I work in a small charter school, there are 36-8th graders that are split into 3 homerooms of 12 students. The 7/8 science teacher and I usually decide the 8th grade classes since we teach them as 7th graders. Usually we split them up based on personality and behavior. This year we are toying with the idea of ability grouping to an extent. Of our 36 kids, there is a bottom 12, these students consist of sped and ELL's along with a few who it just takes a little longer to "get it". We want to put these students together in a HR (HRs travel to every class together) and evenly distribute the rest between the other two homerooms, meaning no "high level" class. I have such conflicting thoughts on this based on the research showing how bad this is. However, I truly feel that we (8th grade teachers) would hold these students to the same expectations as the other two classes, its just the way we would deliver lessons and structure the classes that would be different. I feel that we would be giving this class the chance to think for themselves and show them how excellent they really can be!
I guess I am looking for feedback from others that have done this. Does it work, am I right to be hesitant?
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Minds On Math: Chapter 9 "Conferring"
Problem of the Day: How can you get to know your students individually as math learners, promote their confidence and growth?
This chapter discusses what teachers can do while students are busy during work time-meet with students. Two things really stick out about this chapter, one is the need to really organize and plan how you will confer with students and the second is teaching students how to confer with you and how to act when you are conferring with others!
Starting off with the plan of attack, according to the author, we should be doing three things: finding out exactly where the student is in the learning process, guiding the student towards the learning goal and making notes about the progress/meeting (p 145-146) I absolutely love the list of questions for each stage provided on page 147. This would be a good thing to laminate and attach to my clipboard as I go around to students.
Next, this process is a routine that will need to be introduced and explained so that students don't feel like they are being put "under the spotlight" and so that other students learn to respect others' time. Students need to learn what the purpose of the meeting is and how it will help them. They need to buy into the fact that it will benefit them. They also need to learn that individual meetings must be respected. This will definitely be one of the procedures I will start the year off teaching.
Hoffer points out that it will take time to learn how to confer with students and at first you might only get to meet with 1 or 2 students per class. I am wondering if I can confer with groups at a time. I still haven't decided how I am going to group my students for work time yet, but I am thinking if I have a preset group, I can make record sheets for each group which might make it easier to meet with more students and record/reflect.
I really think meeting with students to discuss their learning is important. Students need to receive meaningful feedback and feedback other than grades. In the "How to Learn Math" course I am taking there is a big emphasis on learning from mistakes but most of my students have to learn that mistakes are good, this would be a great time to teach this to them.
This chapter discusses what teachers can do while students are busy during work time-meet with students. Two things really stick out about this chapter, one is the need to really organize and plan how you will confer with students and the second is teaching students how to confer with you and how to act when you are conferring with others!
Starting off with the plan of attack, according to the author, we should be doing three things: finding out exactly where the student is in the learning process, guiding the student towards the learning goal and making notes about the progress/meeting (p 145-146) I absolutely love the list of questions for each stage provided on page 147. This would be a good thing to laminate and attach to my clipboard as I go around to students.
Next, this process is a routine that will need to be introduced and explained so that students don't feel like they are being put "under the spotlight" and so that other students learn to respect others' time. Students need to learn what the purpose of the meeting is and how it will help them. They need to buy into the fact that it will benefit them. They also need to learn that individual meetings must be respected. This will definitely be one of the procedures I will start the year off teaching.
Hoffer points out that it will take time to learn how to confer with students and at first you might only get to meet with 1 or 2 students per class. I am wondering if I can confer with groups at a time. I still haven't decided how I am going to group my students for work time yet, but I am thinking if I have a preset group, I can make record sheets for each group which might make it easier to meet with more students and record/reflect.
I really think meeting with students to discuss their learning is important. Students need to receive meaningful feedback and feedback other than grades. In the "How to Learn Math" course I am taking there is a big emphasis on learning from mistakes but most of my students have to learn that mistakes are good, this would be a great time to teach this to them.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Mind on Math: Chapter 8 "Work Time"
Question of the Day: How can we facilitate thoughtful and productive work time for math learners?
And here we have what I think has got to be the most difficult and most important part of math workshop! Work time is where we schedule these challenging tasks and differentiate learning.
Grouping has always been an issue for me since I teach small classes. We seem to have anywhere from 5-6 very low students and then 10-11 on level with only about 1-2 truly above level. My lows sometimes get pulled out as an intervention with the RTI specialist, so I've tended to put them together in the past. When I mix them up with the others, they totally let the others do the work, even when I give them a task.
This year we are thinking about taking those very low 8th graders and putting them together in one homeroom (there are 3- 8th grade homerooms with 12 students and they stay together for all of their classes) and this is something I keep going back and forth with. I have read all of the bad things about ability tracking, but I really think that we will do a good job of NOT lowering expectations for these students, but actually push them to achieve more. So anyway where I am going with this is that if we do go ahead with it, I will have no problem doing random groups all the time, or groups based on their preassessments. Now the 7th grade is a different story, there are only 2 homerooms with 18 in each. Not sure how that is going to work.
I think getting the students to actually WORK during this time is going to take a lot of practice and going over the expectations. I am going to begin the year by describing my Norms of the class and having the students create strategies and rules and I am hoping that this will help. I keep having these delusions that if I just come up with tasks that are challenging and engaging enough, they will just get to it! But I'm sure it is going to take a lot more work on my part!
Which leads into what the teacher is doing during this time: I cannot wait to get into the conferring section. I know from the How to Learn Math course, that giving good feedback is really essential for learning and students thinking about their ability to learn. There is also gathering data which we are required to do in my school anyway. We use a circle chart. It is a spreadsheet with the students names listed in the left column and the concepts we are teaching along the top row. We leave the box empty if students don't have any understanding, one line of a plus sign if they are beginning to get it and then a full plus if they got it.
I am getting really excited about planning everything for this school year using the workshop model!
And here we have what I think has got to be the most difficult and most important part of math workshop! Work time is where we schedule these challenging tasks and differentiate learning.
Grouping has always been an issue for me since I teach small classes. We seem to have anywhere from 5-6 very low students and then 10-11 on level with only about 1-2 truly above level. My lows sometimes get pulled out as an intervention with the RTI specialist, so I've tended to put them together in the past. When I mix them up with the others, they totally let the others do the work, even when I give them a task.
This year we are thinking about taking those very low 8th graders and putting them together in one homeroom (there are 3- 8th grade homerooms with 12 students and they stay together for all of their classes) and this is something I keep going back and forth with. I have read all of the bad things about ability tracking, but I really think that we will do a good job of NOT lowering expectations for these students, but actually push them to achieve more. So anyway where I am going with this is that if we do go ahead with it, I will have no problem doing random groups all the time, or groups based on their preassessments. Now the 7th grade is a different story, there are only 2 homerooms with 18 in each. Not sure how that is going to work.
I think getting the students to actually WORK during this time is going to take a lot of practice and going over the expectations. I am going to begin the year by describing my Norms of the class and having the students create strategies and rules and I am hoping that this will help. I keep having these delusions that if I just come up with tasks that are challenging and engaging enough, they will just get to it! But I'm sure it is going to take a lot more work on my part!
Which leads into what the teacher is doing during this time: I cannot wait to get into the conferring section. I know from the How to Learn Math course, that giving good feedback is really essential for learning and students thinking about their ability to learn. There is also gathering data which we are required to do in my school anyway. We use a circle chart. It is a spreadsheet with the students names listed in the left column and the concepts we are teaching along the top row. We leave the box empty if students don't have any understanding, one line of a plus sign if they are beginning to get it and then a full plus if they got it.
I am getting really excited about planning everything for this school year using the workshop model!
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Minds on Math: Chapter 7 "Minilessons"
Problem of the Day: How do you set students up for success as independent thinkers and problem solvers?
This chapter has a lot to offer. The minilessons are our chance to teach students to think like mathematicians. The purpose or goal is not to teach algorithms or procedures but to model the thinking by doing things such as highlighting the use of background knowledge and teaching problem solving skills.
This is an idea that I will have to get used to since I am a relatively new teacher and have been coached in my approximately 3 years teaching to demonstrate the steps. My school is big on the "I do","We do", "You do" method. However I feel like that this method requires students to see every type of problem done in order to learn it. They are learning to follow steps instead of learning how to think mathematically. I am hoping that focusing on teaching the mathematical thinking will help them to learn how to apply the concepts, rather than just imitate the steps.
Oh and I have to share some GREAT videos from a school that uses the math workshop. It really is cool to see it in action! Check them out here: 6th Grade and 7th Grade
This chapter has a lot to offer. The minilessons are our chance to teach students to think like mathematicians. The purpose or goal is not to teach algorithms or procedures but to model the thinking by doing things such as highlighting the use of background knowledge and teaching problem solving skills.
This is an idea that I will have to get used to since I am a relatively new teacher and have been coached in my approximately 3 years teaching to demonstrate the steps. My school is big on the "I do","We do", "You do" method. However I feel like that this method requires students to see every type of problem done in order to learn it. They are learning to follow steps instead of learning how to think mathematically. I am hoping that focusing on teaching the mathematical thinking will help them to learn how to apply the concepts, rather than just imitate the steps.
Oh and I have to share some GREAT videos from a school that uses the math workshop. It really is cool to see it in action! Check them out here: 6th Grade and 7th Grade
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Minds on Math: Chapter 6 "Opening"
I call this chapter the beginning of "getting down to business" of a math workshop.
The problem of the day is: How do you start math class?
Seems to be pretty obvious that we need to start out our class with some sort of warm-up, bell-work, do now, etc. This was one of the first things you learn when learning about lesson plans! Hoffer reminds us how important the opening activity of our class is to setting the tone of the day and activating prior knowledge.
I have always used a "do now" in my lesson plans and my class routines. My idea of a Do Now is the task students should do when they come in that does not need any explaining on my part. They should come in, take out stuff for class and get to work. My experience is that I usually just throw up a computation problem, probably what we did the day before, and some of the kids race through it or do it in their head and some kids have no clue what to do and just sit and wait for others to finish it. Another struggle I have is no matter how much I try to remind and enforce my beginning of class routine, my kids take their time getting in, getting their stuff put away and getting to business. I wonder if it is because of my "lame" openers?
I am thinking after reading this chapter that one of my goals will be to really work on my openers and beginning of class procedures!
Thursday, July 18, 2013
My Flipped Classroom 2.0
After posting my thoughts on Minds on Mathematics: Chapter 5 "Discourse" ,Sherrie Nackle, who is organizing this really great book study here, commented on how would I implement the workshop model and flipping.
"I am very interested in hearing more about how you will incorporate your flipped teaching into workshop model. I've seen other teachers do flipped learning, but the videos were strictly skill based. How do you get the deep conceptual understanding with a video? I'd love to hear more about this."
So I started to respond, but it turned out to be more of me working out my thoughts of the way I wanted to start planning for next year. I'm not quite ready to do that yet since I am not finished with the book and am taking another online course (a really great one by the way! Check it out here.) But I did think it would be better for a blog post in order to organize my thoughts since they were flowing pretty well!
Ok, so back up a bit. Last summer I "discovered" the flip classroom, hence the name of my blog! I really thought this was going to be the key for my students and my motivation behind it was to encourage more higher order thinking in my classroom by having more time to do so and also I won't lie, I thought it might help with behavior. I figured the less time they had to sit quiet and listen to me lecture in class, the less time they had to act up. In some ways it worked well, my videos were mostly just vocabulary notes and a very quick example of what we would be doing for that concept. It was a way for kids to copy the notes without doing it in class. They could go at their own pace and didn't have to wait for others to finish etc. I never really "taught" on the video and they never took ownership of the learning. I still had to teach in the classroom, they just had less notes to copy!
So, I still thought (think) the flipped model is beneficial, I just needed to work at it more, of course I didn't think I would get it perfect the first year. I saw that Dr. Lodge McCammon and Katie Gimbar were offering their online "Flipped Classroom Training Program" so I applied and got accepted into it. I really like their method of filming one take videos with the teacher in them, opposed to screencasts (which I was doing originally) and I thought that taking the course would help me become better at this.
During the course, I realized that the way I like to teach is with questioning and feedback from students. It was very hard to teach to a video camera! Dan Myer even questioned my motivation for flipping with his comment on my blog:
"I am very interested in hearing more about how you will incorporate your flipped teaching into workshop model. I've seen other teachers do flipped learning, but the videos were strictly skill based. How do you get the deep conceptual understanding with a video? I'd love to hear more about this."
So I started to respond, but it turned out to be more of me working out my thoughts of the way I wanted to start planning for next year. I'm not quite ready to do that yet since I am not finished with the book and am taking another online course (a really great one by the way! Check it out here.) But I did think it would be better for a blog post in order to organize my thoughts since they were flowing pretty well!
Ok, so back up a bit. Last summer I "discovered" the flip classroom, hence the name of my blog! I really thought this was going to be the key for my students and my motivation behind it was to encourage more higher order thinking in my classroom by having more time to do so and also I won't lie, I thought it might help with behavior. I figured the less time they had to sit quiet and listen to me lecture in class, the less time they had to act up. In some ways it worked well, my videos were mostly just vocabulary notes and a very quick example of what we would be doing for that concept. It was a way for kids to copy the notes without doing it in class. They could go at their own pace and didn't have to wait for others to finish etc. I never really "taught" on the video and they never took ownership of the learning. I still had to teach in the classroom, they just had less notes to copy!
So, I still thought (think) the flipped model is beneficial, I just needed to work at it more, of course I didn't think I would get it perfect the first year. I saw that Dr. Lodge McCammon and Katie Gimbar were offering their online "Flipped Classroom Training Program" so I applied and got accepted into it. I really like their method of filming one take videos with the teacher in them, opposed to screencasts (which I was doing originally) and I thought that taking the course would help me become better at this.
During the course, I realized that the way I like to teach is with questioning and feedback from students. It was very hard to teach to a video camera! Dan Myer even questioned my motivation for flipping with his comment on my blog:
Dan MeyerJune 22, 2013 at 2:02 PM
"I have got to learn to jazz them up since I am so used to interacting with my students during my lessons and I use a lot of questioning instead of telling during my lessons."
But isn't this an argument against flipping the classroom? You're saying you're trading "questions and interactions" with "telling and jazz" and it seems you're feeling troubled by that. So what else do you (or your class) get in that trade that makes the flipped classroom worthwhile?
But isn't this an argument against flipping the classroom? You're saying you're trading "questions and interactions" with "telling and jazz" and it seems you're feeling troubled by that. So what else do you (or your class) get in that trade that makes the flipped classroom worthwhile?
I have to say that made sense, I agreed with that comment, but something was still holding me on to the flipped classroom. That is what really made me think about what I need to accomplish in my classroom and how the videos were going to help me achieve those goals.
Finally, this is what leads me to my thoughts on flipping with workshop:
What i have learned so far with all of my PD this summer is that kids need to get their hands dirty working with those complex open ended problems, they need to construct their own understanding of the math. However, I know my kids and I know some of them need to first get those basic lower level skills down and have them modeled for them before they start playing with it. Some don't. That is why I am thinking that my videos will teach very basic "procedures" of a concept, along with trying approx 5 of those basic problems for homework. You know those very basic computation problems the textbook starts out with. When they come to class we will work on the workshop model in order for them to construct meaning for why we do those procedures and when to apply them. I am really looking forward to finishing the book and start digging into my planning!
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Minds on Math: Chapter 5 "Discourse"
Problem of the Day: Why ought and how can teachers facilitate learners engagement in purposeful and meaningful conversations about their thinking?
Great question! I totally cringed while reading the dialog piece Hoffer writes about on page 68-69. I have heard those exact snippets in my room and just couldn't figure out how to stop it!
Last summer I learned about the "flipped classroom", layered curriculum, and interactive notebooks. So I recorded a bunch of lessons, created menus of activities and planned out the notebooks. My vision for my class would be that they watch the video and start their notes for homework, then the first 10 minutes of class would be small group discussion before moving on to the activities. Things started off okay, but did eventually break down over the course of the year and after reading this chapter I feel that it was because I never taught them how to have those discussions. I fell into the trap of "if you put them in a group and tell them to talk about math...they will!" Nooooooo preteens-teenagers do not work that way!
Again, this is another chapter I am going to wear the crap out of while lesson planning! Not only does Hoffer give detailed outlines for scaffolding and structures (p.80), she also explains how to keep students accountable and how to observe them in their discussions!
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