traveling with my dog, so I needed to stay in a pet friendly hotel.  I didn't realize until the end of TMC, how much interaction and sharing happened in the hotel after the sessions were over.  I wish that I had know this as a first timer to TMC.  I also wish I could tell you all that went on at the hotel, but I believe the saying was "What happens at the hotel from five to midnight, stays at the hotel", so I am not any help!  Although... there are some pictures floating around that show the Twitter math campers sitting in circles sharing interactive notebooks with each other! :)

So this year, as a newbie, I wasn't ready for everything.  My biggest take-away from TMC14 is that there is a huge support system on Twitter.  These teachers are totally awesome and are collaborating to make their classrooms better.  There is no need to worry about if you are a good enough teacher or even think that you have nothing to contribute.  Besides being able to put faces to Twitter handles, I left TMC14 feeling like my classroom is moving in the right direction.  I haven't fully processed the entire experience yet.  There are speakers, sessions, and games that I want to share, but they will have to wait for another post. 

What the Newbie Learned about Standard Based Grading...

So last year, I made my first attempt at moving towards a standards based classroom.  I began very small by listing the learning goals (standards) at the top of each test and then breaking the test into sections.  Each section contained only questions relating to that standard.  This is nothing new to me, but not something that I put into practice very often.  I heard about doing it years ago from my guru, Rick Wormeli, at an AMLE conference or SDE conference. (I love hearing Rick present!  He energizes and challenges me.  Go see him if you haven't!  I'll stop gushing now.)  Here is an example of what I was doing:

 

After a year of doing this consistently on every test and quiz, I learned the following three thing:

1) The test really wasn't enough to demonstrate mastery. 
In all honesty, there was a part of me that was hoping the test would be enough and I could say that standards based grading was a breeze.  Ha-ha-ha! That was a nice wish.  Next year, I have to focus on the assignments that I am giving and how they help me see what my students know.  I do a variety of activities, but I need to reexamine how I use them and why I am using them.   I am also thinking that less may be more when it comes to what goes in the grade book. 

2) My scale of 3, 4, and 5 was just renaming the traditional grades of 60-100%. 
I began to realize as the year went on that I was bringing awareness to the standards being learned, but not really standards based grading.  I need to keep working on a rubric that reflects the students' journey towards mastery.  This has been tougher to develop than I thought it would be.

3) It is hard to do standards based grading in a traditional, on-line grade book.  
I managed better than I expected, but I didn't feel a traditional grade book let me record the up and downs of working towards mastery.  I need to track this outside of the on-line grade book.  Just not sure what will work for me yet.

I am at the very beginning of standards based grading.  I plan to take what I learned and improve upon it.  Thankfully, since standards based grading isn't mandatory, I have time to develop standards based grading in my classroom.  That is a luxury I am not taking for granted. 

Reflection on Vocabulary

Tonight, I was trying to narrow down the 28 vocabulary words in the first section of my algebra text to a more manageable 13 or 14.  I was actually having a hard time because I know that all of these words will creep up again on my students on a test produced by the text or on a homework problem.  When I looked at the 28, I was having a hard time deciding which words should be cut.

Therefore, the mess above started.  I thought if I could draw out the connections and determine the words that would be connected together the most often, I could narrow it from there.  My mess of solid lines and dashed lines started to draw a very clear picture for me.  It confirmed something that my gut had been telling me the last couple of years.  The words that I think are the most important and vital to students future math classes doesn't agree with the publisher's opinion all the time.

After creating the mess of lines,  I took out my highlighters (because every teacher has more than one) and highlighted the words in yellow that had the most connections from/to them.  The orange are words I think my students really should know for the future and are part of a standard.  I realized that there are words, like closure, that I would stress to the students because it popped up in homework and on the tests produced by the publisher.  One reason the students always struggled was due to lack of connection with the other lessons in the first section.  Closure only connects to counterexample and there should be a line up to sets.  Other vocabulary can be connected to other terms in other contexts.

Looking at this mess of lines, I am realizing that this might actually be a really good activity to do with students.  I could start a flip chart on my interactive white board and we could revisit it after every lesson and add the new vocabulary and draw the connections on the board.  Students could also keep an ongoing chart in their INBs.  I am thinking through my keyboard right now, but I am starting to see some possibility here.

Does anyone have a good way of narrowing vocabulary?  Love to hear your ideas!