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.

Make sense and persevere

I teach 8th grade Pre-Algebra in a Special Education resource room.  This year I have been blessed with an amazing group of students!  They all try so hard every day to grasp the concepts I am teaching them.  

This week I was particularly proud of them.  We are coming to the end of our unit on linear equations, and I came up with an activity which would really let them demonstrate their knowledge of linear equations and the flexibility to represent the information in various forms.  I knew it was a very challenging activity, but I had confidence that they would all give it 110% of their effort.  

Before we started, I warned them this was going to be really challenging.  They moaned and groaned.  I explained to them that this activity combines everything they've learned so far in this unit and will really show that they understand linear equations.  I first displayed a similar but blank problem up on the SmartBoard.  I pointed out that there were three forms of equations, a table, a graph, and the slope and x- and y-intercepts that needed to be identified.  I told them to all put their detective caps on because they were going to solve a puzzle.  I was going to give them just 1 piece of information, and they have to fill in every other piece of missing information.  You should have seen their faces!  Looks of panic, disbelief, and total lack of confidence.  

I get really math-geeky and excited at this point.  I explain to them that this is soooo cool because everything interconnects with everything else.  That there is more than one way to figure out each piece of the puzzle.  That there is more than one path to get from start to finish.  They look at me like I've totally lost it!

(Warning: I'm about to ramble!)

So, I put one piece of the puzzle up on the board -- a standard form equation.  I ask them what we can do with this?  What information can we get from the standard form of an equation?  They look at me with blank stares and shrugging shoulders.  I guided them to finding the intercepts.  Then I asked them what the intercepts could do for us?  I started to see some light bulbs go on.  I graphed the line using the intercepts. Then I explained that they could have also transformed the standard form into slope-intercept form first in order to graph it.  Then I asked them what we can get from the graph?  Someone volunteered "the slope!"  So we found the slope (and I reminded them that if we had found the slope-intercept form first, we would already have the slope), and I asked what can we do with the information we have so far?  No responses...  I asked if we could write one of the missing equations?  "Oh yeah!"  So we wrote the slope-intercept form of the equation.  (OK, here I go again with more questions -- I really had to drag it out of them the first time through!)  Can we fill in the table of values yet?  I saw mostly blank stares and shrugging shoulders again.  "Substitution" was my clue to them.  One students remembered that they could substitute the x-values I had provided them into the slope-intercept form of the equation to find y.  So we went through that process, painfully...  Then I erased all the y-values and asked them if they could think of another way to fill in the table without substitution.  No responses.  Which order pair do we already know?  What's the special ordered pair in the table?  "Oh, the y-intercept is the one with the zero for x!"  OK, so how can we fill in the rest of the table if we know this one ordered pair?  Can we use the fact that we already know the 'change in y over the change in x'?  "Oh yeah, we know the slope, so we can use that!"  We finished filling in the table using the slope.  Once we had the table complete, I asked if we could now write the point-slope form.  After we did, I explained that they could have also done that without the table since they had the slope and intercepts already and could have used one of the intercepts for the point in the point-slope form.  Phew!  Finally done!  It was exhausting...

But when we were done filling in all the information in, they said "Can we do another one?"  I was so excited that they wanted to do more!  I thought since they seemed so confused and frustrated by the whole process, that they would never in a million years want more!  But they were so persistent and determined to figure out how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.  We did a few more "puzzles" where I gave them different pieces of information such as just the completed table of values, or just the graph.  When the class was almost over, they asked if we could do this again tomorrow!

My hope is that learning to be flexible and complete all the missing pieces of the puzzle from any starting point will help them truly understand linear equations.  They really demonstrated Mathematical Practice Standard #1 - Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. I've never seen them work so hard and I was very proud!