A Tale of Two Years

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” Thanks to Charles Dickens for igniting my thought process.

This is year two for me teaching 8^thgrade math using Illustrative Mathematics’ curriculum published and distributed by Open Up Resources 6-8 Math. Year two is everything I had hoped it would be. I marked my Unit 3 assessments Wednesday and was pretty pleased with the understandings my learners demonstrated. I tallied the individual scores just to get a macro feeling of how the classes were doing this year on the Unit 3 formal assessment. I felt pretty good about student work, but mildly disappointed in myself. As I was marking, I wish I had some student copies from last year’s assessment to compare similarly situated learners’ progressions. (Year one people—make and save a couple student copies to look at next year for each assessment. I thought I was going to remember, but I didn’t.) I did find my teacher copy with the tally marks of last years’ results. Drum roll please…the scores are better. And more students are able to put their understandings on display on the assessment. And, dig this, I am a month ahead of last years’ pace. And the results are significant. [Timeline correction…Last year, I started Unit 4 on February 2^nd. February 2^nd!!!! This year, I started Unit 4 December 7^th. That’s almost 2 months ahead and we have already had 7 or 8 days out of school due to weather issues. And my learners understand more and perform better.] This is all because it is year two. My class sizes are a bit larger than last year, but the mix of historical performance measures (skills, abilities, levels—all horrible words to describe children’s current placement) is about the same. This year-two teaching experience with this curriculum is a wonderful feeling. I attribute improvements to the following changes, in no particular order.

• Focusing on not over-teaching is a giant change affecting pace issues of the past. This revelation came during summer PD sessions with the good people of Illustrative Mathematics fame.
• I am also better at formative assessment on the spot so I am not waiting until I can look at a stack of cool-downs to know if students got the intended learning or not. I have better interventions, earlier.
• This year I made a commitment to move along regardless of stragglers. If I have learned one thing comparing last year to this year it is that you are going to have stragglers no matter how slow and thoroughly you go. Slowing down only harms the learners who are ready to move. It’s like walking in a line with a class of students. No matter how slowly you walk, the end of the line gets further and further from the front. Continually stopping so they can catch up is necessary, but holds everyone back. I need to work at incentivizing the back of the line, aka the stragglers, so they want to keep up and be part of the learning group.
• This year I am using the practice problems whenever I can. This may be as filler at the end of class or as a pre-class activity to review the prior day’s concepts. I also assign targeted practice problems as Unit reviews before a Unit test. I’ve also put in a Quizizz activity once in a while. I’m going to give the Kahn Academy practice problems a shot next. That retrieval/practice routine must be played out regularly.
• The launch for each activity is better year 2 because I know where I am going. I know what the focus of the activity truly is and I know where the stumbling blocks are. I am not removing the productive struggle, but I am better with my instructions and communication to learners of the expected outcomes.
• Both activity and lesson syntheses are better than last year in that they exist, usually. They are focused and tight. They tie to the lesson summary or they come with a note or a highlight on the activity page in the workbook to seal the deal. I am still working to improve all of this and it’s not nearly as good and tight as it reads here.
• The professional development, I am receiving on the unit materials and elements, is better this year since I can actually attend the sessions. Last year they were not held at a time when I could make it without missing one class of each of my two courses during the day, plus I was sooooo far behind I was afraid to be gone.
• This year I have the support of my nationwide PLC. I am also supporting other users of the curriculum so I get better and think more carefully as I respond to inquiries and participate in twitter chats. I also feel a sense of accountability to my nationwide PLC and this makes me prepare and research at a much higher level than I otherwise would.
• I spend more quality time reflecting as I prepare Guru Zoom chats and draft the weekly #OpenUpMath Twitter chat questions. Nothing sharpens skills like leadership.
• Taking some of the preparation off of me and putting it on students, by having student workbooks, is a positive change for which I am grateful. I am not certain learners took the copied version of the activities last year as serious as they do the official workbooks this year. I am also able to invest in better preparation because I am not making copies of the materials. Workbooks also save valuable class time not having to pass out papers.

Just look at the understanding that is demonstrated here. This learner is testing algebraically as well as graphically to determine if the ordered pairs are indeed solutions to the given equation. And look! Going beyond what was given, she tests a point not provided (4, 3) that works in the equation to see that it is on the line. I cried–in the best possible way.

Not everything is rosy, however. Horizontal and vertical lines as well at the shifting of proportional lines (y=kx from 7^thgrade) was horrible last year and no better this year for the most part. Why??? I know I did a better, more explicit job connecting points and coordinates and lines. I did better, but the students weren’t doing enough. I need to beef that up and I am going to go back through those lessons again and see what it is I am NOT doing. The lessons are good in the moment, but they are not sticking with learners. I have got to make them stick. There needs to be struggling retrieval and spaced practice. All those sticky things must happen more and better than I have been doing. I will also check with my Tweople and see what their experiences and remedies are This is one area that did not improve from last year, yet.

I am going to continue to tweak and ponder, reflect and revise. I pledge that to my self and to my PLC.

Gearing Up for Open Up Resources 6-8 Math Year 2

A couple weeks ago I quickly responded to Leeanne Branham’s question about what makes good teacher PD.

Had I given more thought to Leeanne’s question I would have added PD must have a common thread running through it, an over-arching theme, aka a number 1 takeaway you almost don’t realize is there until near the end of the session.

As I was reflecting on Year2, Day2 of Open Up Resources 6-8 Math PD with Kevin Liner of Open Up Resources 6-8 Math and Illustrative Mathematics Curriculum fame, it occurred to me that Monday and Tuesday’s PD hit every mark. (Aug 13-14) The number one takeaway, over-arching theme, common thread was simply this: in order to be effective and efficient, don’t over teach the lesson. Do not go beyond the Learning Goals set out in the lesson. Over-teaching, getting off on tangents and celebrating spoilers rather than quietly acknowledging and telling smarty pants students (I mean that in the best possible way) to keep it to themselves for now are the main reasons we get behind during lessons. Teachers are the problem. I am the problem. I need discipline and self-control and first of all self-awareness. Now, to get down to the nitty-gritty of how this unfolded throughout training—not exactly in order.

We talked about what it really means to reflect on our teaching and, in particular, a lesson we have taught. The take-away here was that we as educators must reflect on our planning processes and not just what went well or poorly during a particular lesson. In this refection of our planning process we must not only look at the short term planning of the lesson, but also the long-term planning, both forward and back. Reflect forward. Whoa! Failing to do this risks understanding the learning progressions that are so carefully written into the curriculum. In edu-speak, this is coherence. It matters what comes before as much as what comes after. Sequence matters. The big reveal is not going to be in the first lesson of a unit. Ever. Teaching for conceptual understanding necessitates learners progressing through the concepts and building understanding that each individual personally owns. Seeing far into the future in the planning stage will help us as educators honor the conceptual learning progression. We are learning to teach differently so our students can learn differently. We keep hearing, “trust the curriculum” and this deep dive and reflection into long term planning reveals why the curriculum can be trusted. It’s all there.

We were reminded once again of the Five Practices, and looked at them from the perspective of planning.

•  Anticipating students’ solutions to a mathematics task
• Monitoring students’ in-class, “real-time” work on the task
• Selecting approaches and students to share them
• Sequencing students’ presentations purposefully
• Connecting students’ approaches and the underlying mathematics

NCTM , 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions

Kevin said these practices are the ingredients that create magical conversations among learners. For our training session, we focused on anticipatingand sequencing. When planning anticipating and sequencing it is always better to do that with our peers rather than in isolation on a Sunday afternoon. To that end, establishing group norms for PLCs at our schools is necessary. Day 2, we spent quality time broken into our school groups discussing, developing and revising PLC norms. This is where we got something tangible to take back to our schools to put into motion. Having a group protocol is the difference between a productive PLC and a non-productive PLC. Highlights of the group norms for planning developed by the wonderful teachers at Northwest Guilford Middle School in Greensboro NC follow. Please know, this is NOT a final, polished, static list, but rather a summary of the norms we discussed as a group. They will change as we change as educators.

• Doing Math Together (like actually work problems)
  • Respect think time
  • Do not interrupt others
  • Be “all in”
  • Drop your pencil and listen
  • This is not a race
  • Pick a topic with a longer term focus so the PLC can go deeper with exploration and problem solving

• Sharing Our Understandings
  • Focus on teaching goals as they relate to learning goals, meaning goals for my actions as a teacher, for the future
  • Use a timer to move things along
  • Listen more than you speak (a rather BIG deal)
  • Be fully present

• Discussing Students and Their Understandings
  • Strive for more than antidotal evidence
  • Speak of learner understandings and common errors
  • Focus on the product, i.e., what students are producing as evidence of their understandings
  • Confidentiality is critical

• Connecting and Reflecting on Our Own Practice
  • Just as assessment informs instruction, so must past experiences inform planning and teacher-moves
  • Help is on the other side of vulnerability. Open up and be vulnerable in your PLC as you plan and reflect and get feedback
  • Leave with a plan of action for the future
  • As peers, we must hold one another accountable

With norms also comes the issue of what to do with breakers of the norms. Some suggestions were a yellow card or a light bell ring. A taskmaster, timer, rule enforcer, norm police position needs to be assigned on a rotating basis. Not it! Please don’t pick me!

So what is missing from here from the past? Notably, negativity, comments about what students can’t or won’t do and war stories. As teachers, we must have an outlet for frustrations, but such actions can run the productive PLC train off the rails. Take these frustrations to the gym or to the track or the bar. Work them out and get over them, but please don’t derail your PLC.

We spent a good deal of time learning about how to use Cool-downs more effectively. I thought I did Cool-downs great last year. I did them everyday. I reviewed them at the beginning of the next class. I thought I nailed it. I was wrong. Other teachers at the training stated they periodically used the Cool-downs as homework or just used them when and if they had time. Cool-downs were rushed through and never truly sorted and analyzed by teachers. We went through a lot of motions last year, but none of those motions were great. Kevin helped us see a productive, more intentional way to use Cool-downs.

The biggest shocker was that we do not have to use Cool-downs each and every lesson. As we plan, we decide if we are going to use the Cool-down and budget the time for it. Maybe even do two in one day. When we do Cool-downs, we will look at them with a focus on student understandings, not merely, did the kid get it or not. A student can get a correct answer and still not truly know what they are doing just as a student can get an incorrect answer and make a computational error while the conceptual understanding is solid. What is understood is quite different from what we see in a mere answer. You want kids to show their work? You better really LOOK at their work. The information gleaned from the Cool-downs will then be used to actually plan subsequent teacher-moves.

So here is this great concept of teacher-moves. Not teacher reactions. Not teacher assumptions. Not teacher experience. Not teacher instincts. Actual planned out teacher moves designed specifically to intentionally address student understandings. These get noted on the daily clipboard roster so they are addressed and not forgotten by the frazzled teacher.

Another shocker—not every lesson/activity is a five-practices activity. Wait. What? I still don’t quite have my arms around this one. Note to self: pay more attention during PD. More on this when I figure out why I’m confused here. Truth.

How to differentiate daily and live through it has never truly been taught to teachers in a way that is actually possible to successfully pull off. Asking administration for help and advice on differentiation will keep them out of your room because they don’t know how to do it either. (This is obviously, just one snarky gal’s opinion.) What we can do in our teaching, however, is make small tweaks that get the actual support to the learners in need. Planning multiple lessons at multiple levels to be monitored and evaluated and assessed all at the same time day in and day out by one teacher in a class of 35 students is pure folly. Small tweaks. We can do that.

We spent time looking at multiple representations of mathematical concepts and limitations of each. The point is, buildings of conceptual understandings have varying entry points that may expire when the situations get more complicated. This necessitates higher-level thinking and abstraction. We start with accessibility by honoring coherence in concepts layered throughout progressive courses. Colloquially, the punch line may be the algorithm, but you must lead up to it—lay foundation on which to build. For the record, my English teacher, bestest buddy, has told me on many occasions that my analogies, while useful at times, take a bit to get used to. My apologies, but I must be me.

Now, how to plan a lesson as a PLC:

•             Do cool-downs together for upcoming lessons
•             Read learning goals and learning targets
•             As you go through the steps above: Do, Share, Discuss, Connect
•             Read the synthesizes–ALL of them
•             Read each activity and complete and then Do, Share, Discuss, Connect

The focus must be on WHAT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING!!! for each lesson.

Every piece of feedback to a member of the PLC has an action associated with it:

•             I like the way you did…I’m going to do that too!
•             Oh, I didn’t see that part. Can you re-explain that form to me?

Teachers are to a PLC as students are to a classroom. Self-discipline and focus as individuals are essential. Just as we want our students focused on the learnings of the day, so too must be focused on the learnings of the PLC. Teacher-management is like classroom management for PLCs. It is essential for successful group planning.

I have been working on this post for two weeks off and on—mostly off. I apologize if it seems disjointed, but I wanted to share and may not have polished like I should. I’m sorry.

So fearing that TLDR has set in for most readers, (I would have bailed long ago) if you made it this far, you have earned a merit badge. Enjoy.

 

 

 

GOALS #SundayFunday Post

GOALS #SundayFunday

GOAL 1) I really wish I had blogged more and slept less last school year. I need to change that this year. My goal is to blog at least once a month.

GOAL 2) I will to become a better planner. I have my daily class structure ready. Once the dadgum pacing guides come out I will see how they stack up with what I have planned. It’s just two preps and I’ve taught both classes before, but this year is going to be very different in the most awesomest kinds of ways. I’m getting super excited. I am doing a self-study along with my language arts partner and that has already helped me plan and organize.

GOAL 3) I am going to do everything I can NOT to waist time at school as well as at home. Time wasters to keep my eye on are: doing jobs students can do, redoing things that don’t meet my standards but are certainly adequate, going down rabbit holes looking for lessons and tasks, starring into the refrigerator and pantry with no plan.

GOAL 4) I want higher quality resources and I want to come by them more efficiently. I’ve already gotten into some of this with my wade into Exeter. I need to get through their maths 1 & 2 materials since my smarty-pants Math 2 classes are a blend of some of both. I’m going to take my Math 8 kiddos into the Exeter world some as well by way of some of their math 1 problems. They can do it.

GOAL 5) I am going to enjoy time with my husband and myself daily. We will deliberately relax, exercise, talk or just sit there silently doing for at least fifteen minutes each day.

So that’s quite enough. Have a great week party people!

Vulnerability = ZPD for teachers

TMC17 Summary and Reflection

I was surrounded by greatness and for that I am grateful. I didn’t show up at TMC17 with my A game, but I improved as the week progressed. Why is that?

Attitude—After leaving Greensboro late because of a doctor appointment that came with unexpected news topped off with car trouble, I got to Atlanta three and a half hours later than expected. It all worked out rather well as I ran into some very nice MTBoSers in the hall and they invited a first timer and me to join them for dinner. Great restaurant. Great company. Thanks Steve Weimar, Megan Schmidt and Benjamin Walker.

Comfort level—I left TMC16 thinking I would not bother to come to another TMC. I got into writing proposals to present back in January and they were accepted and so I came. I attended the Desmos pre-con this year so that was nice. I read comments that non-amateurs were not very open to new folks at that point of the camp and that is unfortunate. I will say, though, that TMC non-amateurs were super great at speed dating the next day. Perhaps it’s because they were held hostage by a downpour, but regardless, they were there. They were participating and they were welcoming and I think they actually enjoyed meeting new people. That was a real turning point for TMC17. Somebody really needs to schedule rain for TMC18. I wonder who is in charge of that.

This year’s TMC was my 2^nd so I had a point of reference. Last year I over-PDed, if that’s possible. This year, I came hungry. I enjoy My Favorites and the Keynote speakers blew me away. If you haven’t done so, please check out their presentations here. I chose good short sessions this year. Then I hit the mother load when I made the right choice for my three-day session. I was excited to meet and learn from the well respected @cheesemonkeySF. Boy, did she deliver. See separate post.

Along with friends, I presented so I also came to TMC17 vulnerable. Little did I know that vulnerability was the theme of TMC17. Last summer’s marching orders were “be intentional”. This year I heard loud and clear to be vulnerable. Take risks. I see vulnerability as a teacher’s Zone of Proximal Development. Learning and progress happen for teachers when they open up and take chances and then reflect and refine.

Have a great, vulnerable school year party people!! May you learn and grow exponentially.

RANT

So, it’s that time of year again. That time when I get so fed up while searching for lesson and activity ideas and clicking on links to should-be swell articles only to have them lead me to the dreaded Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) site with all its evil.

I hate TPT more than just about anything related to education. I hate it more than testing. I hate it more than late work. I hate it more than interactive notebooks which almost killed me a couple years ago. I hate it more than cotton candy—well maybe the same as cotton-candy because that is what it is.

TPT is sweet and fluffy and full of nothing of real substance when things heat up. It’s good for the seller and the sales platform but does nothing for the consumer in the long run. It’s a quick fix.

Here’s my short list of rants on TPT:

• Teachers pay the host (TPT) to which the second teachers post stuff and that posting teacher gets pennies.
• Teachers show up at NCCTM and other places of professional development as speakers and actually do their TPT commercials there. They try to turn other teachers onto the site. I walk out of those sessions. This boils my blood. NCTM is about educators supporting and inspiring one another all to advance student learning. It can all be tied directly to student learning. Not to some price-point.
• I don’t even search Pintrest for educational resources because Pintrest keeps taking me to TPT stuff. Just stop it.
• The products I have seen from TPT that other teachers innocently share with me lack depth. They lack rigor. They lack my touch. My ownership. My love. They aren’t me. They are someone else. They are not for my kids and I can resist them easily, just like cotton-candy.
• Teachers I’ve asked, buy entire units and whole year curriculums from TPT “because it’s so much easier.” Easy does not equate to good. Easy does not mean it meets the rigor expectations of the district or state or even the school or the teacher. Yes, the purchasing teacher didn’t have to work. That is the worst feature of all.

This applies to teachers too!!!

• Shouldn’t the school, district or state have something to say about an entire sequence of curriculum that is being used on a set of kids? Or shouldn’t they at least be aware of what the teacher is using? Educators use the standards and find supporting learning activities and strategies. Educators work to do what is right for the kids they teach rather than fitting their kids’ learning to someone else’s fluff materials.
• If the TPT products are that good, shouldn’t the school system pay for the resources rather than the teachers?
• From what I see from TPT materials, the teachers creating these materials and selling them are playing school rather than teaching school aka helping students learn. It’s all-pretty, but that’s it. Full disclosure: I have not done enough investigating to make this bold statement as fact, but this is my blog and I’ll do it if I want to.
• In the professional learning communities to which I belong, teachers support teachers. Teachers help one anther become better educators. Teachers take one another’s’ lessons and activities and use them and improve them and share back the improvements. They do this willingly and enthusiastically and it’s received that way. Educators feel the love and effort others put into their materials.
• TPT does not share experiences. My professional learning communities do. They do this in person, on twitter and in blog posts. And it’s priceless. I love you tweeps and bloggers and flesh and blood colleagues too.

Thank you to my professional learning communities for helping make me a better educator for my students. Thank you for doing all the right things for all the right reasons.

Thanking my teachers–long over-due

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, I want to give a shout out to the following people from my past. I credit my core as a teacher to them.

Mr. Wolfram was my math teacher all through high school. You read that correctly. I had the same math teacher for four years. Fortunately, he was amazing. He was so amazing that all of my kids from the past seven years (since I’ve been teaching high school courses to middle schoolers) know the name of my high school math teacher from 36 years ago. From Mr. Wolfram I learned that you earn As and get Bs. Even though you place for a cash prize in a state geometry test, that was not good enough to get put on his Math Hall of Fame wall. That was all good to know before college. I wasn’t quite the big fish I thought I was. Math was fun. Math was cool. Math was worth the effort.

Paul Humke—Humke was a visiting professor at St. Olaf my first semester of college, Fall 1980. He was a great teacher. I got a B, which was generous, but he was the first teacher I ever really talked to. He knew I was having a tough time—so lonely; so poor at a rich-man’s school; so just not a good fit. He told me to quit studying during Chapel time and actually go to Chapel. What a concept! He was also the one to tell me that I could actually major in math. He was a difference maker. He also wore sandals and socks—in the dead of winter in Minnesota. So cool.

Dr. Pilgrim was my adviser when I transferred to Luther. He never got over the fact that he misspelled—dang, some word that stared with an i—all throughout his dissertation. (I actually know that he is still living in Decorah, IA (Luther) as does my aunt. She goes to his nursing home and tells him that I’m finally teaching and other bragging points that my mother feeds her sister.) Dr. Pilgrim set up a tutoring opportunity my junior year with a high school geometry student. (I think it was the daughter of his dentist.) I had no idea what I was doing, but I got paid for three hours each Saturday morning. I spent way too much time getting ready for Heidi (my student) and loved every minute. But I was a math-econ major and had no sights on teaching. You could only get el-ed at Luther so I never even considered teaching. But Dr. Pilgrim knew—even though it took 25+ years for me to figure it out.

Dr. Triton was my senior paper advisor at Luther. He was the one professor that scared the daylights out of me. My mother somehow convinced me that he needed to be my senior paper advisor. Seriously mom? It was good though. He only looked scary. Great guy. Gentle giant. That experience taught me to be not afraid of those who first appear scary. That was not the point of my paper, but it was the take-away. (1984)

Fast forward to 2006…Alex K. This was a high school kid that was the bother of one of my daughter’s friends. He needed help with his algebra 2. It was a win-win. I helped him and he helped me figure out what I was really supposed to be doing. I. Loved. It. Done—I enrolled at UNCG and got my masters in middle grades math. Why middle grades? I fall in love with my son and his friends when they were in middle school. So cool—weird but cool emerging individuals.

And my mom. Dr. Baumgardner. My biggest fan. Ever and always. She never pushed me into anything and always fully supported me in everything I have ever done. It’s not until I am much older that I realize how special that really is. Uh Oh—I’m feeling a mother’s day post coming on. Don’t fret. I probably won’t. I’d cry so much I’d dehydrate.

Thank you teachers. That’s not enough, but that’s all I got. Virtual love, hugs, kisses and sincere public appreciation to you all.

BTW, this post was inspired by Meg Craig—thank you Meg @mathymeg07.