New Idea: Class Quiz! I imagine implementing this on the 3rdish day of school, pretty early on. Picture this: Students have already gone through a lesson and are working on practice problems with their seatmates. After a few minutes of working, I make them pause and look up.
I imagine frantic working, possibly a small uproar at the unfairness. I don't care. Because I have more planned. And I tell them that they are wasting time when they need to make sure everyone in their group understands every problem.
While the 3 students are writing the problems on the board, I tell the class the rules for the grade: Each student will present their problem and talk through their thinking, and students must respond by asking good questions. During the presentations I ask questions too to make sure they didn't just copy another kid's work. I take notes on the student as well as the class (are they paying attention, asking good questions, etc.) as each child is presenting, pause for class questions. Then I ask, "what did X do well?" and "what's one thing X could improve upon?" and add any additional notes I took.
This plays out for the other students. I tell the class that while everyone did a fantastic job for the first time being up here, it was hard work and they still have a lot to improve upon. I don't think I would give the class a perfect score the first time, to teach them to work harder for the next time. I am all about standards-based grading, but I'm also very strongly for character grades, as well. How well can students work in teams? How well do students present in front of a group of people? How well can students read and synthesize information in a project? I think it's my roll to not just strengthen a student's math ability, but also their character. I don't, however, believe that these grades should make-or-break a students grade, so I'm imagining the standards being 90% and the class quizzes (character quizzes, really) only 10% of a student's overall grade.
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I've been thinking a lot about how I'll redo my classroom when I return in a few years (taking a break now to raise the babies). In one of my last classes in graduate school (just got my Masters'! woo!) I learned A TON about researched-based principles of multimedia learning (so cool!). I was also told to read Mindset by Dweck in a methods course, and learned about some great ways to encourage and help students develop their mathematical mindset. Two big ideas from the readings that really stuck out to me were:
This got me thinking about how I do (1) warm-ups and (2) testing. Since pre-knowledge is so important, and from seeing the wonderful light-bulbs go off in the past, I imagine I will incorporate more "My Favorite No" before a lesson, which is a fantastic way to celebrate mistakes, and gauge how much my students remember about a topic before I build on their understanding. And since written feedback needs to always be incorporated more in my lessons, I decided I'm doing two new things: One new idea I have is MATH JOURNALS! There is just NEVER enough time in the day to talk with every student about how they're doing or feeling or thinking about math, so I thought at least a 5-10 minute prompt every other day could really get me connecting more with them, and showing them more feedback from me. And the second new idea I have that's not fully developed yet is that instead of doing 1 day of review and 1 day of testing, we switch it up and do 1 day of testing and 1 day of reflection. I'll have to develop this further, read about other teachers who've tried something similar, then draw up my own conclusions. I just strongly feel we as educators need to show more of a compassionate side to education, a "I REALLY want you to learn this, so let's keep thinking about improvement rather than ignoring it and moving on." It just feels so liberating to break free from this little teaching box I imagined myself into! Until next time. It's Thursday, a teacher workday. For the kids school starts Monday. This semester I'm teaching Math 1-A and Honors Math 3, and for the most part I know the topic of each day in each class. I just have a hard time organizing my thoughts at this point to know if I'm "ready" for Days 1, 2, and 3. Do I have my powerpoints for the Day 1 opener/introduction to class ready? Does it have everything I want to communicate to the kids; my belief in them, my high expectations, my desire to see their brains grow? When do I introduce the NumberTalks? And how often? How do I keep up with and respond to the 2-times-a-week Remind 101 reflections I'm having my students do (for the first time ever!). I feel like I'm all over the place with planning that I don't know how to get organized. Should I make a little notecard for each day of a unit and list all the things I need to do in class in order? And I can't forget about the deep questions I need to ask my students- should those go on the notecards too? For what feels like the first time ever my school has done some incredible professional development in the first few days that I'm excited to get started and get to know my students. I'm doing the "Who I Am" worksheet in all 3 classes, and my goal is to go around the room, introduce myself, and get to know the kids. Afterwards we'll discuss some talking points, and then I'll show them this video on growth mindset and what it means to make mistakes. I want to promote working together on the first day, so I'm having them do Four 4's together, although 1-100 looked pretty cool too (but I wanted my Math 1-A students to get more familiar with various operations before they go into solving equations). "Homework" or "Closure" as I like to call it now, thanks to When Math Happens, is to fill out their information using a Google form, and reflect on why mistakes are important in learning. I think typing all this out has helped me deconstruct my thoughts, and I think I will go with the notecard idea. Day 1, here we go! |
AuthorTracy Conte is a high school math teacher in Raleigh, NC. Archives
November 2019
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