Week 4: My Student are Good at "School"

This week's assignment was a fun one.  You know when you are planning to be observed by your administrator, you try to pull out all the bells and whistles and show how awesome you are? I thought about going into this week doing the same thing, but decided against it.  Here's day two of a "regular" lesson during first period after a snowy start to the day.  Needless to say, the kids were amped.

The topic of the week is data analysis and scatterplots.  We started the day before doing Yummy Math's Opening Weekend activity and plotted the points for all of the movies.  Great conversations about noticing and plotting points when given this table:

Some highlites included: there are 18 movies, that's a lot of money(!), there is no total gross for Star Wars, and the movies range from 2006 to 2015.  Some fun facts: more than half of the class has not seen the new or any Star Wars movies (gasp!) and one student had the most of seeing 16 of the above movies.  When told to plot the points, the kids had lots of questions about how to plot such large numbers.  They were concerned with being precise which resulted into rounding and estimation.  Here's what our graph looked like:


We talked about how there's a positive and linear association.  This then lead into drawing line of best fit.  I asked the class what it looks like and a student responded that it's a line on the graph.  I replied, "Oh, like this?"

Student: "No! It needs to be in the middle of the dots with some above and some below.  It has to go up!"
Me: "Right. Go ahead, everyone, and do that. Draw your line of best fit"

As I walked around the room checking in with the students, too many of them had what I drew on the board!! This goes back to the idea of last week's post on learned helplessless. No matter what I do with turning and talking, noticing and wondering, etc. it's very difficult to keep all students engaged.  Those that wake up from day dreaming see something on the board and think they need to copy it ad nauseam.  They all didn't know why the drew it on their sheet when I talked with them.  It's very frustrating when you think everything is going well and all kids are engaged and then you see this on their sheet.  We reconvened as a group and made sure no one had what I drew on the board and continued on our way. 

The kids did great as we made numerous conjectures and, I think, by the end all got something out of the activity. 

My favorite part was closing and seeing if our prediction on Star Wars lifetime gross was getting close.  Here's what we found:


This is the excitement that you love to see.  The students went nuts to see how high it is already.  We graphed it to see what it looks like:

"That's an outlier!" they shouted.  It led to more discussion on what to do with outliers and how they should be treated.  Some were mad that they didn't get the "correct" answer.  That made me happy because it kicked in how math should be treated and the answers aren't always what they're supposed to be.  It's all about the process and thinking like a mathematician.  I look forward to doing more activities where we can work on the process and not focus on being correct or copying everything that is written on the board!

Better Questions: Can You Help Me?

There were many prompts to get this week's task going, and this one has hit me hard recently, and not just in math class: "Mr. Hulitt, can you help me?" Simple, right?  Let's resume the convo:

Sure, what do you need?
I don't know what to do
What don't you know what to do?
Number 7
Ok, what don't you know about number 7?
I don't know what to do

Many of our students want the easy way out.  They have been programmed since school age to be robotic answer-finders.  Give them a formula, tell them what numbers to use, plug it into a calculator, and bam(!), there's your answer.

The idea of learned helpless is plaguing our classrooms.  Without the need to rehash posts from this, this and this, I will add that the Math Practice Standards aim to curtail learned helplessness and promote better thinking in class.  Specifically MP1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.  I've found that low entry high ceiling tasks do this exactly.  That's the beauty of Estimation180, Visual Patterns, and Which One Doesn't Belong.  Also, Jo Boaler and NRich have more examples that expand this concept.

Have you used anything in particular?  How did it go? Please share!

My Favorite

Imagine if Pear Deck, Nearpod, and Socrative had a mobile whiteboard,  ipad mirroring and remote access to your computer.  Sounds too good to be true, except it is!  Meet Annotate.  I have been using it the past year and could not live without it.  Let them explain what it does:



I find the mobile whiteboard, ipad mirroring and remote access to be game changers for the classroom.  With the mobile whiteboard, I am no longer tied to the front of the room writing whatever is projected.  Ipad mirroring is great to display apps or show the students how to do something with their ipads.  And remote access to my computer allows me to control my computer from my ipad.

Let me explain how I use this.  If I'm projecting a pdf, I'll import it to my account via their web-based software, then I need to open a program on my computer.  This will link my ipad to my computer.  From my ipad, I open the imported pdf and tap Project and it will show on my projector

web-based program

computer software

iPad view

  

Projected view

Annotate is great for mirroring my iPad.  Again, I need to open the computer software and make sure my PC and ipad are on the same network.  Then I swipe to the control panel on my ipad and tap Airplay.  Tap my name and it's as easy as that.  Here's the iPad and projected view:

iPad

Projected view

Lastly, I normally use Annotate as remote access to my computer to draw on my Keynote slides.  I prefer to use Keynote as their animations, notes and next slide view are key parts of my presentation.  If I upload the pdf's and project them, it looses what is integral for me.  Here's what I see from my iPad as Annotate is in Remote:

Their customer service is top notch as I had a recommendation to add a Secondary display to preview.  They quickly added it in and now I can easily tap between display views so I can see my notes for the slide and what is coming up next.

Here's an example of drawing on my slide from my ipad as I walked around the room and what the students see projected.

Annotate does much more than I have described.  I'm still trying to work in how I can use the other features as it's difficult since we're not a 1:1 school.  

Without a doubt, Annotate is easily My Favorite!  Let me know how it goes when you give it a try.

Week 1: One Good Thing: "What? Do you think I'm a math person?!"

During our warm up the other day, the students were presented with this:


While I was observing the students working, I asked one about 4x=32.  He told me the correct answer and I then asked how he got that.

Well, I know that four times eight is 48.
Makes sense.  What if you had something that looks like 4x=44?
11
Why?
Four times 11 is 44
Ok, how about 4x=72?
<Working on the calculator> 18!
How do you know?
Four times 18 is 72
Ok, how about 4x=244?
What?!  Do you think I'm some sort of math person!?

Yes! He had the headache and wanted aspirin!  We then talked about how he solved the addition and subtraction problems above.  He said that he did the opposite of whatever the problem was asking.  I asked him what's the opposite of multiplication and he told it was dividing.   He used his calculator and did four divided by 244.  He thankfully realized that .016 is incorrect, so he did it the other way around and got 61.  We did another problem to see if it worked again and it did.  He felt very satisfied and proud of his work.  The lightbulb turned on and he finally understands one-step equations.

Welcome to the Math Person Club!

Twitter as Professional Development

In filling out the awesome PA state teacher application on pareap.net, I had to change my essay since it was out of date. I chose to write about how I use Twitter as a form of professional development. Hopefully my choice isn't too avant-garde for some schools. Will it get me hired for thinking outside of the box? Stay tuned!

ps- feel free to provide any feedback

The Importance of Continuing Professional Development and how I Plan to Incorporate it Throughout My Career

Teachers are life-long learners who want to educate and create a whole new generation of life-long learners. In order to do this, we need to stay on top of the current trends in education and how to incorporate these ideas in the classroom. Luckily, I have found the greatest resource in continuing my professional development.

Social networks and web 2.0 are very popular today. Everyone is familiar with Facebook and now the new talk is about Twitter. Some people have never even heard about it, and if they have, don’t understand it, or know how it works. Twitter is basically like Facebook, but with “status updates” that are limited to 140 characters. However, the difference, I believe, is that Twitter is more of a conversation, compared to posting about what you are doing. There is also a special “language” of acronyms, @ signs and hash tags that are used in most posts.

Understanding Twitter has lead me to a wealth of information that I could not have possibly learned anywhere else. Through this I have created a Personal Learning Network (PLN) of hundreds of professional educators. They range in all different specialities such as teachers, administrators, librarians, service providers, etc. from all over the world.

Everyone has all been to stale in-services where a presenter is trying to sell their latest product or boring staff meetings where few participate, and if they do, it’s to complain. Some examples of what I converse with my PLN on Twitter, are positive conversations about how we can do our jobs better, help with trouble in the classroom, our sharing websites about the latest news in the world of education.

Also, each week there are different chat sessions that exist on Twitter which cater to all fields of education. A topic is presented and people from all of the world offer their views and pro-active strategies to accomplish a common goal: how to better serve our students. I have participated in chats for special education, general education, new teachers, and English teachers to name a few.

This new style of professional development is more beneficial for me than staff meetings or in-services. First is because it is geared towards my interests and motivating for me. Second is the convenience. I set aside about 30-60 minutes each day to check Twitter. This can be done in the morning before work, when I get home, or even laying in bed. I see no end in this new type of learning and look forward to see how it progresses and grows. My PLN and Twitter will unquestionably make me a better teacher and life-long learner. Now, if only I was able to earn Act 48 credits!

My New Title

While on Christmas break, I got hooked on many marathon viewings of Locked Up on MSNBC. It's an excellent show that documents prison life. One night they were profiling a juvenile detention center called Lake County Juvenile Complex in Indiana.

There was one story that focused on an inmate/teenager/student who was back in court after being arrested on drug possession charges. It was his second time in the center for various illegal activities. This time though, he was making progress with his life; he removed his gang tattoos, went back to school and was passing to become an electrician, making tremendous progress in his weekly therapy sessions for anger management, and also had a second child on the way and promised to be a better father.

During the court session, the prosecutor kept bringing up the negative issues associated with this inmate/teenager/student, while the defendant was pleading his case in all the positive contributions he has been making. The court ruled that he was making progress with his life and he needs that to continue and therefore didn't need to have a longer stay at the detention center. After the ruling, the inmate/teenager/student erupted in tears of joy.

I like to think of myself as not only a teacher, but a tutor, counselor, advocate, parent and friend. Now I can add defendant to that list. Without the defendant pleading for this inmate/teenager/student, there is no way he would be free. I think some teachers are always pointing out the negative such as not showing up to class, not doing homework, etc. We need more defendants pointing out the positives in our students' lives. It's the only way some of them have a chance to succeed.

I run a school-wide positive behavior support plan and you'd be surprised the amount of teacher reluctance in participating in the program. There are many ways to support your students. A simple "Hello" and "How was your weekend?", if said sincerely, can welcome a student in your class and be that positive support they desire. Let's all be defendants and promote our students to be the best possible citizens they can be. We don't want to see them on the next episode of "Locked Up".
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Here is Rodrick: the student mentioned in this post

Merry Christmas! Or is it?

It's hard not to get in the holiday spirit; the presents, lights, family, food and of course the break from school.  Or is it hard to get in the holiday spirit?  Today I saw that first hand. 

I had a student in a grumpy mood.  Everyone is smiling and cheerful that today is the last day of school because of Christmas break.  My student wasn't.  After giving him some time to be with himself and get some sort of control with his emotions, I was able to talk to him to see what's up.  He told me, "everyone is in a good mood, but some of us have family problems." I find out that today is the second anniversary of his brother committing suicide.  Whoa!  How do I handle this?

This student isn't stable to begin with, but all he wanted to do was talk.  I didn't have the best information for him, but I was able to listen.  Sometimes that's all our students want.  They need someone to trust.  Someone they can talk to.  Someone they can confide in.  After our little chat, he wished me a Merry Christmas. 

Teaching isn't always about the x's and o's.  It's about building relationships.  In my opinion, that's the most important aspect of school.  Learning will occur, both easily and naturally, when that relationship is made.