Math Practice #5 for Teachers

The other day I was trying to decide which of the many tools in my bag of tricks I wanted to use for a quick formative assessment.  My usual routine is just to have students raise their hands to answer my questions and provide enough wait-time for everyone to think about it, or to have them write their answer on their individual whiteboards.  But no matter how much wait-time I provide, there's either that one student who calls out the answer so everyone else stops thinking, or the student who just waits for someone else to answer so they don't have to.  Over this past summer I read Total Participation Techniques and swore I was going to use some of these strategies to get everyone involved in answering, but I really haven't done a good job with that.

So back to my decision of which tech tool to use - here are my usual go-to choices:

• Nearpod 
• Socrative
• Google Form
• Plickers
• Classkick
• Google Classroom Question

I'm looking for something that is quick and easy, will record everyone's answers for later review, and gives everyone an equal opportunity to provide an answer.  I'm trying to assess how my students are understanding the pattern lessons we've been exploring from the book From Patterns to Algebra.  I want to see if they can explain their thought processes using words, not just drawing or building the next position in the patterns.  I want to see if they can explain how they determine the constant and the multiplier.  This is really important as we are going to move on to patterns where all the tiles are the same color instead of having the constant stand out with a different color.  I want to have a good class discussion afterwards to reveal all understandings and also correct misconceptions.

So, my first option - Nearpod - requires me to set up the presentation and have students sign in.  I can see the results in real time and it does save the data for later.  I can even share out good responses and those that are lacking so we can discuss them as a whole class which I like.

The next option - Socrative - also requires that I set up the questions ahead of time.  Yes, I could use the Quick Question option, but as far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong) the data isn't saved for later review.

Next up - Google Form - again requires prior setup to use, but it does save the data.  But reviewing the data is awkward when it's short answer questions as I'm planning to use.  Forms are also good for multiple choice because they can be graded with Flubaroo, but this was not this case here.

Next is Plickers - my students love Plickers, but they're only good for multiple choice, so that option is off the table.

Classkick is another option, but I find this is a better option for using the drawing tool to solve problems, not so much for typing responses.  

My last choice is the Google Classroom Question feature.  My students are already signed into Classroom all the time, so that makes it quick to access.  And adding a question on the fly is quick and easy too.  I have a class that I named "Templates" where I add questions that I use over and over again.  So when I want to use one, I click on the "+", chose "Reuse post", and pick the question I want to ask.  I love that I can see how many students have submitted their answers and how many have not.  I also find it easy to review their short answers by simply scrolling through them.  I can also provide feedback to them by means of a private comment if I wanted to do that afterwards.

We talk about students' mathematical habits and the 8 Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practices that we want them to become proficient with.  I realized as I was trying to find the "just- right" tech tool for this formative assessment that I was paralleling Math Practice #5 - "Use appropriate tools strategically":

Mathematically proficient students teachers consider the available tools when solving assessing a mathematical problem. These tools might include pencil and paper, concrete models, a ruler, a protractor, a calculator, a spreadsheet, a computer algebra system, a statistical package, or dynamic geometry software tech tools for formative assessment such as Nearpod, Socrative, Google Forms, Plickers, Classkick, or Google Classroom Questions. Proficient students teachers are sufficiently familiar with tools appropriate for their grade or course to make sound decisions about when each of these tools might be helpful, recognizing both the insight to be gained and their limitations. ...  They are able to use technological tools to explore assess and deepen analyze their students' understanding of concepts.

As I was going through my options for formative assessment ("consider the available tools"), I was making decisions about each tool's strengths and weaknesses ("recognizing both the insight to be gained and their limitations").

I don't think I've ever put this much thought into choosing a tech tool to use.  Going forward, I think I will always make a more conscious effort to "use appropriate tools strategically".


What do you look for when choosing tech tools for formative assessments?

I Made It Through the First Week!

Wow, the title of this post makes it sound like my first week was extremely long and difficult.  It was not; it was actually the total opposite - I had a terrific first week!  I love my new schedule and my new students.  Actually my students are not all new to me - I've had about half of them for the past two years of summer school.

First I thought I would share a few pictures of some new things in my classroom this year, courtesy of Sarah Carter - if you haven't read her blog yet you really should - she's an amazing, creative teacher.

So I started out the first day, Tuesday, by going over my classroom procedures and expectations, but to kill two birds wth one stone, I created a Nearpod presentation so my students could not only learn about my routines, but so they also could learn how to use an application that I use quite often throughout the school year.

The next day, Wednesday, I had them get familiar with a couple of other activities that I use on a regular basis, QR code scavenger hunts and Socrative.  I set up a super easy QR code scavenger hunt where the problems were just multiplication facts, just so they could get the hang of how scavenger hunts work.  In the past, students thought they could just go to random problems or just work their way around the room without using the answers as clues as to where to go next.  Hopefully this will prevent that mistake the next time we do a QR code scavenger hunt for real.  The Socrative activity was another super easy set of questions just so they could see how to get into my "class", what the different types of questions looked like, and to see the feedback they get after they answer the question.  (I also do a lot of "Space Races", but I'll save that for another day.)

We finished up with everyone joining my Google Classroom and completing the first assignment which was an "All About Me" Google Slides - I gave everyone their own copy which had 10 slides of questions to help me get to know them.  They had a lot of fun with this one and some students got really creative with the images they chose to go along with their answers.  My homework this weekend is to read through all of them!

Thursday was probably not their favorite day because I gave them a pre-assessment.  I wanted to find out if they have the prerequisite skills that I feel they should have in order to be able to start learning the 8th grade curriculum, such as their basic multiplication facts, integer operations, exponents, one- and two-step equations, and basic graphing skills like plotting points and naming coordinates on a coordinate plane.  I haven't finished grading them all yet, but from what I've seen, I have my work cut out for me this year!

When they had completed the pre-assessment, I had them create bookmarks for all the applications we will be using throughout the year to avoid the 5-minutes or so spent searching for the applications each time we use them.  I also taught them how to shorten the bookmark so that it's just the icon without words so they can fit more on their bookmark bar, and how to make a folder on their bookmark bar for all the math applications.

I think they probably liked today, Friday, the best.  I started out class with a presentation about growth mindsets which consisted of 6 short video clips. I had been telling them all week about how mistakes are OK, mistakes make your brain grow, mistakes show that you are trying and learning, etc.  The first video was Jo Boaler explaining the scientific research about this so they didn't just think I was making it all up.  Then I had a few cutesy cartoony videos about growth mindset.

The video I felt was the best was basically an analogy between brain growth and building a rope bridge across a really high ravine.  The first time across was really difficult (just like learning a new concept), they made some mistakes along the way (one man slips as he's walking on the rope), but the more times they crossed the ravine the easier it became (they showed the two men adding more and more ropes to the bridge they were building which I related to the brain cells being connected), and then after many times across they finally had a solid foundation (they had added wood planks to walk on).  I watched my students as they watched the video and everyone was really engaged in it.

The last two videos had everyone laughing.  One was about learned helplessness - two people were on an escalator and it stops moving.  They both freak out and get frustrated that this has happened when they're obviously trying to get somewhere important (they're both dressed up in business suits).  They call out for help and look for a cell phone to call for help.  A repair man finally arrives and his escalator also breaks down.  We discussed how if this had been an elevator, their reactions would have made sense, but because it was an escalator they could have easily just walked up the rest of the way, but the thought never crossed their minds because they're so used to the escalator doing all the work for them and they aren't doing any thinking for themselves.  The solution to their problem is so obvious but they're just not looking for it.  One of my new slogans came from this video - "Get off the escalator!" - I think I'm going to make a sign to hang up in my classroom that says this.  Anytime I see one of my students saying they don't understand something before they've even attempted the problem, I'll just say "Get off the escalator!" to them.

The final video was about determination and perseverance.  A dog hears the toaster oven 'ding' and cleverly pushes a chair up to the counter, climbs up onto the counter, opens the toaster oven, and pushed the tray with the food out onto the floor so he can eat it.  I used this to discuss how they also should be determined to learn new concepts and persevere instead of giving up.  So my slogan from this video is now "Be the dog!"

After the videos, I had my classes do the 1-100 group work activity that I got from Sara VanDerWerf's blog.  The kids loved this and were so excited to try to beat their scores and beat the other teams.  I loved watching them working so well together.  After we finished the three rounds (by the way, only one team figured out the secret that the position of the numbers went around the paper from one quadrant to the next), we discussed "What good group work looks like" (also from Sara VanDerWerf) and I pointed out the things I had seen while they were working. When we got to number 2 ("They don't get distracted. They don't notice what other groups or the teacher is doing."), I told them I could have been doing a little jig in the back of the room and no one would have noticed.  I only hope the group work the rest of the year looks as good as today's did.

One final thing I almost forgot to mention was the new Do Now routines I've started this year.  I want to help my students develop better number sense, and I found a great list of math routines.  The one I tried this week was the "Number of the Day".  The first time I gave them the number and asked them to write 3 different expressions, each with a different operation.  The next day I stepped up the challenge and asked them for 3 different expressions, each with 2 different operations, and none of the expressions can use the number 1 (I found the first day students were making this way to easy by just adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing by 1 - I wanted them to think of more challenging ways to write the expressions).  There were a few students who just couldn't come up with an expression with 2 different operations, so I told them it was OK to just use one operation - we're going to work on this.  Then there was one student who made my day today - her expressions showed she was thinking outside the box - she was the only one who included parenthesis, exponents, and negatives!  She really impressed me!

All in all, I had a great first week of school!  This is my 7th year teaching and it was the first opening day that I didn't have the customary opening day butterflies!  I'm really looking forward to working with my new students this year.

Chromebook Training Week

Photo via us.acer.com

If you've read any of my recent blog posts, you'll know my district will have 1:1 Chromebooks (Acer C720P's) for grades 7 through 11 this coming school year.  To prepare the teachers for this new adventure, we were given the opportunity to participate in four days of Chromebook training, with teachers from our district leading the sessions.  Whenever I attend a workshop or conference, I like to reflect on what I have learned, and I'm happy when I can walk away with having learned one new valuable idea.  The purpose of this post is to do just that, and share my favorites with you, my readers.


All attendees met in a large group for each day's opening session, then we broke out into individual sessions based on experience and interest.  After our lunch break, we met with our content area colleagues to discuss how we can apply our new technology to our curriculum.  We ended the day back in the large group to answer any questions from the day.  Here's the overview of each of the days' sessions I attended and what I feel was the best thing I learned on each day.


Day 1

Photo via www.bettshow.com

The sessions I attended on day 1 included Hapara, Google Add-ons, and Best Practices for Google Docs.  I'm really intrigued by Hapara and I'm excited to be able to try it out with my new group of students in September.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Hapara, it's a Google Apps for Education add-on that consists of two components, Teacher Dashboard and Remote Control.  Teacher Dashboard allows for workflow management and monitoring of students' activity.  Remote Control gives teachers the power to remotely open or close tabs on students' Chromebooks as needed.  With the new Google Classroom being release August 11th, just in time for the new school year, it will be interesting to see if it can be a replacement for the Teacher Dashboard portion of Hapara or if they will just work well together.  I plan on comparing the capabilities of the two applications by using Classroom with one of my Pre-Algebra classes, and Teacher Dashboard with my other Pre-Algebra class.  I still plan on using Remote Control for both classes since Classroom does not have that functionality (yet).


Day 2

Photo via techsmith.com

On day 2, I attended a session on Flubaroo, another on Socrative, and one of screencasting with TechSmith's Snagit and Movenote.  I was already familiar with the first two applications, but Snagit is what caught my attention on this day.  I have been using the iPad app Explain Everything to make videos for my students (and for my students to make their own videos as well).  While I absolutely love Explain Everything, sometimes I need to do a screencast of something on the Chromebooks, so Snagit will be my go-to app for this purpose.


Day 3

My "Do Now" mini-NPP

Day 3 was all about tools for our content areas (math for me), differentiation, and sharing learning.  My math team worked with Nearpod.  Since I had experience with it, I demonstrated how to use it.  I had the other teachers take the student role so they could see how it will look to our students.  They absolutely loved the "Draw It" feature, especially since our Chromebooks are touch screen!  I shared my favorite stylus with them (TruGlide) and one of my team jumped onto Amazon right away to order one!

Photo via lynktec.com

 After I showed them how to create a quick Nearpod Presentation (NPP), we brainstormed how to use "mini-NPP"s for our "Do Now"s, homework checks, and even exit tickets (thank you to Cathy Yenca for that great idea!).  I have used Nearpod for full presentations in the past, but never for these shorter snapshots of learning.  What made us decide to use Nearpod over some of the other tools we tried was the "Draw It" feature and the fact that we can save the data from each session.  We also liked InfuseLearning, except that we couldn't use the draw feature during a pre-made quiz.


Day 4

Photo via blogger.com

On the final day, I attended sessions on backchanneling, Google Sites and Google groups, and blogging.  We played around with TodaysMeet for backchanneling, which had my wheels spinning trying to figure out how I could use this tool in my math classes.  (Any ideas? Please let me know!)  But the most exciting idea I took away from this day was having my students using Blogger for their math journaling.  I had set up a Google Sites with the announcement style pages for my students to blog and keep all their blogs connected under one site to make it easier to monitor all of them.  But during the blogging session I found out that Hapara will monitor my students' posts and comments as long as they use Blogger as their blogging tool.  This is definitely the way I will go.  Now I just have to plan a digital citizenship/how to blog lesson.  I'm excited to try this new way to improve my students' writing about math.


On the last day of training, everyone who didn't already have a Twitter account signed up for one.  Eisenhower Middle School and Roxbury High School teachers will be busy tweeting now!  All-in-all, the week of Chromebook training was terrific!  I found a new tool to experiment with during each of the four days.  As much as I am enjoying my last few weeks of summer break, I look forward to my new "Tech Adventures in a Middle School Math Class" in September!