Finally a Week Full of Fun Activities!!!

This past week was our 3^rd week with the kiddos.  My Accelerated Algebra 1 class was taking their 2^nd quiz of the unit this week, and my Algebra 1 On-level classes were heading for their first unit test.  I was able to take advantage of a few review days this week to do some engaging activities for assessment preparation.

On Tuesday, I used an activity from the team batch for the inequalities quiz.   This activity gave compound inequality problems along with 3 different representations of the solution that had to be matched up with each problem:  interval notation, inequality w/union or intersection notation, and the visual graph.   Because I had just got my laminator delivered, I was able to laminate the game cards, so I was really excited.  On the bottom of each card was a letter, so when they put the solutions together, it spelled a word – great way to check their answers, and they did not catch on to that at all, which was something I anticipated.   The activity was really engaging and reinforced their understanding of the representing solutions rather than just finding them.  In grading their quizzes later in the week, it was clear that this activity helped!   The 2^nd activity I created and was intended to strengthen understanding of indicators of inequality symbols in word problems.  This activity gave the students 6 inequality problem sets, and for each one the students were asked to write a number sentence representing the inequality, and then create a real-world situation to represent the inequality.  Because of time constraints, I had them pick 4 out of the 6 inequalities.  There answers were really creative and fun on the real –world side of it, and they rocked the number sentence portion; also, great discussions! What they did not hesitate to say is that it was much harder to come up with the problem than solve it; mission accomplished!  I told them that meant they were learning for the long termJ   Activities in action and link for game are below.

 Inequality Matching Card Game

What Was the Situation Inequality Activity

Wednesday in Algebra 1 after wrapping up radical expressions, I gave a spiral review activity for Order of Operations.  I would not realize until later in the week while browsing Twitter and MTBoS that I had done a version of “Commit and Capture”.  I was excited to know that my thinking and lesson creating is on track with awesome teachers in the MTBoS community – it gave me a lot of energy.  Along with the commit and capture idea, I had them roll dice for numbers to insert into the blanks, and they had to make every other number negative.   The last two problems on this activity included division in the order of operations, so I asked them if their number was an integer or rational to reinforce the number types subsets.  If their number was rational because of the division, I asked them to explore the original problem and see what numbers could be changed to make the result an integer under the division involved.   That was an awesome piece – I thought I may have pushed too far for on-level this early, but that was the part they focused on the most!    I am glad “Commit and Capture” for this activity is already out there as I will continue to spiral it through.  Below is the link to the activity I made.

Order of Operations Dice Game

On Thursday in Algebra 1 we had day 2 of review activities.  I used the “I Have Who Has” Structure of Expressions activity from my team bank last year.  I also was able to laminate and cut cards this year, so the activity will keep better.  I had students deal out the cards and take turns telling their group members what expression they had, and what term, factor, coefficient, or constant they needed.  They were to take turns until everyone had found the elements they needed from their hand.  I believe there were 2-3 leftover elements that no card had, and when they found those, I knew they had the activity completed.  The awesome part of this activity was hearing all the vocabulary for expressions flying around in the room.  As evidenced from the tests I have graded so far, this activity brought the reinforcement of this concept to their understanding that had been missing when they took the quiz.  Pictures of the activity and the link for it are below.

I Have Who Has Structure of Expressions Activity

Also on Thursday was another attempt, although I now know not the last, to help students classify number types.  I developed a “Number Type Coloring Lab” for students to create subset boxes for each number and represent the type the number is a member of by certain colors.  At the end of the activity, I wanted the students to look at certain color schemes for patterns.  I asked them what patterns they noticed.  They still struggled with it originally and referred to their notebooks (which of course I want them to be able to do – that is why were keep themJ), but many are still struggling with this concept after the test.   My search for activities for this topic will continue and of course include the MTBoSJ  Pictures of the activity and link are below.

  

Number Sets Coloring Lab

The last activity I gave for Algebra 1 was a writing expressions activity.  The problems I created had the students gathering information from clippings I got off the internet and pasted.  Some of it was hard to read, so I encouraged them to use their Surface Pros to look up normal pricing for similar things involved in the problems to determine a certain price or amount.  The Jet’s pizza problem was the most challenging, and I let them know they may want to save that one for last.  Most groups required some interaction from me with further prompts, but the enthusiasm to get through that problem was definitely there, which made me happy.  Of course, Jet’s is some damn good pizza in our area, so that probably helped!  Even after the test, a lot of students still struggle with the ideas of tax as a percentage off the price, but the process is getting better.  I honestly think their age and lack of experience paying for retail things has a lot to do with it.   On parent night, it will give me something to talk about with their kids when shopping.  Link for this activity below.

 Writing Algebraic Expressions from Real-World Situations Activity

  

One last great thing from the planning side of things is that I left Friday afternoon feeling like I could actually breathe and was somewhat caught up.  I had all of my stuff crossed off the list, and things ready for Monday.  I am not someone who likes making lists because they overwhelm me at times, but my friend got me a list pad that is a super fun way to make lists and want to cross off items.  It is called a “crap pad”, and at the bottom of the pad when I am done I can check off “All crapped out”, which is so silly, but I love getting there and getting to say “yes!  I am all crapped out”.   Below is a list from this week complete with some adding at the bottom from when I was trying to determine point value totals for our Algebra 1 test this week.

All of these activities made the week so exciting from the teaching aspect.  I am at it again this week for regular instruction this time pulling ideas from the CMP curriculum for area and perimeter.  I also have a cool dimensional analysis activity my friend Deb gave me to help the Accel Algebra students get ready for their test.  This week is a short one for us as our school has a professional day Friday, and then the Labor Day weekend.  It is hard to believe that the end of this week already marks a month of school!

Day in the Life – August 26, 2016

6:15am:  Wake up and finally get out of bed – it’s Friday, so definitely an extra challenge today!  It’s August in Atlanta, which means don’t bother straightening the hair, and opt for the extra few minutes of extra sleep.

6:50am:  Pack up lunch for today and eat breakfast.  Every Sunday, I make a monstrous omelette and break it up for breakfast each day of the week.   I also pack up my lunches for the week.  This is like Meg Craig does with outfits, only this would be more of a morning struggle for me if not made ahead of time.

7:15am:  Arrive to school and realize I need to rearrange student desks because Algebra 1 has their first Unit test today.  Begin doing that and work on what I call my “file pile”, which goes into my course binders.  Organization of paper has always been a struggle for me, but my last school whipped me into shape with that.  Now I can’t go more than a couple of days without dealing with piles.  I spent too many years trying to clean up those messes at the end of a semester with an enormous trash bin.

7:45am:  Meeting with my department chair and a member of my Algebra 1 team who started to become a rogue operator.   All of us on the Algebra 1 team are coming in from different schools, so it has been hard to get into a rhythm on the team.   He and I actually talked about it at lunch yesterday, but this formality meeting was set yesterday.  Another meeting….   Out of 5 mornings before school and 5 lunches this week, 7 of those time periods have been at one meeting or another.  Thankfully, I have 1^st period planning, which helps to then get ready for the day if I still need to.  

8:40am:  Meeting lasted almost an hour; ran over because my department chair and I both have 1^st period planning.  Good conversations were had, and I feel like we are back to a starting place in our PLC, but start-overs can be a good thing if everyone is committed to a definable better.  I could have sat and talked to my department chair much longer, but I realized that I needed to go and copy my tests for today.  Because I finalized them and sent the key out to everyone, there are no edits to worry about, but they do need to be copied!

9:00am:  Begin finalizing my instruction and notes for 3^rd and 4^th period Accel Algebra for today on Dimensional Analysis.  Not a welcomed topic by students, I want to make sure it has the proper hooks and want to find spots in the problems for good conversations and “What –if “ scenarios.  Yesterday during the unit rates lesson, we ended up with an amazing discussion on the business principal of profit and not being able to keep everything you may earn.  Further, we visited the fact that there is not guarantee of profit.

9:30am:  2^nd Period Algebra 1 and time for their first Unit test of the year.  We have been doing some exciting activities in class the past couple of days to review order of operations, number types, writing algebraic expressions, and “terms, factors, coefficients, constants”, so I am looking forward to how they do.  Most finished in plenty of time and said they felt prepared, so I am hoping they knocked their first assessment out of the park!  During the test I grade their review homework and start writing lesson plans for next week as well as attend to the constant stream of email coming in.

10:30am:  3^rd  Period Accel Algebra 1 and unit conversions/dimensional analysis.   As expected, it was not a welcomed topic by students, especially when converting to cubic centimeters, but we made it through.  I definitely need to find a way to spice this topic up much more on the front end, but I am excited about an activity using it next week for test review.  4^th period with Accel Algebra went a little better on the uptake with conversions, but still – note for the future:  find a way to make conversions more engaging.  Better application problems, something.    During this period I get an email from my Accel Algebra team leader that we need to meet quick over lunch.  I am now up to 8 out of 10 hours of meetings this week. 

12:45pm   The meeting was in my room and about whether or not to replace a lowest quiz with next week’s test if they do better.  This is not a practice I use, but I agree to it to save argument and time.   As my Accel Algebra colleague is leaving, my mentor stops by and is trying to convince me to “eat lunch like a real person” in the office with others today.  I am panicking a bit now because I have no materials for math support 6^th period today.  I had planned on puzzles, but I had also planned on my entire lunch period to print and copy an assortment.  I told my mentor I would try to get in there.  Next, my Algebra 1 colleague stops by to see what to do about giving the test 6^th period because our principal is making the formal announcement of the death of one of our students this week; we both know that students may need to opt out of the test.  We come up with plan B for giving the test Monday for his class if needed.  As soon as that was done, one of my colleagues from my former school stops by to say hi and visit since he is subbing for us today.  He has gone out of the classroom to pursue a graduate degree in statistics.  He was an amazing teacher, and something tells me he will go back someday (I hope so).  I really miss working with him.

1:05pm:  I now have 15 minutes left to eat lunch and make copies.  I quickly decide to do Ken-Ken only with support today (they had their 1^st major exam today in their core class, so I wanted to do something more relaxing with numbers today).   I print the puzzles, go to the math office with my yogurt and join the others while my copies were running.  It was nice to get some laughs in before the afternoon classes.  I have to push myself to do this more often.

1:30 – 3:30pm:  5^th and 6^th period came and passed.  It was hard to get support engaged into the puzzles, especially after the announcement from the principal, but they were good sports about it considering it was a Friday, unfortunate news, and we were all exhausted.  I was relieved when the bell rang at 3:30pm and excited to start my weekend.   I stayed a bit after school to talk with my team teacher and a couple of other colleagues about overloaded classes, lack of access to our gradebooks yet, and the fact that my support class will dissipate soon (more on that with a formal blog).

4:20pm:  I hit the road to meet up with my colleagues from my former school at Taco Mac for dinner and drinks.  I left too late of course and met up with some awesome and ridiculous suburb traffic...

Not really what one wants to deal with after a long day of work - this went on for 4-5 miles.  Gotta love North Fulton County, GA.

and was late, but when I got to the restaurant, there was a nice surprise.  Two other of my close colleagues from another nearby high school that I tutor for were there too.  We all sat together and caught up on our school year so far – all the crazy glitches, the stress, the awesome kids, etc.  What I love about this scene was the fact that were had 3 different schools worth of things to share.  It has taken some time, but with the many high schools in our area, we are becoming a pretty close knit set of mathies.  We don’t get our together often, but we do all know each other and have been around long enough to form these bonds.    It is great being in the company of those who share your path – we shared a lot of laughter too.  I love being a part of this community even if we are all at different schools.

7:30pm:  I arrive home after dinner and re-cap the day with my husband who is going into teaching as a second career; I am now re-capping my day for this blog.  I was doing the blog in real time until I finished the 10:30 am segment; then the day got away from me.  We are now three weeks done in our school year already, but this 3^rd Friday feels the most exhausting, so I am glad I am at home.  My plan is to go to bed by 10pm and get a good night’s sleep.  I do not have much planned for this weekend, so hopefully I can get good and recharged for next week, which is a short one with the kiddos.  Our school has an extra professional day next Friday, but I did not know this coming into the school.  I will not share that learning day with my colleagues as we are going out of town for our annual anniversary trip and already financially committed.  I am so very much looking forward to it though, and I know it will help next week to have that pot of gold at the end of the week; then of course is the 3 day Labor Day weekend!!!

Until next timeJ

Reflection Questions

1) Teacher make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.   When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher mover you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried about?

     Today I am glad that I made the decision to give support math a break from the  math after their 

     first unit test in their core math class.  As I stated in the blog, it was hard to get them engaged, but 

     I think it was important for them to know that I do understand the need for a break from normal 

     routine after working hard towards a big assessment.

     I am concerned about the decision to not fight harder to not replace the lowest quiz in the unit 

     with the test score if it is higher, but I am going to trust my colleague on this one.  For me, I think 

     it sends the wrong message early and in the wrong way.  I am very much a proponent of finding 

     ways to reward hard work and mastery when it was not there before, but I o not like doing it on 

     the grand scale.  I like it much better by individual, and I think it allows for trust building and 

     individual  communication between students and teachers.  Still, teaching in our area is very 

     PLC-based and too  many times in a robotic sense, so I know if we are going to do this, my 

     colleague is right about the  process.

2)  Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us  some of what that is  like as a teacher.  What  are you looking forward to?   What has been a challenge for you lately?

     This year, I have been doing a lot more interactive activities with students; many of them

     open ended and task-orientated.  I have truly enjoyed this and look forward to continuing

     this process because I believe it has helped immensely with success in their first assessments.

     The most challenging thing for me this year is my support class as it is structured differently 

     than my support classes in the past.  I was used to having a support class for 2 hours in which 

     I was the students’ core content and support teacher.  Wow did we get so much done and build a 

     community!  This year, support is the last period of the day, and my students are coming from 4 

     other different content teachers.  It is so hard to build any kind of relationship with them or get 

     to any kind of consistent routine.  I find myself more and more frustrated by the day.

3)  We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with teachers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone lately.

    As mentioned in the blog, I had a member of the Algebra 1 team become a rogue operator within 

    the  last 2 weeks.   Both of us sought help from our department chair, and we planned to meet 

    today.  My colleague came to my room during lunch yesterday to talk, and we had a great 

    conversation about what had happened and what we could do to fix it moving forward.  This made 

    the meeting with our department chair much more rich this morning.  We were able to have a 

    sharing session rather than  a “fix-it”  session.  I am proud of us for committing to talk sooner that 

    required as well as the conversations we had.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and are often have specific goals for things to work on

     Throughout the year.  What have you been doing to work on your goal?  How are you doing?

     One goal for this year was to create more engaging activities for students.  So far I have been

     doing pretty good at implementing at least a couple of engaging activities per class per week. 

     I am able to keep up with this because I followed Sarah Carter’s idea of posting a tweet for 

     teach180 as often as possible.

     Another goal I wanted for this year was to spiral concepts into homework assignments to help 

     keep information alive whether a student is working on mastery or maintaining mastery.  So far 

     this has been a challenge because of time, but I have been able to do this with a few assignments.  

     My hope is that as the beginning of the year gets less crazy, time will allow for this.

5)  What else happened this month that you want to share?e

      My most exciting thing that happened this month was when I introduced MTBoS and Desmos to

      my colleagues at my former high school.  The reception I got was incredible, and I was so 

      excited to pass along these great resources that I have learned and re-energized from!!!

Getting Kicked by the 10-day Count Concept

Week 2 sure has been interesting…  They are balancing classes and continued to do so until Friday, which was the official 10 day count to determine if we are understaffed or overstaffed.  The balance act has definitely not been showing slope zero on the teeter-totter if you know what I mean.

Monday 8/15:  1^st period is underway, and we are doing pairs-work review with a learning check for the quiz on Wednesday.  1^st period started at 8:20am, and suddenly at 8:35am my colleague and Accelerated Algebra 1 team member appears in my doorway with a panicked look on his face asking to talk to me.  Out in the hall he informs me that 2 our Accel classes have been switched and that I now have 1^st period planning.  Did I want him to take the students with him today or start with them tomorrow, and he will keep his 3^rd period students the same for the day.

Ummm, WHAT???

I kept the 1^st period students.  I was heartbroken.  I spent a week getting to know them with name tents and student auto-biographies, and we were definitely in a rhythm.  Telling them at the end of the period was the hardest thing I have had to do yet this year; none of us were happy.   My colleague is an excellent teacher, and I know they will be in good hands, but they are already transitioning to high school let alone having to get used to another class/teacher.

During 3^rd planning that day, I read my emails, and I realized that the email about the switch was sent to my colleague and myself at 8:23am that morning; 3 minutes into when that class was supposed to have started.   No student had gotten a schedule change formally, they let us handle it and walk the students to their new classrooms; maybe that was a more personal way to handle it…

Tuesday 8/16:  I got my new 3^rd period class, and they are awesome too, but they were sure stunned that day when they heard the news and had to come up to my room.  It is a smaller class, so we are getting to know each other quickly, but it took a couple of days to settle in.  In the switch, the students became worried that they had missed information pertinent to the quiz on Wednesday, but they did well on their first quiz, which I was relieved to see.

All of the week, the support Algebra 1 class has been a behavioral struggle as well as an instructional challenge.  I had to drop my opening of the period with Number Talks or Would you Rather? Because we do not have the behavior enough in a rhythm to get through it.  Most of it stems from the fact that the group consists of students with different teachers for their core Algebra 1 content classes, and all teachers teaching differently and at a different pace.  As an Algebra 1 team of all new teachers to the school, we are trying to work on this, but it is proving to be a slow process given all of us going through the transition of a new school.  As lead on the team, that is my biggest goal for week 3 – to get us more coordinated in our intentions and outcomes.  

As far as the support class, this also is a new experience for me as I have always taught support classes for a 2-hour block where I was their sole teacher for the core content and the support to go along with it.    I honestly believe that is a better system for the students, and as I have talked about in earlier blogs this month, success was found by all.  Still, there must be a way, so I will be looking to the MTBoS for suggestions.

So, the resulting chaos from the events of the past week along with a medical procedure I had done this past Saturday and had to prep for on Friday have kept me from the blogging keyboard for the past week.  I wish I could have produced more for Blaugust, but at least I am still writing.

I am hoping this week will settle down a little more.  Tonight I developed a couple of activities for my Algebra 1 classes this week to strengthen their skills in Order of Operations and Expression Writing as they head into a test on Friday.   I also have a pairs activity for Accelerated Algebra that I cannot wait to hear them talk about on Tuesday as they prepare for their 2^nd quiz.   The support class I have to re-engage in somehow…

AND…  My laminater finally showed up from back order on Saturday morning, so who cannot love that!!!

Until next time.

The First Week:  We are on Bell Schedule #2...

And there are actually 8 different bell schedules in my new school - the struggle to learn them is real, trust me.  My goal is to know bell schedule #1, the regular schedule, by the end of the year:)

On last blog, I walked readers through the tornado of the last day of pre-planning.  I was able to get a few things done over the weekend to help more with the first week, but I was really still just starting with what I call the bare basics.  Still, I was excited to meet my kids, and because I teach all freshmen, we were all coming to Alpharetta HS and our classroom for the first time together. 

Most of my colleagues cringe when they hear that I teach all freshmen, and maybe my readers do to, but I can tell you that I absolutely LOVE working with freshmen.  They are still young enough that I can do some of that fun stuff that exists more in middle school, but they are also old enough that I can start the big kid classroom responsibilities too.   They are transitioning to a big, new experience, and I love to mentor them through this experience.  To me, it is the perfect grade to impart a lot of shaping and molding of their high school math experience and teach them good work habits they can carry forth to be successful in high school.

I will highlight the first two days in detail and then go from there in  a more general sense.  The first two days were absolutely the best even though I was really behind from the teacher sideline.

Monday 8/8;  This was our first day.  In all classes, we briefly went over the syllabus – I don’t like to hammer too much of that because they won’t remember it, and it is on my website.  In Accelerated Algebra 1 we had to give a pre-test to see if there were students who may want to re-consider honors.  I don’t like giving a pre-test on the first day of school, but in case a student was misplaced, we did not want them to suffer.  Our school was in over count, so we needed to watch numbers and be careful of placement.  In Algebra 1, we did not give a pre-test; no need to and wanted the time for meet and greet.  I did a colors meet and greet where students took 2 color squares from a bag and then we went around the room having them answer specific questions related to the color they picked.  Questions involved things like favorite movie, book, vacation, and sport.  I love this activity for the first day because I can start learning about personalities of my students immediately.

Another favorite activity of mine on first day that I got to do with all of my students was have them fill out a student “Auto-Biography”.  It is really a “Mathography”, but I incorporated a couple of non-math questions on it this year.  I have not done this in a few years, and I now realize how much I missed it.  I got the idea from when I student taught in Minneapolis.  I believe it was part of the CPM curriculum that the district had adopted right before school started.  I do not read them until Saturday after the first week and never have because I want  to try and have some faces to go with the writing.

Here is a download for the student “Auto-Biography”:  Student Auto-Biography 

Tuesday 8/9:  Then of course on the night of the first day, I found  Sara Van Der Werf’s post on the Name Tents, which totally hooked me in!  I really had no time to do this project, but Sara is very persuasive.  That together with the fact that when I find something I like, off I go, and no one can stop me, I was doing it.   I wanted to use this tool to get to know my students in the time until I could read their auto-bios.  Because  they were coming in from 2 middle school feeders, it would definitely a good way to meet and get to know each other.   So, Tuesday morning at 7am I am editing Sara’s version and running off copies while pulling out color paper to glue them to (I had no time to go and get card stock the night before).  Still the color paper backing worked just fine in the long run thank goodness.  Because advisement was before 1^st period most of the week, I had time to glue the comment/question page to the orange paper then.  I was a crazy person for that 30 minutes, but I got enough done for the periods before lunch.  Luckily I was assigned seniors for advisement this year, and they are always about as into advisement as I  am- I was able to get it done.

The name tents were a hit.  The students loved them, loved decorating them just a little more each day, and communicated some great thoughts to me.  I left the “question for me day” until Friday, and because we started the name tents on Tuesday, I had them do two days the first time.  Again,  this is where having freshmen is fun – I made the Monday question be:  Name something cool that happened on your first day of high school!  A lot of them said they were happy they did not get lost-I told them they were a step ahead of me as I had gotten lost in our huge building during pre-planning!

For any of you yet to start school, I totally recommend this idea.  It does take time, but it is SO worth it.  Additionally, when I answered the questions from Friday on the weekend, I also used the tents as flashcards to see how many faces I could put with names; total win-win-win opportunity!

Here is the link to Sara's name tent blog: Sara VDW's Name Tent Blog - A MUST SEE!!!

Another awesome thing that happened Tuesday was starting number talks and cool activities in my support class.  I had been saving a first day idea from a post by Megan Schmidt back in July about Minnesota temperature/heat index changes within 6 months.  Because I used to live there, I definitely know how brutal these extremes can be.  I think most people know Minnesota is really cold in the winter, but I do not think they realize that it can also be hotter than the south during parts of the summer.  Anyway, Megan’s post and Sara VDW’s comment about linking it to integer instruction in middle school sparked an idea to use it as a number talk in my first days with support Algebra 1.  

I started it by a map of the United States as I guessed that a lot of my students had never been to Minnesota and was not sure how well they knew the states.  I was right about none of them ever going to Minnesota, so that was a good lead in. I was also correct in that they realized Minnesota gets cold, but did not realize that it ever got really hot.    Once we located MN, I brought up the temperature/heat index comparison image.  We started talking about what they noticed, and a good 10-15 minute talk was spawned.  I asked them to pick a town to compare on the map, and for some reason they picked Wilmer, MN.  I asked them to look at both temps for Wilmer, and try to figure out how much difference in temps/heat index had occurred from the winter to the summer.  They started getting in the ball park, but then my team teacher went ahead and drew a vertical number line to prompt them, which sealed the deal for finding the exact difference.

It was as awesome of a number talked as I could have hoped for.  The students were totally engaged, and the discussion was so interesting.  Below is a picture I posted on Twitter Tuesday 8/9:

The Rest of the Week:  I continued to open up my support class with talking problems from 3-Act Math and Would You Rather.  On Friday 8/12, I did not open with a talk, but I finished class by starting them on solving 3 by 3 Ken-Ken puzzles.  Not every day went as well as Tuesday, but still, the problems are great for getting them thinking and talking.  My support class is different from last year in that I only have them one period, and most of them are not my own students.  It is very tough to build a classroom community this way at the end of every day (I have them 6^th period), but it looks like that will be a front-burner project in coming weeks.

In my accelerated and on-level Algebra 1 classes, we are doing interactive notebooks, and the great thing is that they had all done them in middle school and were right on board with the process.  This will be the second full year that I incorporate them, and I am glad they like them too.  They will be getting their surface pro devices this coming week, but as I told them, devices crash – interactive notebooks do not.  One interesting thing that I noticed this weekend from reading their auto-bios is that many of them do not like having 1:1 devices; particularly in math.  I would say from reading their feedback that it is about 50/50 for or against with maybe a slight lean to against.  I think this works  well with the fact that I have not received one yet anyway.  I will never completely do everything in my classroom on the devices, but I do believe it gives them the opportunity to not carry around textbooks all the time, have instant access to teacher websites/Edmodo, and best of all in math:  DESMOS!!!   I think I will post their homework on One Note, but they can opt to print it out or do it on paper if they wish.

Another thing I kept this year was homework check sheets.  I started doing this two years ago, and I love it for many reasons.  I check off their homework every time it is assigned with an expo marker, and every two weeks I take up the check sheet and give them a grade; each homework is worth 4 points, so every 2 weeks is around 24-32 points.  The students keep the sheet with them, and what I noticed the most and made me decide to keep them is that they have a visual gradebook for themselves.  Before I did this, less homework got turned in because they could never see how many points they did or did not have.  When they use these and see zeros, they tend not to make a lot of zeros.  This is also a way to highlight important dates for school.  The sheet is broken up into 3 two-week grade sets, and since we give progress reports every 6 weeks, they know when the progress report is coming.  Here is a link to the stamp sheet: 

Homework Check Sheet

The downfall of the week was more and more meetings and never quite catching my breath.  I ended up late at school every night because I had a meeting every day during lunch and housekeeping things to do during planning period.   I had forgotten about my department meeting on Friday 8/12, and after 3^rd period prep that day I was feeling for the first time that maybe I was about to get over the hurdle.  Then during 4^th period the meeting popped up on my Outlook calendar and frustration seeped out of the edges again.  Again, I was later after school than I planned, and  I still made it to the teacher get together with some of my mathies from a nearby school, but I was completely and utterly “meeting-ed out”  I left school pretty bitter about that.  I have to say, I have never in the years I have been teaching attended so many meetings per week. 

As always, the kiddos pulled me out of my bitter mood.  I spent some of Saturday reading their auto-bios and answering the questions they asked me on their name tents.  I loved reading their responses and answering their question; It instantly pulled me out of my funk and made me excited again to start think about next week.   Again I can affirm that the main thing that keeps teachers coming back to the classroom is the kiddos; both teaching/mentoring them AND all that we learn from them.

Now a weekend later, I feel pretty caught up.  I have materials ready for most of the week, I have the name tents all answered, the auto-bios all read, keys made and loaded to Edmodo, and a couple of blogs written.  Blaugust has not been as bloggy as I had hoped for, but I have written some and hope to keep a couple coming each week at least.

Here’s to week 2 and wishing all who have yet to start the year, a great first week!

Riding The Pre-Planning Roller Coaster:  Part 2

Well, I am writing this over a week later than I had planned, so that says a lot  about how this  day impacted my first  week of school and ability to get to  projects outside of my classroom.  Just as the Wednesday of pre-planning that I wrote about last blog was so energizing and productive (the peak of the roller coaster ride), the Friday of pre-planning became the valley that drained me. 

In between Wednesday and Friday of that week, I had my first Algebra 1 team meeting for which I  am the team lead.  There are  5 of us, and four are new this  year, so that is quite an undertaking for leading a team.  I got them all signed up to dropbox and was planning  on Friday afternoon and early evening to get materials loaded up for them for the first 2 weeks.  We did manage to finalize our syllabus and calendar for the first unit; more specifically the first 2 weeks as we all had to stay on the same page due to students changing schedules.

Then came Friday.  It started out with a department meeting at 8:30am for an hour.  One of my colleagues was leading it and showing us how to work OneNote on our Surface Pro devices, which was informative and helpful as I had already started to play around with the program  on my computer.  I still as I write this have yet to  receive my device, and the students get them this coming Tuesday…   I am not worried about it though because they can utilize them for things other than OneNote while waiting for me to get my device.  They can access my Edmodo site, the course textbook when I do actually assign out of it, and best of all, they can download DESMOS!!!    There is still plenty we can do even if I never get my device. 

The department meeting lasted until 9:30am, and then it was time to start getting all those errands done that I had put off all week.  Most important was the parking pass, which I quickly regretted not getting on the first day of pre-planning.   My department chair had stopped by earlier in the week  to check if I had gotten my parking pass, and I told him it was on the to-do list’ he just smiled and said okay.  We have been professional friends for many years, and he is a very nice guy, so he did not realize that if he was trying to save me from myself he needed to say something like:  “hey dumbass, you need to go get a pass, or you will end up parking behind the school..”.   My former department chair was more of a straight shooter that way, she knew I was terrible at details.

I  quickly learned my lesson.  I ended up assigned in back of the school by the beautiful trees, and this is what our campus looks like except there are trees around it now.

My spot is is behind the corner of the building closest to the bottom right of the image, and my room is at the end of one of the hallways in front.  Enough said.

At 10:30am I had to attend a meeting for one of my Algebra 1 support students whose mother wanted to meet us and bring us up to speed his challenges as he transitions to high school.  It was a good meeting and helpful for me to start thinking about strategies to help him as the school year starts.

This brought me to 11am, and I was supposed to meet a past colleague for lunch at 11:45, so I used the time between to run to the School Box to get some additional supplies for my “not finished” bulletin board and other classroom décor.  I found out that School Box had moved down the street, so that process took up time, and I did not make it to lunch until nearly noon.  It was probably better for my bank account that I did not have extra time at School Box, but it made me feel like there was so much more I wanted to do to my new room.  I decided maybe mid-year (being realistic). 

At 12pm I met my friend.  I had not seen her in almost a year.  She left my former school at the end of 2015 and went to teach at a private school for students needing a different type of school set-up.  She was hoping that would revive her teaching soul, but it was not the right fit, so she is taking the year off to figure out what is next.  I have to admit that on this day at mid-day, I was just a slightly envious of that as I felt the stress and pressure building of the impending first day of school 3 days away.

I got back to school about 1pm.  I had agreed to help one of my Algebra 1 team members start her google-site set-up as that is required of us to carry a website.  We had just sat down to do so and do work together when the admin announced the ethics meeting for all new teachers and strongly suggested for teachers not new to the district but new to the school.  This is where the irritation started seeping out along the edges.  I had planned on 2 solid hours to get the dropbox loaded for my team, and start printing out materials for the following week and Monday’s copies made.  In retrospect, I would have done just that.  On Friday, I still felt that being new to the school meant better not miss a meeting; a week later that perspective has changed a bit.  I learned nothing new at the ethics meeting other than what some people with no scruples will do when left to their own element.  I am not, and never have been that person, and I have carried an ethical approach to my job for the last 12 years and always will.

The meeting lasted from 1:30pm to almost 3pm, and then it was time for our faculty meeting.  I went to that, which was useful information, but I lost the two hours before that could have set a less exhausting tone for the next week.  I finally got back to my room at 4:15pm.  I had not loaded materials to our team folder in dropbox, had nothing printed out, nothing copied.   Further, I was staring at a bulletin board that consisted only of new material stapled to it from 5 days prior; I had intended to have it done already; I completely cracked.

Thankfully my son had planned to help me re-hang some posters that we had not glued enough to the wall and lost the battle to the Georgia August humidity.  He helped me border the bulletin board as well, which was a double layer of black and silver, so not easy to do.  I was able to get it together with his help and only throwing one stapler out of 3 across the room.  Unfortunately, decorating bulletin boards is not my forte, and I have the up most respect for elementary teachers who have to change them several times a year – I could not make it through that!

Even with help and finishing the bulletin board, it was then 6pm, and I still had nothing I had planned done.  It was then coming to the realization  that I would not be prepared beyond Monday, which is not how I like to approach any upcoming week.   Luckily my teacher mentor calmed me down, got me to only focus on what I needed for Monday and let the rest go.  I printed out my syllabus signature sheets, the Auto-Biography that I wanted the students to complete, and the Accelerated Algebra 1 pre-tests that were giving first day.   Another colleague helped by cutting out color squares for the Algebra 1 meet and greet activity, and all that was left was to make the power point to go with the meet and greet activity.

The printing, copying, and organizing of Monday’s materials along with a few other loose ends (drop box loading)  kept me in the building until 8pm.   I was ready for the first day, but I was really uneasy with not having anything else worked out.  I would definitely work over the weekend, but I did not like leaving without print-outs for the week.

My next blog about the first week will reflect the impact of this pre-planning day.   The point I am reflecting on is how different one day is from another in a teacher’s world.  While one day can leave you flying high and so excited, another day can leave you on the ground and barely able to keep your head above water for the next few days.  A teaching job is truly like riding a roller coaster, with lots of highs and lows.  This first week proved out to be the same, but I can definitely say the highs did out count the lows.  As always, having the students back and interacting with them made it all worth it!

Reflection Questions (These Cover Pre-Planning Roller Coaster Parts 1 and 2)

1) Teacher make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.   When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher mover you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried about?   

     I am so happy I asked my colleagues from my former high school to let me present MTBoS and

     Desmos for them.  They took time out of their pre-planning schedule and were willing to learn

     something new.  Best of all, they found it useful, and that is gold to me.  As I have stated in past

     blogs, we are all tired from years of curriculum change and needed something new and 

     energiazing.

     I am starting to be really concerned about my decision to transfer to a different school.  Life  in my

     new school seems really demanding, tense, and I feel lost in such a big building.  I am going to 

     trust that I am just resisting change that is imminent in the wake of a decision like this, and am

     hoping that in weeks  to come I will settle in better and enjoy my new home.  I have not met the 

     students  yet, so I know that will help with the process A LOT!!!

2)  Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us  some of what that is  like as a 

     teacher.  What  are you looking forward to?   What has been a challenge for you lately?

     I am looking forward to meeting my new students next week and settling into a routine again.  

     Both of these blogs have demonstrated the “highs and lows” that a teaching career can bring to a 

     soul, and felt inspired by this ideas in metaphorically including the idea of a roller  coaster into the

     title.

3)  We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build 

     relationships with teachers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone 

     lately.  The relational  moment I felt this week was with my former colleagues.  I was never aware 

     before how much they valued thoughts and ideas I had.  I felt closer to them  professionally after 

     the presentation than I did previously.  I am excited to know that I have formed many professional

     relationships that appear to be long-lasting.  I hope to find even more to add to this list in my new

     school.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and are often have specific goals for things to work on

     Throughout the year.  What have you been doing to work on your goal?  How are you doing?

     One goal for this year was to create more engaging activities for students.   I feel like my 

     instruction over the past two years has fallen really flat, and I want to get back in touch with the

     creative flair I had for many years in my classroom.  Being a part of the MTBoS community has

     definitely re-newed my energy and passions for teaching, and I am hoping that will drive me to 

     make the changes I want to.

     Another goal I wanted for this year was to spiral concepts into homework assignments to help 

     keep content learned alive whether a student is working on mastery or maintaining mastery.  This 

     is a big undertaking and may have to wait until well into 1^st semester or even 2^nd semester.  Still, 

     this will provide increadible review for or EOC exams and also work to connect and seal our 

     curriculum in the course.

5)  What else happened this month that you want to share?

      My most exciting thing that happened this month was when I introduced MTBoS and Desmos to

      my colleagues at my former high school.  The reception I got was incredible, and I was so excited

      to pass along these great resources that I have learned and re-energized from!!!

Riding the Pre-Planning Roller Coaster:  Part 1

This year I switched high schools, and that always adds a certain spice to the week of pre-planning!  I moved into my room the day before our official pre-planning began to get a jump start on things.  I was still pretty panicked last Monday when my room looked like this:

But somehow I got it all unpacked, and I am thankful  to my son  for helping me move into the school and put up posters and bulletin board material.   When we were  done Monday, the room was put together minus a competed bulletin board that I will  talk about more in the “part 2” blog.

In my experience, pre-planning can be an emotional roller coaster, and this year was no exception to that; maybe even a magnified version of it.  In this blog and the next blog, I will highlight my high day and my low day starting with the former for a positive reflection. 

Wednesday, August 3^rd

I was a bit worried about this day because it started out with not leaving in time to avoid traffic; in the Atlanta Metro area a simple time difference of 5-10 mins can destroy the whole drive.   I was late out the door at 7:20am, but because school had not started yet this week, 4.5 miles only took me 20 minutes.  Yep, that’s right – traffic is a beast here!

I got to school by 7:40am and got upstairs to my room.  We were due for an all staff at 9:15am, so I was happy to have some quiet time  to get some paperwork out of the way.  I began with a list of “beginning of school” tasks that I had to get done including viewing videos for staff expectations.  I ended up getting two of those done along with the quizzes they give us at the end.  I discovered I had not paid enough attention to the bookkeeping video when it became apparent that I was going to fail the quiz they gave me; that one became a recovery quiz after re-watching the videoJ 

At about 8:30am I started a shared dropbox for my Algebra 1 team that I would be leading.  All of us are new to the school, but I have taught Algebra 1 or Algebra 1 type courses in the county for years and led them off and on, so my department chair selected me to lead.  I started loading up the dropbox with last year’s Unit 1 calendar and successive materials to compliment the topics we were starting with.  I realized that I wanted to tweak the calendar from last year, so that engulfed my next hour of time before the faculty meeting.

At 9:15am our faculty meeting began.  I found out that my new principal likes to call all new teachers down to the front of the auditorium and have them introduce themselves to the staff along with what we are teaching this year and something fun about ourselves.   Because I am a shy person who does not like to be anywhere near the center of attention until I feel comfortable in my surroundings, this was definitely not something I was excited about.  Still, I pushed through with my name and what I was teaching and declared myself the crazy cat person that I am.  I was one of the 1^st to talk, which exacerbated my nerves.   I honestly think I would have said more if I had been at the end of the line.  Note for next new school should there be one.

Our school hires out consulting for professional development (PD), so the consultant was there to lead us after that with discussion of rigor and engagement in the classroom and how they come together.  He is really engaging to work with, and he had us up and moving around meeting each other and sharing ideas based off of quotes he provided, so that made the learning beneficial – no one wants to sit and listen that long.  What I liked about this the most is that he was modeling what good instructional strategies:  sharing ideas, movement, active learning, etc.  That is what is expected of us, and I am glad that our school provides us that model.  Best of all, our administration learn right along with the teachers in the process; they do not lead the leading.

At 10:30, the all-staff meeting was over, but those of us who were content PLC leaders had to stay for a learning session to open the year with; also lead by the consultant in the all-staff meeting.  This time he had us rate ourselves around the room with how well we felt we had mastered certain PLC strategies the year before.  I found myself deciding that content pacing was my most mastered PLC strategy, and utilizing data my least.  He had us freely volunteer our experiences, and I openly shared some of mine along with many others in this smaller staff environment.  I was so happy to see that my new colleagues were open to discussion and willing and able to contribute until he was ready to move to the next topic.  I took away some great thoughts and ideas for improvement as a PLC leader.

At 11:30am the PLC leader meeting was over, but my department chair and I elected to speak with one of our assistant principals who had asked us to lead 90-minute sessions in RTI Math Strategies on professional days this semester.  We needed some clarification on exactly what this could look like and how much room we had to turn it into overall strategies for more math teachers and subsequently, their students.  We had some great conversations about reaching out to our middle and elementary school feeders for resources for the RTI component.  Working with these teachers is something that should be done anyway, and this would give us just the right launch pad to do so.  Of course, I added in the opportunity to introduce the MTBoS to our math teachers as it is an infinite and ongoing real time resource for math teachers.  

By noon I was back in my room.  I had brought lunch as there was a scheduled meeting at 1:15 for co-teachers, so I wanted to do a working lunch.  I checked email and checked my list from the morning checking off some completed items and then furthering the list for the next day.  I had scheduled to be at my old high school at 3pm to give my former colleagues some PD on MTBoS and Desmos.

At 1pm I discovered that the co-teaching meeting had been cancelled.  I was happy to have the extra time to get a few more things done.  The teacher that came by to tell me the meeting was cancelled was one of my co-teachers, so we ended up chatting about the course and sharing our experiences with previously teaching the course and things to think about incorporating.

I then worked on the syllabus for my honors class by editing a common one sent to me by the PLC lead for Accelerated Algebra 2.  We had our team meeting the first day of pre-planning, so I was feeling pretty good about having those plans under my belt.   Our Algebra 1 team meeting was Thursday, so I started working on a starter syllabus for us to discuss and edit together in our first meeting the next day.

This took me to 2:30, and it was time to pack up and get across town to my former high school.  I arrived just before 3:00pm and in time to see my colleagues from the past 4 years and say hello.  One of them asked me for advice on pacing the senior level pre-calculus course, which I was happy to give and glad I could help.  I then went to my former department chairs classroom to set-up for the session.

Most of my math colleagues in the school were there, and they naturally sat with their PLC buddies which was what I was hoping for.   I had constructed a sheet of instruction and resources to get started with to get involved in MTBoS.   Most of them were already on Twitter, but they had not used it professionally.  I had a list of people for them to start following that I chose based on what I knew of my colleagues from working with them the past 4 years; I wanted it to be a “best fit” to start.  We spent a good 10-15 minutes having them start following the handles I had provided.  After that, I introduced them to the “Exploring  MTBoS” site as a resource for being involved.   Next, I had a list of blogs for them to bookmark on our work laptops for easy reference at school.  I had listed the blogs with the courses that the authors typically taught.   We spent a good bit of time exploring blogs and I offered what I knew about the authors.  They were astonished at how I knew all these people without ever meeting them, but soon they would too I told them.   One colleague completely connected with Meg Craig’s resources – I am not sure he explored many other blogs that day; that was his perfect resource fit!  I showed them a few tricks for navigating posts and posting professionally on Twitter, and then we wrapped up the MTBoS.

I then moved on to talking about Desmos.  Some of them had worked with Desmos, but no one knew about card sorts; hence they had not discovered teacher.desmos.com!  I gave them a copy of the handout that I had received in Sara Van Der Werf’s session in Minneapolis a couple of months ago, and they each signed up for an account.   We did a couple of card sorts together, and I told them that Desmos was a learning work in progress for me and to let it also be for them.  By the end of the session, some had discovered things that I did not know and were showing me; awesome!

We finished at about 4:15pm.  I could not believe how engaged they were, but then again I had to remind myself that I had been that way all summer getting into the MTBoS and looking at Desmos.  As I have mentioned in previous blogs, we have not had a lot of good, content-rich PD in our district for a long time; all of us were hungry for new ideas. 

After the session, a couple of my colleagues and I went out to dinner.  All three of us are teaching Algebra 1 support again this year even though I am at a different school.  We reflected upon our past experiences and had some great discussions about new plans and ideas to implement into Algebra 1 support this coming school year.  We made the commitment to stay in touch and meet up often for collaboration as well as relaxation with a nice dinner out.

I got home about 7pm, but I still had so much energy from all the positive interactions  and resulting ideas shared at two different schools with so many different people.  I browsed Twitter of course and posted the picture  above of my colleagues and I working at my former school on Twitter;  I put in to the tweet “together we are better” and it is just simply the truth. 

To me, it was the best kind of pre-planning day I could have had.  Getting critical planning tasks done, attending meaningful PD at my school, delivering meaningful PD back to some of my area colleagues so they had good resources, and dinner with good friends.  Who could ask for anything more as a teacherJ?

As teachers we need these days to counteract the stressful ones, and we need to reflect upon them to help us remember what keeps us going.  Inevitably there will be the days when we want to give up or at least pull our hair out.

So sets the stage for next blog:  The Pre-Planning Roller Coaster – Part 2

The Day My Support Math Class Taught Me More About Socratic Seminars.

After the incredible experience I had implementing socratic seminars into my Accelerated Geo B/Advanced Algebra courses, my next mission was to find a way to incorporate this into my Algebra 1 support class at least one time before the end of the year.  I knew I did not want to be as structured as the accelerated class with them, but I still was not sure exactly what it would look like.  My support class had a lot of personality, and there were both good and tough days with that, but definitely more good.  It was nearing the end of the year, and I really wanted to encapsulate the good times, but I was tired just like they were.   I absolutely loved teaching these students, and they knew I cared about them and worked just as hard as they did to make our 2-hour block run productively each day.  We were in-tune with each other’s routines and expectations, and I firmly believe that is what drove them to set the tone of their seminar.

We were in the middle of the Georgia Milestone’s End of Course review for Algebra 1.  We were re-capping the year, and that is a tough undertaking, but they were troupers.  They wanted to do well, and I believed they could.  I believed it so much so, that on a whim, I found the Accelerated Algebra 1 teacher’s review packets in the copy room and used those for their review.  The problems were a little tougher, but I wanted to push them – I wanted them to have every advantage possible to do well on their state exam as it is state mandated that it be 20% of their grade.  Now, I did not tell them the level they were working at until later – I wanted them to realize just how capable they were if they made it through the packets; if not, I would re-group and use my original problems.

That particular week, the class was in 3-4 hour blocks of time because of the testing schedule.  We would open class by looking at multiple choice problems that were most missed from the practice test I had given them from state resources.   What I wanted them to do was find a way to solve the problems – I did not care how.  I told them this was their time to become total detectives, be creative with what they learned throughout the year, and use any way they could think of to find their way to an answer.  At the same time, we had what I called a “concepts toolkit sheet” for each unit of the year (I stole this idea from the CPM curriculum I student taught with in Minneapolis)    This was a notetaking guide that  I encouraged them to write the problem-solving ideas and concepts that made the most sense to them as we discussed them  in class for any particular unit.  I did add some generalizations for them, but mostly I wanted it to be written in their own words and understanding.

Now, the socratic part.  I came in to school the first day of that week, and I was about to have them for a three-hour block that morning.   I put my middle rows into a “U-shape” set up in the middle of the room; 2 desks curving out the bottom of the “U” and 10 desks comprising the “legs” of the “U”.  I then  placed a desk behind each of the chairs on the legs of the “U” for a second tier.  I placed white boards on the 2^nd tier desks and then hoped for the best.  I did not know how many of my support students did socratics in their English classes or how much, so I was kind at a loss for how they would take to this.  I did decide that I would designate Malika as the group lead on the “U”.  Malika was a student with a large personality and definitely a leader in the classroom; sometimes productive, sometimes not depending on how quickly she would get bored.   She had strong math skills, stronger than she realized, and I somehow knew this would be a positive way to encompass the leader and mathlete in  her.

The students started filing in at 8:20 for class, and many of them asked excitedly:  “Are we doing a socratic seminar???”  I told them yes in a sense, may a very informal one.  I told them I was not sure how much they had worked with socractic seminars in the past, and that we would see how it went as the class went on.  I had put names on all desks for them to know where to sit, and I told Malika that I wanted her to lead out our first seminar.  She tells me:  “I got this Mrs. Daas – don’t worry, we are going to make this work!”

And that they did.   I started with the most missed multiple choice problems giving them 2-3 problems at a time and had them first work them silently.   Malika instructed the 2^nd tier to work and put their ideas on white boards.  Next, I called for answers, which sometimes they agreed on an answer, and sometimes not.  I loved the conflicting answers because then I asked the 2^nd tier students to raise their whiteboards with work and show what they did.  I could hear “oh I did it that way too” or “oh  yeah, I didn’t think to start there-I remember now” or “oh, I see what I did wrong now!.”   Now, I always wanted to discuss an answer that some of them agreed on was wrong and why.   This discussion would involve both tiers and I would ask students with whiteboards to show visuals of how the mistakes could become corrected.   There were so many strategies being discussed during this informal seminar.  One of my students Nick was a student who embraced multiple choice and the opportunity to work backwards with answers.  He was not the only one who would do this, but he was pretty enthusiastic about itJ   I did not hesitate to highlight this because it is a problem-solving strategy, and let’s face it, when a whole year of content is being tested at 20% of their grade, a pretty darn good one.  Malika liked that strategy too, and for students that were not prone to doing this, she would ask someone with a whiteboard to show an example.   At the end of each set of 2-3 problems, we summarized concepts we discussed, and the students would add to their unit toolkits.

After we went through the most missed problem set for the day, about 10-12 problems, I gave them their Units 1 and 2A review packets.  They continued the seminar!!!   I was hoping to get us through the most missed portion, and they took it beyond what I had envisioned; they set the expectation.  They tackled each problem as a group, Malika ordered quiet time for 1^st tier and 2^nd tier to solve 2-3 problems, and then they would check with each other and discuss when they were not in agreement calling for help from their peers with the whiteboards.  I would chime in when I heard certain strategies/concepts that I wanted to reinforce at the board.   What I did not realize at the time, was that we were knocking the door of Number Talks, only the students were still writing rather than working out calculations mentally. 

This was an amazing way to review for a standardized test with students in a math support class.   Best yet, it was student-driven and managed, and I learned how to look at socratic seminars in a different way.  This was not a seminar in which each person took their time talking with everyone else listening, it was a full collaboration with some pairs discussing before contributing.  The students were not a group that worked well with listening only to one person at a time, but that did not mean they could not have meaningful discussions about the math they were doing.   I did not have a 3^rd tier of students listening and recording the math spoken; there was no way that could happen in these seminars, and there was no need. 

 I  saw my support class three times that week in large blocks; we continued the informal seminars each time.   I was truly amazed to see what they knew and furthermore, what how they worked with each other to correct what they did not know.  I gave them many packets of problems to work on and discuss that week.  Each time, because again, these were problems given at the accelerated level, I had them “star” problems that I felt were super challenging and told them that while that level is not necessarily required for preparation, to try and see what they could do with the problem; many at least tried them.  All students wanted to know why those problems were there:  “Mrs. Daas, are you trying to scare us???”  I said “no, but you all are working on the same packets and the accelerated level students.”  They looked at me in shock and asked why I gave them those packets.  My response:  because I believed that you could work at this level, and clearly you have proved to me this week that you can; look at all you have learned and what you can do.   Their excitement level was awesome, and I know that spiked their confidence level at the same time.  I told them I was excited to see what they could do on their test.

The Results

The students took their Algebra 1 EOC on May 6^th.   By then we had thoroughly reviewed all 6 units through the group work and discussions the students led through the informal seminars.   When the results came back, I walked down to the office with a lot of nervous energy about seeing the scores.  Did this form of review work?  I mean, it was rigorous, and there was a lot of great discussion and preparation, but did it really reach to all as much as it could have?   With some students still on the edge of passing the course (passing is 70% in Georgia), they needed a score at least in the passing area…  

And so I believe it did reach all.  Out of 24 students, 19 passed, and the remaining 5 were within 5 points of a passing score.  Many students scored well above passing, and most student grades raised in the process.  These were students that were in the support class because they had not passed their standardized test the year before, and this was an incredible gain.  I was so proud of them, not only for their endurance during long hours of re-cap, but also throughout the year keeping up with their interactive notebooks and working hard in class.  I ask a lot of them all year and even more with this preparation, and they stepped up to the plate like no other class I had seen in my years of teaching.  When I got back to my classroom and saw their results, of course tears ran down my face.  I was so happy for them!  I immediately posted a congratulations to them on Edmodo – our shared communication network.

The  Take-Away

Why wait until the end of the year to do this?   My biggest advice for teachers is to never assume that students that are at a support level are not able to do some incredible thing.  Try all the things you do in other classes with them, and they may surprise you beyond your wildest dreams.   Informal socratics will now become a common practice throughout the year-possibly at the end of each unit at the support level.   One of my goals to add to this is formal number talks as there is a clear call for it that I saw develop in the seminars.    I am excited for a new year to start, so I can continue this journey with both strategies and see where else it leads.