My Own Blogging Challenge

I think there is a 30 day blogging challenge going on, but I'm not sure.  What I am sure of is that I want to blog more, I stink at it, and I know that blogging more often should help me get better!
My plan is to blog every single day of May.  May is going to be an interesting month.  It starts off with my very first observation of the year!  YIKES!  I don't mind being observed at all, but now that I have tenure I only get one a year which is kind of scary since I feel like I only get one shot!   We are reviewing and preparing for our state tests the following week so I decided to do a lesson on similar triangles since we haven't really done much with that this year.
The second week will be NJAsk, that is going to be a boring blog week I'm sure!  Then we get one week of regular school and then its off to Washington, DC with the 8th grade for 4 days!  I LOVE our 8th grade trip each year.  I've toyed with moving down to 5/6th grade but the DC trip is definitely something that holds me back from moving down.

I think the biggest struggle I am going to have with my challenge is titling my posts!  I hate trying to come up with a title each day!  Any suggestions?

NJCSA Conference

Today my school attended the New Jersey Charter School Association conference in Atlantic City.    Overall, the conference needs some beefing up, with better sessions for teachers and more vendors.  However, I can't complain today because I attended an amazing session called Getting Messi:  How Mistakes make Mathematicians and Scientists.  The presenter was the winner of the Fishman Prize for Superlative Teaching (which I didn't even know existed today, but it is really cool!) Check it out here: http://tntp.org/fishman-prize/winners/fishman-prize-2013/keith-robinson  Anyway, the session was all about Mindset!  My passion of late especially since taking Jo Boaler's class over the summer and now participating in the Perts study.  Most of the ideas presented I was familiar with but did come away with some ideas for really creating the growth mindset culture, such as presenting my "fake" mistakes for students to analyze and awards for class culture such as for the hardest worker, or the best question asker, etc.
The best part was I was a winner of Carol Dweck's Mindset, which I've never actually read.  So excited to get reading!

Then after lunch I got to be a speaker at a session!   I was kind of thrown into it as another teacher was going to do it and backed out at the last minute.  I am so glad I did!  We talked about some of the things our school did to increase math fluency, deeper conceptual understanding and incorporating the 8 mathematical practices.  It was really easy, I talked about our "Mad Math" program, how we set it up, how if runs, some of the changes and improvements we made since last year.  Then I talked about using KWI (What do I know, What is the questions, What are my ideas for solving) for multi-step or word problems along with TAPPS, Talk-aloud-partner-pair-share also for problem solving.  Finally I talked about using kid friendly translations of the 8 mathematical practices and how I introduce three to four main practice to focus on when I introduce the objective of the lesson and also how I have them hanging above my number line and refer to them often throughout the day.  I got to present this with our math coach and the Director of my school.   It was fun, I could talk about teaching math all day long!

The End is Near!

Wow, so much going on and I haven't blogged in FOREVER!!

I have hit the end of year panic, but what makes this year scarier is that since we adopted our new textbooks and haven't "covered" every chapter yet, I feel very very scared.  However, I do feel like I have deeply and thoroughly taught all of the "new" content that my students need.  I only have some geometry and probability to go through and my kids have all been taught this in previous years.  I am tackling this by continuing with the pacing guide of my textbook and supplementing with our NJAsk Coach workbook.  I think its working pretty well, I've told the kids that they should be annotating the text (Yay!  Adding some ELA skills in there!)  So we can really pinpoint what needs to be reviewed/covered before the big day.  

What worries me the most is that we had our 4th benchmark testing of the year and my kids tanked.  I mean so bad that I spent about three days looking for mistakes in my grading spreadsheet, answer key, etc.  When I asked them about it I got two types of responses, "Mrs. Nehila, I looked at the test and it was stuff you taught in the beginning of the year!  I can't remember that!" or "I was just so tired, I gave up!"  Neither response was encouraging.  However to the first one, I've been trying to instill the message that if you forgot it, you never learned it the first place.  Frustrated is an understatement.  Again, I feel like what the heck have I been doing all year?  I might as well have been staying home eating bon-bons with these types of results.  Its just sickening!  

Next up is Common Core.  While I don't know how it is for the younger grades or for ELA and it very well may be bad, I don't have a problem with the 7th/8th math standards.  I think they are laid out pretty well, and I really like how my textbook progress through them.   Now onto my rant which actually turned into a cool conversation with the president of our PAC!  She posted this:

So after reading all of the horrible hate comments, I decided to add to the commentary:

She liked that response and then asked some other good questions about how parents can help their students with homework and stuff.  I told her to show them the way YOU know how to solve the problem.  I told her one of the best things about common core is that it encourage students to think about problems and show their work in many ways.  As long as they understand that is the goal!

The conversation ended with us discussing a "learning about common core" session at a PAC meeting!  Yes!!

Finally, the next exciting thing I want to write about is that I am going to be a part of a presentation at the NJ Charter School convention in Atlantic City on Monday!!  Our school raised our math scores last year, so we are talking about some of the things we've done.  I will report back after our session on how it goes.  I am excited and not the least bit nervous.  Should I be? 

   

Starting to "Click"

I have been so excited about the way a few small changes can totally transform the way my classroom works.  I love reading and learning about new methods and ways of becoming a more effective teacher.  Over the summer I read Minds on Mathematics: Using Math Workshop to Develop Deep Understanding in Grades 4-8 by Wendy Ward Hoffer, and I was hooked.  It sounded amazing and exactly how I wanted my classroom to run.  

After going through the PD of our new curriculum, I didn't know how it was going to work out.  One of my biggest flaws especially with teaching is if I don't think I am doing something perfectly, I feel like I'm wasting precious time with my students who for the most part struggle with math.  So I have been floundering with the workshop model because I thought I should stick with my usual way until I learn the new curriculum. 

So the way I've always taught is the "I do, we do, you do" model.  Even when I incorporated some flipping, my videos were still the "I do's" and then we did the other two parts in class.  I've never given enough struggle time and I think that is the missing link, no matter what method you use to give it.

With that as my goal, the first thing I did was cut my "I do"  or mini lesson way down.  I began to only model a very basic example of the main concept, point out important vocabulary, or model my thinking process-not necessarily a step by step of how to solve each problem.  

Next I set them out to read and discuss the worked out examples in the textbook.  The most important thing I've done here is I give them guided questions that they need to answer while they are reading the examples and they are to use them for their discussion.  The greatest thing is that I can see after two weeks, some of the kids are starting to ask their own great questions that I didn't write out!  See in the past if I asked them to do any type of pair/share or discussion, they would spend about a minute saying "what did you get? I got this" and think that was all they had to do.  The questions are the key!   On a side note, my students have no clue how to read a math book and use it as a tool.  I can't tell you how many times they won't turn in their homework because they say they don't know how to do it and I ask them "well why didn't you look at the example in your textbook?" and they look at me like I have 3 heads.  I'm hoping they will also start learning how to use this tool to help them. 

Next I have them work together on 3-5 practice problems this is where they start to struggle and I walk around and check to see if they are working through their struggle. Once they are successful with these problems I release them to independent work.  When everyone has finished the 3-5 practice problems I stop them and we share out. I purposely let some of the errors be shared so we can discuss it and the kids are already getting used to that!  

I know I am way more excited about this than its probably worth, but that's because I can't really articulate the way the culture has changed in room from just these really small changes.  But I am liking what I see and even though we haven't tested on the new chapter yet, the way the kids are talking about the content is definitely different than they was they did before.

I know that things take time, but I can really see how I am going to keep working towards the workshop model and feel like even though its not perfect right now, its going to keep getting better and better.

The Reflective Educator

I have come to my blogger page a million times (exaggerate much?) and started a post only to delete it!
I have hit that "overwhelmed" part of the year where I start to panic that half the year is over and I am no where near reaching the goals I set for myself.
I am sad today because I really feel defeated.  We have been having GREAT lessons in 8th grade.  We are studying systems of linear equations and the kids just really get it, well, I thought they did.  I gave them a quick 10 question quiz today and for the most part they bombed it.  When this happens I just feel like giving up.  What is the point?  Like I said we've been having great lessons where the kids are doing most of the work, they are feeling confident, they are acing their exit tickets; I just put it all together on a quiz and their mind goes blank.   I don't get it? Then to top it off, I teach our after school test prep class and I had 5 8th graders who seriously did not know how to divide fractions.  I refused to tell them.  I tried visualfractions.com, I tried showing them 1/3 / 1/3 is 1 since anything divided by itself is one then showing them 1/3 / 3 is also 1 (all visually) and they just couldn't put it together themselves...even after they've "learned" it before, in 5th grade for sure, I KNOW I taught them again in 7th grade and even in 8th with solving equations we've talked about multiplying by the reciprocal when solving for x with a fraction coefficient many many times.    Anyway, after "telling" them how to do it, I sent them home with a 20 problem Kuta soft worksheet as "punishment."  Which leads me to the assumption that I suck.

On a happier note, I was the ETA Friday Freebie winner!  I got a level 8 starter set of Versa Tiles!  Can't wait to blog about using them!

Our First Math Competition!

Today I took 12 of my students to their first math competition. We had no idea what to expect other than it would be a 16 question exam, 45 minutes long and no calculators.  We also knew the topics would be algebra, geometry and miscellaneous elementary topics.
We met at the school and took a bus over to the high school where the competition was being held.  The kids were really excited and it was so cool to see them happy and pumped up to take a math test on a Saturday morning!  Of course their motivation was the prizes they could have won $100 for the highest score, $50 for 2nd highest and $25 for 3rd place.
Once we got there they were taken to the exam room and I headed back to hang with the parents.  At 12 we headed to the gym where they had a luncheon set up for us.  The kids joined us and they were still all smiles, but were blown away at how challenging the test was!  I was happy that they got to keep the copy of the test and an answer key.  I swear the problems looked like they came directly from the Palette of Problems section in NCTM's Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School journal.  So, while they were challenging problems, they were do-able. The only one they probably wouldn't know how to do was a system problem with 4 variables.  I'm definitely going to start giving them problems each week from Palette of Problems.
After lunch they announced the winners and top 10 teams (there were 25 teams), we already knew we didn't do well, but the kids didn't seem too upset, well I take that back, after we found out the winner had a perfect score, my one student (who has gotten 300's (perfect score) on the last few NJAsk tests, kept saying over and over "how did she get them all right!"  I'm happy that he is one of my 7th graders, he will be on our team next year too and seems determined to do better next year!
They did get a certificate and a free sundae at Applebee's for participating.
Here are the QCA Mathletes with their certificates!

They also noticed and commented on how they were the only school that was all African-American and Hispanic.  They realized that they need to get out there and represent more.  They are already asking me to find more competitions for them to go to!

The Math Workshop Model in my 7/8 Classroom

Over the summer I participated in a great book study on Minds on Mathematics; Using Math Workshop to Develop Deep Understanding in Grades 4-8 by Wendy Ward Hoffer.  I loved the book and it was laid out so clearly that I was 100% sure that I was going to use the math workshop model exclusively with my 7th and 8th grade this year.  After the PD on my new textbook series (Math in Focus; Singapore Math) I wasn't so sure the workshop model was going to "work" for me this year.  While I really like our new curriculum, the way it was presented to us was very "scripted" Now I know that sounds totally awful, but I thought that for this year, I would stick as closely to it as possible since I was new to Singapore Math.  Now that we are in January, I feel comfortable with the text and methods and finally feel ready to give the workshop model another go!

Something I realized this week, is that the best way for me to get started implementing the workshop model  is to keep it simple! Basically my struggle with implementing the workshop was trying to find "juicy problems" that fit the skill I'm trying to teach.  Well, I decided that what I am really trying to accomplish with this is giving the kids more struggle time.  I had been doing an I do, we do, you do model and only releasing them to the you do when they demonstrated understanding, which a lot of times was the whole period.  Now, I model a general problem and then get them to work.  Its almost been a "duh" moment to me, they aren't going to ask questions and struggle with problems  until they start working on them!  So far they have been doing a great job of coming up with questions that spark really good conversations.

I also realized that I don't have to do math workshop every day with every lesson!  Started a great activity today with 8th grade that I can't wait to blog about, had them go out around the school timing how long it takes to walk to certain classes and how many steps they take, then they are going to graph the data and answer some questions about the slopes and intercepts, we finish it up on Monday so sometime next week I'll work on that!

I'm using my circle tracker on my clip board as a checklist to make sure I'm checking in with everyone.  I don't really keep any  formal recording of it.  I fill in the circle tracker with results from the entrance ticket/exit tickets that I collect.