Conference Day 1: Aligning Tasks to Standards

As part of my reflection process from the Maryland College and Career Readiness Conference, I am recording my thoughts and goals following each session. This session focused on using four main protocols meant to aid instructors, publishers, and curriculum specialists in determining how well curriculum materials are aligned to math and language arts common core standards. 

The tool that I worked on dissecting was the EQuIP tool. This process was structured as a rubric meant t measure the enxtent to which lessons and units effectively incorporate appropriate depth, conherence, rigor, differentiation, and assessment. The main goals are to make sure that materials are aligned with an emphasis on performance based assessment as evidence if effective lesson design. 

The five steps of the protocol are to review the materials, analyze the purpose as determined solely by the directions presented, compare the content to the standards, diagnose student work looking for patterns, and making suggestions on how to improve the materials. Through those five steps the EQuIP has a nice overall evaluative tool for units and lessons. 

The other tools discussed were primarily mean for entire assessments, individual assessment items, and supplementary materials. I am very glad that I was given access to the entire toolkit, a hefty phone book sized document. 

My goals after attending this session are to use the tools to evaluate materials that I am using in my own instruction, and I want to make administrators and supervisors aware of the tools  in case they are not already, so that they can a way of making sure materials are appropriately aligned. 

Conference Day 1: Coaching Skills

Following the Maryland College and Career Readiness Conference, and am continuing to try reflect on the eight sessions that I attended. 

Staring the session, there was a distinction established between being a mentor and being a coach. The main separation between the two roles is that an instructional coach primarily asks prompting questions that are meant to empower teachers to solve their own problems, while mentors primarily consult teachers and work to problem solve for a mentee. 

This was an important distinction, as most of the participants serve as coaches meaning to empower teachers. There are three stages of coaching that shift the approach of the coach. The first stage is a standard coaching relationship where the teaching is the main actor in the problem solving process. The second stage, which may be utilized depending on the level of capability of the teacher, is a collaborative relationship where the coach and teacher are working together to get through a problem. The third stage is meant to be a last resort where the coach takes on a consulting relationship with the teacher. This third stage is very similar to serving as a mentor. 

The idea behind the distinction in the three stages of coaching is to provide a structure for coaching that is flexible based on the teacher's needs. 

The most important skill that effective caches possess is being able to listen well. This took the session into a focus on determining what time of listener we are, so that we can better listen to teachers in order to better attend to their concerns. The key focus was to make sure that full attention and effective listening takes place no matter who the speaker is. In order for us to be effective coaches, the teachers need t know that we are listening fully, and devoting undivided attention to their needs in the moment. 

From being an effective listener, the focus went towards being able to paraphrase effectively so that the teacher knows that you have accurately listened and understood their problem. The main ways to paraphrase depend on how well you as the listener understood what was said. The coach can either acknowledge and ask for clarification, summarize and organize the information, or shift the conceptual focus appropriaty to a productive way forward. The important feature of each method is to affirm for the teacher that their concerns have been heard and you are ready to help them work out a solution. 

We had the opportunity to practice our coaching on a hypothetical dramatization of a teacher. This was a great exercise as it put us in the shoes of a coach trying to help possibly difficult clientels.  After engaging in this practice I realized that, just as with students, if teachers do not see the need for change and growth none of your suggestions will really help them. They need to own the process. 

After attending this session, my goals moving forward Into this year are to build trust from my colleagues and to improve my listening skills to better support teachers in ourcollective shift to new curriculum, strategies, and technologies.  

Conference Day 1: Classroom Focused Improvement Process

Continuing my reflection process following the Maryland College and Career Readiness Conference, I am going to focus on the second session I attended about CFIP. This protocol for analyzing data in continuos, timely, collaborative, and productive ways. 

I found this session particularly useful as my school began ongoing data meetings where teams met to discuss student work on PARCC type assessments. I was able to connect the good things that are happening at these data meetings with the areas that the CFIP outlines for improvement. 

Last years data meetings took place about once a month, while the CFIP suggests meeting at least every two weeks. Making the meetings more consistent will help make the shift of analyzing data in focused and collaborative ways more effective. Just as students need more exposure to puzzling and authentic problem solving tasks to get better, teachers need the same continuous process of engaging in meaningful dialogue about student work to better improve practices. 

 My big take aways from the session are as follows. 

-Discussion about data needs to take place with team members on the same page with common understanding and common purpose.

-Discussion needs to stay focused and precise when discussing data and outcomes. 

-It is important for teachers to separate what we do from who we are. It is easy for teachers to fall into taking comments about student work and suggestions for improving instruction personally. 

-Data that does not serve to answer a question is not necessary. 

- Decisions made about interventions and enrichment should be based on patterns in student work as present in the data. 

In general this session was very informative in introducing the CFIP protocol, and it offered a lot of good ideas to take with me to my department and PLC. I look forward to using the common assessments that we are developing this summer with my PLC to improve instruction based on the data. 

My main goals for the coming year are to establish norms regarding regular meetings that utilize the CFIP framework within my department and PLC. 

Conference Day 1: Using Technology for Effective Formative Assessment Feedback

The first day of the Maryland College and Career Readiness Conference, and I have a lot of ideas ad information to take away. I am going to use this as a platform for reflection for each of the eight sessions I attended. The first session focused on using technology to more effectively assess student learning and provide timely and meaningful feedback. 

A major goal of mine has been to find more efficient ways in which I can evaluate student work and provide timely feedback. The first few tools that were presented provided me with a means to accomplish that goal. I was very glad to have attended this session and now my goals have shifted to working on incorporating those tools into my instruction. 

The first tool that caught my attention was Socrative. Very similar to Poll Everywhere, Socrative provides a resource where assessments can be developed and students can respond from any WiFi enabled device. This will be very handy given that I may not have a set of clickers next year, and I can utilize a bring your o an device policy for students in my room with varying devices.

Another tool that I am especially excited to use is Flubaroo. This tool allows me to utilize google forms, and as an add oo in the spreadsheet, Flubaroo will grade student submissions and email individual reports to each student. I have figured out how to have student responses graded automatically, but being able to send student progress in a timely manner is a great way to let students know their strengths and weaknesses. 

I am excited to explore these tools and more like Three Ring and Video Notes along with a host of other tools that can help me gather student work more seamlessly and timely. 

My goal after attending this session is to incorporate these tools into as many lessons so as to enhance instruction in meaningful ways. 

Thank you 101qs.com

This past week was a humbling reminder that I still have a long way to go before I'm satisfied with my ability to be an effective teacher.

Nonetheless, I am feeling more comfortable with my ability to implement problem solving tasks with my students. I am very grateful for the wonderful community of resources that exists through the twitters and all of the blogs, and one in particular that I am excited to have started using is http://www.101qs.com/. 

I had started my seventh graders working on representing percentage using equivalent expressions, when I came across a picture that led to a really interesting question about deciding between two coupons. The picture led to students noticing and wondering, which led to them thinking.

Which coupons is better, 30% off the entire purchase or 40% off one regular item?

Their first inclination was that, "it depends." Now came for the fun part, because they realized that they would be figuring out on what it would depend. What prices would cause you to choose one coupon over another? Does it matter how many items are in your cart?

They were split up into groups of three, and most every group started working through different purchase situations. Most began to find that the 30% off coupon consistently won out, and this led to a prompt for them to find a situation when the 30% off coupon would not be the better deal.

As groups worked through this portion, I could see the wheels really start turning. They were noticing different patterns, they were being strategic in the prices that they assigned to the one item on which the 40% off coupon would be used, they were thinking about the problem in creative and insightful ways.

When a student first gave me his answer, I didn't quite know how to respond. I expected that the groups would find an answer, but I anticipated solutions to start popping up later based on the progress they were making at the time. For several of the groups to start noticing that the one item had to be more than 75% of the total purchase in order for the 40% off coupon to be a better deal, really impressed me.

I was excited, and I was very proud to see them start with no more than a picture and some questions only to end with a powerful solution.

The best part of the solution was the extension afterwards. Having the conclusion that the one item had to be worth more than three fourths of the total in order for the 40% off coupon to be worth using, led to students observing that 30/40 reduces to three fourths. Their problem now became one of verifying whether that result would continue for other combinations of discounts, or if it was merely a coincidence.

All in all the problem was rich with great thinking and exploration, and so far it served as one of my best class sessions this year.

I am still struggling to present the problems more consistently and effectively, but I won't be able to improve if I don't try new things. Here is to my own exploration and discovery.  

Making "Real World" Problems Feel More Real

Third week of school, and I am feeling more and more satisfied with the amount of problems on which students have been working. Starting with my Geometry classes working on the great transversal tape and sticky activity that I found on the wonderful problem based learning curriculum maps (that I adore exploring). The activity didn't go quite as planned because I wasn't able to make copies of the handouts, but the students worked well none the less.

Those Geometry classes also had fun tackling some logic puzzles as we started talking about forming proofs and deductive reasoning. I was very thankful that my wife and I were able to visit her grandparents last weekend, and while there her grandmother gave me a book titled "The Brain Game." The book has 27 intelligence tests "that will reveal your unique abilities" like an IQ test. 

When I first saw it, I instantly thought of the possible problems and tasks I could pull from for the students, and thinking about the proof lessons coming up, I was look at the logic tests for some gems. One of the puzzles involved blue wombats, and it was a nice starter before we started proving angle relationships.

Moving to the Algebra 1 classes, I tried my hand at implementing a 3 Act task today with a Pepsi Points task  that I also found using those wonderful curriculum maps. I am looking forward to talking with the kids on Monday about the court case involving the person who tried to redeem pepsi points for a jet, and today they were really into estimating how much things cost and starting to figure out how many points it would take to get the jet. This was also a fun task because I got to talk about my experience with my dad riding in his van and stopping on the side of the rode to pick up pepsi bottles for the caps, so that he could redeem the points for stuff.

The fun did not end with Algebra, thankfully, as my seventh graders got to work on a problem about designing a model of the solar system, a problem about McDonalds, and a problem about the Curiosity Rover. They were working with exponent properties and scientific notation, and problems about space and the McDonald's serving 1% of the world's population seemed to fit. I loved showing them pictures of some really cool planets and stars, and they were really interested in how the Curiosity Rover landed. Infecting kids with the wonders of space explorations is my favorite past time. The fun again came in when I was able to relate the problems to experiences from my life. They seemed to enjoy some funny stories from my childhood when my mom worked as a manager at McDonald's, and I would play around the store in the freezer, in the drive through (scrounging for dropped change for a small fry), and wearing the headsets listening to the drive through orders. One particular group of girls found the idea of a car coming through the drive through while I was looking for change quite funny.

I started thinking after having the chance to share the stories about myself to my students that being able to connect these problems to my life really seemed to help make the work we were doing more meaningful. The students weren't just working through problems from some foreign book, or even good problems that aren't related to anything. Not only were students given an opportunity to work on interesting and challenging problems, they were able to see these problems as something more than just a math problem. Through telling my little stories, I felt that I was able to make these "real world problems" more real.

Really Fun Moments from the First Week of School

The first week of school has been a blast. This is my first year at a middle school, and I am really enjoying these seventh and eighth graders. They are an impressive bunch, and I am very excited for what is sure to be a great year.

Starting off the year, I got the idea from a friend of mine to present a really nice counting problem. We started looking at a soda can pyramid picture that I found. The bottom row of the pyramid has 11 cans with each successive row having one less can until the single can at the top.

The goal was to count the number of cans, and after students went through and added them all together, we tried to come up with a better way of counting that would be more efficient. A few students picked up on the trick commonly credited to Gauss, which was fun because I was able to show them a nice numberphile video about the counting problem after they worked it out.

The fun began when they were faced with a pyramid that has 50 cans at the bottom. They thought about it independently for a couple of minutes, then they were split into six groups to work out the problem on big white boards. Below are some of the great ideas they came up with and presented to the class.


This idea was about turning the pyramid into a square and subtracting off the area. The coolest part about this idea was that the group accounted for the single can at the top of the pyramid.


This idea was about adding up groups of tens, nines, eights, and so on. The group noticed that each successive group of numbers was reduced by five, which was very cool, and they were able to use that to quickly get to multiplying their sums. 


This idea was very impressive to me. This group was trying to find a formula to use to find the number of cans. They went through a few different ideas, tried them out to see if they worked, and they finally landed on this beauty for any pyramid with base B. 

The other three groups came up with similar solutions, and this served as a great problem for the start of the year. They loved working in groups, they really enjoyed using the white boards, and I enjoyed being able to go to each group and help them make sure that each member of the group was on board and asking good questions. 

I look forward to posting more of these fun activities throughout the year. I am very excited about the start of the new year.