Don't judge a book by its cover - preview it!

I love a challenge ... and here it is: Explore the MTBoS 2017 Blogging Initiative!  I invite YOU to blog as well!  Share what is happening in your classroom!

This week the topic is your favorite!

I love to read.  And I love to read books about education! While typically I wouldn't care who published the book, my favorite happens to be Stenhouse!  Stenhouse Publishers are my favorite because they offer free previews of whole books online.  An account is required but the account is free! Most of the books are written for K - 8; a few books are written K - 12.  In my career I've worked in elementary, middle and high schools so I still read books from all levels!  I use free previews to scan a variety of books - helps me determine what books to purchase! 

Currently I'm previewing three books ... 

Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had: Ideas and Strategies from Vibrant Classrooms by Tracy Johnston Zager has been mentioned quite a bit on Twitter.  I'm intrigued to read the book because Zager's purpose is to connect math classrooms to what "real" mathematicians do!

The Four Roles of the Numerate Learner: Effective Teaching and Assessment Strategies to Help Students Think Differently About Mathematics by Fiore and Lebar looks interesting.  The authors include examples even for secondary math - something I wish more books did.  It appears from the brief preview that the authors make a connection between literacy and math - something Pearse did in her book on numeracy (Teaching Numeracy: 9 Critical Habits to Ignite Mathematical Thinking). I'm curious what connections overlap in the two books!

Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning by Roberts and Neebe catches my attention about using technology in the classroom.  Roberts and Neebe are English teachers - so many of their examples are from English classes.  That's OK with me since many times ideas can cross over disciplines.

Don't judge a book by its cover ... preview it!

Professional development - it's personal #youredustory

Last January I wrote a post answering the question, "What is one significant practice in teaching?"  I wrote about the significance of planning and how it is multidimensional.  You can read that post here!

This January I'd like to answer the question with another significant practice ... professional development!

By professional development, I don't mean a meeting, workshop, or training ... something your administration assigns to you.  Professional development is personal!

Professional development is you assessing your teacher know-how, with-it-ness, effectiveness - and developing a personal learning plan for improvement ...

It's ...
Feeding up ... clarifying your goals as an educator ... your next steps -
    Feeding back ... getting responses to your work from administrators, colleagues, students, parents -
        Feeding forward ... using feedback to adjust teaching style, strategies -

                        To make a difference in students' lives!
                                        That's the BIG purpose of professional development!

Professional development is "life-long" learning!
     It's belonging to a professional organization ...
               Reading journals and books ...
                      Talking the talk with like-minded colleagues ...
                             Questioning policies, procedures, methods for effectiveness ...
                                    Searching out not just new ideas but better ideas ...
                                          Putting research to work, replicating it in your classroom

Professional development is thinking critically ...
    Observing,
          Analyzing,
                 Looking for patterns,
                         Reflecting ...

                              It's introspective ... it's about growth ... it's about change ... it's hard work!

It's teacher as learner ... full circle!

#MTBoSBlaugust 20: Job Alike Training today

Our district sponsors a day of training called "Job Alike" during the prep days before school starts.  All the secondary math teachers in the district descended on one school today to explore instructional strategies, technology tools and make/take ideas.

Several sessions highlighted high-yield instructional strategies from Lead4ward training.  This pdf document lists those strategies and how they support our new process standards.

I shared Desmos with about 75+ teachers focusing on how Desmos can be used as an instructional tool for exploration and inquiry.  It was a popular session and teachers were excited to discover the class activities especially.  As we played parabola polygraph, the increase in energy in the room was obvious.  One group also sampled Central Park.  I loved hearing the teachers' frustration when they had not divided the area exactly for the cars and boats to park.

I also told teachers today about the MTBoS and specifically about the search engine.  I hope more teachers will explore the online math community and get connected!

NaBloPoMo #11 Twitter Chats

One of my favorite forms of professional development are Twitter Chats.  I've mentioned them before.  The online chats are teacher driven, just-in-time information, and invigorating!

This week on Monday, Algebra teachers joined online for #alg2chat!  We meet every other week right now.  We had been on a hiatus, and returning this past Monday was awesome!  We talked most about our current curriculum and ideas for engaging students in the work.  This past week using videos in class and for tutorial support was a big topic!  How do you use videos in your work?  Do you make them yourself?  Do you use a particular series online?  How does that work for your students?

Last night, #eduread was hopping!  We decided to step away from reading a single article a week to tackling Marzano's book, The Highly Engaged Classroom.  Last night was Chapter 1 so there is plenty of time for you to join in!  My take-aways from our discussion last night include this tweet/retweet via @druinok ... "Best way to learn is to DO." "We move to restart our brains." "The person talking is thinking!"  I'm writing these short statements on chart paper for our classroom this morning!

In this first session, I learned that engagement is different from being attentive.  Attention is about emotions and energy.  Negative emotions and low energy prevent learning from getting into working memory.  Engagement on the other hand is about relevance and a sense of efficacy.  If students don't believe the information is necessary or if they think they can't do the work, their brains will reject the learning - and the information will not stay in working memory long enough to make a difference.  Marzano uses these four questions ...

1. How do I feel?
2. Am I interested?
3. Is this important?
4. Can I do this?

I want to find a way to teach these questions to students ... it's important that they understand how their brain works!

This has been an amazing week for professional development, starting with the Google Lesson Plan Jam, and then the Twitter Chats!  My brain is full to overflowing!  My next task is to apply this good stuff to my classroom!  And then to share out!

#MTBoSChallenge: Professional Books

Earlier this summer I saw a post about an ideal bookshelf and so I wrote about favorite books at that time. This is mostly a repeat listing of books I value!

Assessment is essential ... these two books are essential!

• Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliams 
• Mathematics Formative Assessment: 75 Practical Strategies by Keeley and Tobey

Asking the right questions is significant!  These books are super resources for identifying good questions!

• Good Questions for Math Teaching: Why Ask Them and What to Ask, K-6 by Sullivan and Lilburn
• Good Questions for Math Teaching, Grades 5-8: Why Ask Them and What to Ask by Anderson and Schuster
• Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Mathematics Instruction by Marian Small
• More Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Secondary Mathematics Instruction by Small and Lin

Instructional strategies are key!  Using research-based strategies to develop strong lessons are necessary!

• The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction by Marzano
• The Strategic Teacher: Selecting the Right Research-Based Strategy for Every Lesson by Silver, Strong, and Perini

For enrichment and mathematical background information I love to read Theoni Pappas!

• More Joy of Mathematics
• The Joy of Mathematics
• Math Talk
• Fractals, Googols, and Other Mathematical Tales
• The Magic of Mathematics
• The Music of Reason
• The Adventures of Penrose–the Mathematical Cat
•  Math for Kids & Other People Too!

Since writing is an initiative in our school, I dug through my shelf to find an old book, Mathematics Write Now.  It emphasizes creative writing in math.  I also stopped by our school's professional library to check out Algebra Out Loud which has ideas for communicating math that could be written!

Last, for inspiration, I read Teaching with Heart: Poetry that Speaks to the Courage to Teach by Intrator and Scribner.

There are so many more books I could share but these are books I value today!

#70Days Challenging the Advanced Learner

Last year, our district started a 2-day Pre-AP/AP Conference.  It's specifically designed for the secondary teacher working with advanced learners.  The conference offers keynote speakers, break out sessions and more!  This conference doesn't focus on math specifically so there are opportunities for making connections.

Today, Day 1, was filled with interesting ideas.

The Keynote address was delivered by 3 teachers - all recognized for excellence in teaching gifted students.  I was intrigued by the opening in which they shared several great thinkers and what they got wrong!  I love it when learning collides ... and so much of what I've been studying for the past 2 years is all about making mistakes and personal growth. The four big points in their address were teaching open-mindedness, empathy, metaphorical thinking, and productive failure.

Identifying your "Star Wars" name makes a good first day activity.  To observe students working in groups and to note their ability to interact, ask students to first create their names.  Then in table groups discuss whether their names indicate alliance with the Jedi or with the Dark Side.  Ask students to justify their reasoning.

Four Box Synectics would make a good warm-up strategy or review.  Draw four boxes.  You could fill in the boxes with words in advance or ask students to name objects from four categories.  Then have students describe the current unit's content using those objects.  Example:

Song	Bicycle
Frame	Pencil

Ask students to complete the sentence: A _______ is like a ______ because ....  So ... functions are like a song because they both tell a story.  Functions are like a song because they both can be graphed. Functions are like a song because they illustrate movement. And so on.

Educanon is a good tool for flipping a lesson or building a video tutorial.  It's easy, free, and available on most all platforms.  You can upload a video you make yourself, or you can upload a video you find online.  It's easy to insert formative assessment questions to help students' check for understanding.  The teacher gets the data from their responses - color coded red for incorrect, green for correct and an overall percentage for each student.  It takes only minutes to set up an Educanon learning "bulb" if you have the video and know what questions you want to ask!

In the last session I attended, an AP Calculus teacher shared how a strong knowledge of algebraic manipulations is needed.  She pointed out that the AP Calculus test has 2 non - calculator sections.  Students have to be able to work out problems by hand.  Most of us in the room were algebra teachers.  We wanted to know what top 3 - 5 skills were most needed.  Her response:  factoring patterns, fractions, working with exponents (rational exponents) and solving literal equations!

Today's conference presenters mostly encouraged me to think outside the box.  How can I challenge my advanced learners?

#70Days Projects in Math Class

Today I wrapped up my plans and handouts for the presentations I am doing on Monday.  I am a bit nervous since it has been a while since I presented to teachers ... and because I am relatively new to this district.

One of my goals is to share #MTBoS and all the fun found in blogs and Twitter.  The focus of the morning presentation is on projects.  The focus of the afternoon session is on warm-up routines.

The presentation on projects has been the most difficult to pull together.  I don't have a great list of projects to share!  Last year I did two projects that I thought worth telling about.  One was on "exploring math" ... based on Fawn Nguyen and Sam Shah's posts.  I describe the project we did here.  The second was graphing art with Desmos.  Asking students to graph a picture and label the functions is pretty standard in Algebra classes.  Using Desmos just made the project amazing and reinforced very well the concept of domain and range.

So to help the participants think through projects in math class next week, I decided to do two things.  First participants will complete four short mini-projects that could be adapted for any middle or high school math class. Then I curated projects from the Internet for us to discuss - how we might adapt one or more of them to meet our goals for students.

The four mini-projects that we will do are ...

1. Your life in numbers ... to introduce ourselves, workshop participants will make a mini-poster about themselves emphasizing the numbers that shape their lives. The purpose of this project is obvious - we get to introduce ourselves and of course, we could use this in our classes as well.
2. Round Robin Suspense Story Writing ... in groups of 3 or 4, workshop participants will write a story using this sentence starter, “Last Monday was an average day, it wasn’t odd or weird - till numbers all around our town completely disappeared!” Each person will write for 1 minute, then pass the paper. After about 5 to 8 minutes we'll stop and share our stories. I'll read Missing Math, a Number Mystery by Leedy. We'll talk about how you could use a story like this one or The Math Curse by Scieszka and Smith as a "first week activity."
3. Participants will respond to this prompt ... If the world were a village made up of only 100 people, how many of those people do you think… speak English, are 9 years of age of younger, have enough food, go to school, have electricity, have safe water. I'll share the book, If the World were a Village by Smith and Armstrong. Obviously our discussion could be about percentages in middle school math, but I'm wondering if there might be other statistical projects that could arise.
4. The last mini-project we will do is a circuit (a loop or a scavenger hunt) in which participants work math problems to find the missing words in quotations by Descartes.  Here are the links to the puzzle and the circuit.  This mini-project illustrates how one might mesh routine skills with a project.  Students could research something in math and create a puzzle to challenge their classmates.

Obviously these are all "lightweight" projects.  So in between those activities we will be building a case for doing projects and how doing projects help us to get at the math process standards (similar to CCSS mathematical practices).

Then, I'll share a dozen or so projects I found online.  The projects will be on 3 different pieces of paper - one, two, three!  So I'm going to ask table groups to read through just one page, discuss, determine possibilities, and share out.

The last minutes will be open for discussion.

I look forward to meeting folks in our district!

What projects do you use in your classroom?  Would you share with us?

#70Days Sharing presentations with colleagues

Next week our district will host 2 weeks of workshops.  Teachers in our district are not required to attend but even with that, there will be many folks there!  The workshops will vary from technology to curriculum to instruction.  I am relatively new to this district but in the past I had done some presentations.  I decided to share what I've been learning for the past two years and my proposals were accepted.  Unfortunately the workshop on the MTBoS did not make (didn't have at least 10 participants sign up).  I would have still offered it but the powers that be did not offer that choice.  I still get to do two other presentations - and hopefully I can spread the word about the amazing group of math teachers online.

Here is the MTBoS presentation ... if you have a chance to share it with others, let me know:



My presentation on "warm-ups" comes directly from all the great work among the MTBoS teachers.

 

My last presentation - on projects in math class is not quite finished yet ... but I'm sharing it anyway ... let me know if you have ideas to add!  I'm looking for projects that are teacher tested!



I'll report back in a week or two about the outcomes of our workshops!

Twitter me this: how do you get anything done?

Applying a little math pedagogy ...

I notice ...

• Streams of tweets flow daily, no hourly!
• Some folks in MTBoS tweet a LOT!
• Tweets range from cute/funny comments to serious professional development.
• Tweets remind me of phone conversations (you know - when we used to call folks to talk about our work!)
• I get excited when someone responds, favorites or retweets my tweets!
• I often want to check my Tweet Deck during the school day!  Yikes!
• I am easily overwhelmed with so much data especially on the #chat night!
• I find it difficult to make my thoughts fit in 140 characters!

I wonder ... 

• How folks have so much time for tweeting?
• How teachers have time for family, hobbies, LIFE, while tweeting, blogging math all of the time?

I can feel it ... tweeting is addictive!  I want to participate more but am holding back.  I'm holding back partly because I am new ... prefer to lurk before jumping in.  Need to test the waters.  I'm holding back because I love to write, love to communicate online, and I don't need to spend anymore time at those activities.  

Yes, I want to be the best math teacher I can be!!  

I want to read everything written about teaching math and absorb it all and redo all my lesson plans!

I also want to put the technology away, read a good book, take a walk, enjoy the sights and sounds ... without wondering how I could apply it to a math lesson!

If you’re new to Twitter, what is something that has surprised you about it?  How compelling, how in the moment, how perfect it is for teachers who share passion for teaching, for math, to communicate - in real time, just in time ... 

Guess I'll keep at it a while longer ...

Vocabulary Mix UP

As a member of ASCD, I receive six books during the year.  This year, I tossed them on the shelf - there was no time to read them.  But now that summer is settling in, I decided I should check out these books and see what gems are hiding between the covers.

The first book I chose to thumb through is Overcoming Textbook Fatigue by Lent.   Since we don't use textbooks much at all at school, I chose this book first thinking I could dispose of it quickly.  Not so!  I skimmed the first several pages and discovered excellent strategies that I could put to use in the fall!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I want to do better with teaching our math vocabulary.  In Lent's book, she has a chapter dedicated to teaching vocabulary.  One idea that jumped out in my quick reading she labels as Vocabulary Mix Up.  She suggests placing vocabulary words on table tents - one word per tent.  Set up student groups, use roles even ... reader, illustrator, leader, and reporter.  Provide resources ... a textbook, other books, chart paper, markers.  Have each group draw, define, and explain their assigned term using the available resources.  When completed, ask each group to report out and hang up their work to create an illustrated word wall.

Since I teach several classes with the same content, I might hang all of the posters and ask classes to determine which posters get to represent the words for that unit.

I can see doing this activity as part of a warm-up sequence in an introductory lesson for a unit.

To build on this vocabulary idea, I could also begin using Question Cards 2 - 3 times during the unit.  Students simply write one of the assigned words on an index card.  On the back they respond to a prompt that I provide.  The author gives this example for the word, variable:  If you were a variable in math, what would your role be?

Other questions I might ask ...

• When can a variable represent more than one value?
• What is an example of the word, variable, in literature and how does that meaning help you understand math?
• How are the words variable and solution related?

How do you teach math vocabulary?

Symbaloo ... woohoo!

I had the opportunity to attend professional development training on the new platform our district is using for teacher websites.  We used TeacherWeb last year; this year we will use SharpSchool.  The training was fine, and I have a head start on creating my website for the coming year.

But more importantly, the instructor shared a website called Symbaloo with us!  Oh my!  It is a way to organize favorite websites for a topic using visual buttons.  So I played with it ... organizing online interactive games, textbook videos, and more around our introductory unit on functions.  I know it still needs work making the buttons prettier ... but it sure is useful already!  I think my students will appreciate the ease at which they can choose online activities!





How do you organize approved websites for students?

bombarded with innovations?

Reading Chapter 2 tonight, "The Case for Formative Assessment," in Wiliam's book, Embedded Formative Assessment.

Wiliam makes many statements that make so much sense.  This one caught my eye tonight.

 "Because teachers are bombarded with innovations, none of these innovations has time to take root, so nothing really changes.  And worse, not only is there little or no real improvement in what happens in classrooms, but teachers get justifiably cynical about the constant barrage of innovations to which they are subjected."

Does this happen in your district?  Is something new introduced every year?  How many different "innovations" have been pushed each year where you work?

This year may have been the first year in a while in which I experienced only 2 expectations for professional development ... and no new ones next year.  Our school's focus is on formative assessment and embedding technology well.  Last year, next year ... that's it!

I'm thankful for that ... because I want to develop my skill in using formative assessment effectively!