Getting More Bang For Your Block (Period)

My colleague and I are co-authoring a school tech blog at http://tech4scots.blogspot.com. We have block scheduling, and I wrote about 5 online formative assessment tools. I have written about some (not all) of this already here and here.

Here is a copy of the blog I wrote:

Let's face it. We're the New Kids on the Block. I don't know about you, but I used to think 90 minutes would be a long time to keep students' attention. Lecture and unstructured group work can only go so far. But having tried some of these formative assessment tools this year, I have seen kids high-five one another and help each other in ways that I did not even know existed. Some of these online tools will give you a platform for formative assessments that can be graded or not, and some can used just to change things up and review or preview material while doing it. There are many tools out there, so look for more in a later blog post.

Some of these tools do require prep work, but if make it once, you will have it forever. And there are many teachers who have already made great ones that are available for your use, too!

Kahoot! - Any course, any level

The first one is Kahoot! Although I have not played this one yet with students, I will this upcoming week. I did play as a participant when I attended a workshop this summer, and it is very fun! Students compete in a multiple choice quiz (they can also do surveys), logging in and then using a code that you will provide. To start, go to https://create.kahoot.it/.

This is the screen you will get, and you can make a quiz or use someone else's

Here is a Kahoot! I will use to a review what I taught last block. But you can use at the end of a topic as well.

Watch this video to learn how to make one or to use one that is pre-made. This can be used in ANY discipline, and I've heard it's so much fun that students that have a free period will log in to play, too, when they hear your class is playing! I can't wait to play this game this week.

Formative - Any course, any level

Formative is great for review or a quick do now or even a quick exit ticket. I think this is one of the best out there. I love it because you can upload your own worksheet and create boxes for students to do their work. THEN, when they click on the boxes (again, after you give them a code to sign in), YOU CAN SEE THEIR WORK ON YOUR OWN COMPUTER! Yep. All of them. At once. And your computer screen or iPad will look something like this:

You can actually give them feed back individually (see the box on the right, above)--and you can even grade them right then and there! I am going to use Formative this week in my Pre-Calculus class, and I am looking forward to seeing how it goes. See below: they just click on those blue boxes, and for them, it will turn into a space to write or draw. My worksheet has been uploaded into the website, but they do the work in their notebook. When they type or write in their answers online, I can see all of them at once and can go to whoever needs help. Remember how you would try to get to everyone and see how they are doing? Goodbye Felicia! Formative is here.

Socrative - Any course, any level

Socrative is great for exit tickets, quizzes, polls, and my favorite, space race. Watch the video below to see how to set up a space race. I find multiple choice questions the best for Socrative, as it matches student answers with your answers to give immediate feedback, and it will mark student answers wrong if they put in an extra space, for example. I think Socrative would be really fun for advisory, too, to see how well they understand one of the videos or values that we have studied.

Activity Builder and Polygraph in Desmos - Math & Science--perhaps more?

I am biased as a math teacher, I know, but this has completely changed the way I teach math. (Truthfully, I think any subject can use this.) Desmos has been around for a year or so, and last year several of us in the department found out how powerful it was. BUT NOW...after being in the pilot group at Twitter Math Camp with Liz Pursel, DUN DUN DUN...we can use Activity Builder for formative assessment in real time!! And the kids love it. Math teachers, there is so much to do here that Liz and I will demonstrate at a Math Department meeting, but if you want to play on your own, here is an example of what an activity builder can look like. I like to use it as a preview of what's to come (let them play with the sliders) but it can definitely be used as a Do Now for review or for an exit ticket. AND THERE'S MORE! Kids can see the answers to three random students in the class, so they get an idea if they are right or wrong...and there is an overlay screen (awesome!) that you can show on the board while they are working, so if students are drawing a curve, you can show all of their graphs on top of each other (without names) so students can see if they have the answer right or if they are close.

And don't forget to play Match My Line or Match My Parabola. Finally, Polygraph is a math version of "you sank by battleship," where Desmos randomly pairs up students. See below for an example, and ask Liz about her Calculus Limits Polygraph!

Diagnostic Questions - Math, Science, Language, Computer Science

Need some questions for your multiple choice Kahoot! Game? Go to diagnosticquestions.com. They also have online quizzes that you can make.


I hope you can use some of this! I know it's hard if your school is not 1-1, but if they have iPhones, you can do much of it on those, too.

~Lisa

Save teaching time at the beginning of the year with "Are you ready for Pre-Calculus?" worksheet (and Algebra 2 Honors)

This year, we are going to block scheduling. There has been some talk of losing precious teaching time, and so the thought our department has been discussing is, how can we make that time up? Is there a way to do this without teaching a mile wide and an inch deep? Especially since we already felt like we could not get through enough material with the previous schedule.

I have always been a big proponent of teaching "Chapter P" at the beginning of the year, which means reviewing all of the prerequisites with the students. I have felt like I can get everyone on the same page, basically, and I will know that students really DID learn this (if they claim that they didn't in the previous year...though we all know they did!) This takes up a good 2 to 3 weeks of school, but my theory has been that if you teach/review the prerequisites well, you save time later when teaching concepts that are based on them.

However, at the end of the school year, our new department chair threw out the idea that we sort of skip over the prerequisites. I was appalled. WHAT?? There is no way I could do that. Reviewing at the beginning gives students confidence to start slowly with things they understand. They begin to trust you early. And they feel like they can DO THIS. How could I get rid of prereqs??

My colleague suggested the idea of a diagnostic test in my honors class at the beginning of the year, so that I could see what the students know and could skip anything they are all comfortable with. Though I love that idea and started off making that this year for my students, I began to think about the fact that we have so many different schools that feed into our 9th grade--not only several different high schools, but from several countries as well...so I worried that they would be all over the place with what they knew and did not know as a group, and I wasn't sure it would save me as much time as I needed.

Plus, I liked my knew way of teaching since after spring break. When I got my new classroom then with whiteboard wall paper, I really delved into the idea of students collaborating and teaching each other. I noticed that kids quickly became comfortable discussing what they knew with each other rather than working at their desks in a more isolated fashion. So I also wanted to use the idea of collaboration in getting all of the prerequisites out of the way in a few days. And I remembered a former colleague used to use an  "Are you ready for Calculus" worksheet...so looming fear started to turn itself into something I could possibly use in the classroom...

I don't teach Calculus, so I had to make up worksheets for my other classes. I will teach Algebra 2 Honors (out of Algebra and Trigonometry 9e by Ron Larson) for the first year this year, and Pre-Calculus (out of Pre-Calculus with Limits 3e by Ron Larson) for the second year. Before I go any further, let me first talk about http://www.calcchat.com/, which is THE ABSOLUTE BEST THING THAT HELPED MY STUDENTS THIS PAST YEAR WHEN WORKING ON HOMEWORK. @calcchat gives free solutions to odd homework answers to Larson textbooks, and my students (mostly) diligently used them, and I freed up SO MUCH class time going over homework. Yes, occasionally I caught a student copying answers, but it really only hurt them...my D student still remained a D student. Did I mention they also give live help from 4pm - 12am????

But I digress. So, in keeping with making students take ownership of their learning WHILE collaborating, I came up with two documents; one for Algebra 2H and one for Pre-Calculus. On the first day of classes, I will go over some class rules and assign the packet for homework with a time limit...I will likely tell them to spend 30 minutes or so just working on what they know. Then on the first block (90 minutes), I will divide them up into random groups (ala @AlexOverwijk from Twitter Math Camp) and have them work on the rest of the worksheet. I am hoping to use @pegcagle's idea of having red, yellow, and green cups for the groups to let me know if they are good, need help (they are frustrated, but "good" frustrated), or if they are freaking out in need of some major help.

After this class, I will decide if there is something I really need to spend time on, but rather than me teach everything, they will work together. There are videos (most from the Larson site on instructional videos ) and students can use our math lab for help. I think I will set up a google classroom (have not used this yet) link so that they can talk to each other while they are working on it outside of the classroom...or perhaps a twitter hashtag...any ideas on that one?

So here are the two worksheets.




Hopefully it will go well, and if not, I will adjust as necessary.
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Also, here is something fun that I just got...don't be jealous, you can get them, too. They are yoga pants that my colleague told me about from www.amazon.com. There is another kind, too...but you have to google "math leggings" rather than math yoga pants. They have been so much fun to wear at yoga...you should see all the jealous, I mean, weird looks I get from other yogis, haha!! I see a great Halloween costume in the making...or maybe my math club will design their own next year! Hmmmm....

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Don't know what to make for dinner? Go to Pinterest, which is where I always get my ideas. I just made this Chicken Quinoa Burrito Bowl from Gimmesomeoven.com tonight, and it was seriously delicious. I am not the best cook, and this came out really good, which means it's no fail. If I can make it, anyone can. My husband cleaned everything up (he usually does when I cook) so that I could finish this blog!

Gah! School is almost upon us. Where did this lovely summer go?
Until next time,
~Lisa

Teaching a Problem Solving Class for the First Time

Math 

School's out for summer, and I couldn't sleep last night. Call me crazy. I was up tossing and turning all night...thinking about what you ask?? About the new Honors Problem Solving Seminar elective that I will be teaching next year. 

My brain was churning throughout the night about what I should and should not do or add. We are going to a very interesting block schedule next year, and I have to consider how I want to teach the course based on this. The course is a semester course, and students can sign up for both semesters...this means I can't repeat what I did first semester...so it really is a full course I have to plan for. What makes this difficult is that there will be students enrolled second semester that did not take it first semester...so I have a LOT of planning to do...perhaps this is why I kept dreaming/thinking about it all night!

Here are some things I'd like to incorporate into the course. The model we will have for our modified block schedule next year is: 50 minute class Monday, and two 90 minute blocks during the week. 

• Hand out a Problem Set a week before actually going over them. This will consist of about 8 questions a week similar to this one that I used when I taught a problem solving class in Hong Kong one summer. This will be gone over the following week (see below) Exeter Style. 
  

• Monday (50 minutes) will be competitions day. I will give students 30 minute competitions like Florida Math League competitions, Hustles, speed math, mental math, and Relays, and then will take the remaining 20 minutes to have students go to the board to explain anything that some students did not understand. 

• Block 1: Students will go over the first problem set. At the beginning of class, students will go to the board (I have whiteboard walls) and will put up solutions to their favorite problem. They will then each explain the problems to the rest of the class and others can add the way that they did the problem. When finished, the next problem set will be handed out.

• Block 2: Part 1: Show a video...this could be a Ted Talk, like Angela Duckworth's Ted Talk on Grit or maybe one of these on the Monty Hall Problem. Yes this is what was going through my brain at 3am last night! 

• Block 2: Part 2: Teach a lesson that is not part of any curriculum that we teach. I am thinking of breaking this up by quarters. I may poll the kids to help with quarters 3 and 4.
• Quarter 1: Sequences--I will likely use problems from this book Finite Sequences and have kids develop formulas ANY WAY THEY SEE FIT for figurate numbers or Tower of Hanoi sequences and will teach the method of finite differences and possibly Proof by induction.
• Quarter 2: Probability--this is the one thing we do not have enough time for in our curriculum and I know we can spend a ton of time on this. 

• Have students blog once per week. There will not be tests or quizzes in this class, so this will be a major part of their grade...I will take the best one and post it each week as a guest blog in my blog...this came to me in my sleep...I can't wait! 

I think the best part of it is that I either have taught all of the students in the course or know them from Mu Alpha Theta, my math club. I am really looking forward to this class!

Follow me on Pinterest to see some of the pins for High School math lessons that I will try to incorporate into this class.

Play/Eat

I am going to try to cook more this summer. Here is something I had when we went to a tapas restaurant in Missouri last week...Baked Goat Cheese in tomato sauce...I found this recipe and recreated it. To make it even easier, I would just use your favorite tomato sauce rather than making your own. It was definitely well liked in the family!

Any ideas for a problem solving class? Please post below :)

~Lisa