Digital Reflection

Types of Triangles

This week my students have been preparing for their geometry CSTs, and since all of the different types of triangles/angles can get confusing, I had the students complete a group activity to help them remember: They wrote a song, poem, story, or rap about 4 out of 6 possible triangle types. Here are some samples:

Poem:
Obtuse triangle has one angle that is more than 90 degrees
one side bigger
acute triangle has an angle under 90 degrees
almost too tiny to see
equilateral triangle has all equal sides and angles
easiest to describe
right triangle has one 90 degree angle
real easy to draw

Rap:
I like that big 90 degree angle
her name is obtuse
but I don't like isosceles
because she has only 2 equal angles
I look past that right angle
and, woah, I see that acute
it's so small - smaller than 90 degrees

Story:
Jay, the obtuse boy, had a goose. "Ahoy," he said as he played with his computer toy when he opened his laptop with an angle of 95 degrees because Jay, being shady as the obtuse boy, likes only numbers that are more than 90, but less than 180. Now his goose was acute and he plays a green flute, and played it almighty, he didn't have loot. In fact, he had less than 90. The goose's name was Abel, they were best friends, 2 parts of 1, like a right angle.

Motivation

What is our students' motivation to learn? Too often, the easiest thing to say to off-task students is, "You'll get a zero." Though this is motivating enough for some students to do work, they'd consequently be doing it for the teacher and simply to completion, instead of doing quality work for the purpose of their own learning. The past 2 weeks, I have noticed that sometimes it is difficult to get students to work and sometimes very easy. The reasons for this could be so many things, including the student's mood, their interest, the importance of the content, and so on. Ultimately, as teachers it is our duty to motivate and inspire our students to want to learn what we are teaching.
To get students more excited about the content, it could be actually detrimental to offer rewards. As you'll see in this video I found on YouTube,  people do not reach their full potential when they are offered rewards. This takes the fun out of it; students no longer think creatively or do the work to see how awesome it is that they solved a problem. One way I have been getting students excited about geometry and business math is relating to their interests, or at least real life. Another thing I do is show how their current math class connects to many different higher levels and subjects of mathematics.
The best thing we can do is make lessons that are interesting to our students, but we cannot always get students enthused about the content, so we have to be prepared to offer other incentives. These incentives are hard to determine because it depends on the student. I have been trying to observe teachers and see how they motivate without bringing up points or grades. I have heard some great motivating sayings to on and off task students, such as:
"If you worked for me, you would get a raise" or "If you worked for me, you wouldn't get paid today"
"You're a great student"
"In high school, you learn how to learn" (in response to "why do I need to know this?")
I have had to give a few talks in my classrooms as to why it is important that they do their work and succeed in the class, and it was something that I hadn't really thought of planning so frequently and carefully for until recently. It is a huge part of this job, and it shows how important our role is - our students really need us, and most of the time, they don't even know it.


Interesting video about motivating students (the first 3.5 minutes is sufficient to watch):

 

CP II: Week 2

This last week I planned for one class and felt more comfortable in the other. I have enjoyed making exciting lesson plans  for geometry, but it is a little stressful wondering if the plan will work out. It also makes me anxious planning far ahead and spending a lot of time on plans if I will have to change them later depending on the pace the students' understanding. However, as I write more and more plans, they are getting easier and evolving. The feeling of being a teacher is more prominent and I feel like I get more content about my career everyday. In business math, we are almost done with a couple chapters, on investments and insurance, and I enjoy teaching very applicable topics. It isn't too difficult gaining students' interest, but sometimes they are off task, and I had to have a talk with them expressing the importance of utilizing class time and being efficient as if working for a business. On top of my classes, I have also been tutoring for the after-school mastery learning program for students who fail a test in algebra. I love that I can gain experience in another subject and grade level. Last, but not least, my cooperating teachers are wonderful. I learn a lot from their teaching styles and the random conversations we hold between classes and at lunch.

CP II: Week 1

This week went splendid. The two courses I am assigned to teach are geometry and business math, and I am transitioning into being the full-time teacher for each at different paces. On Monday and Tuesday, I continued to observe my two cooperating teacher's lessons and walked around to help students individually. On Wednesday, I started teaching for business math a chapter on health and life insurance. It has been fun learning experience working with seniors. Most of them think the class is pretty easy and just need to pass to graduate, so it has been somewhat challenging classroom management and keeping everyone interested. So far, I already am making great relationships with the students and my cooperating teachers, and loving lesson planning. In geometry this week, the students have been finishing up a chapter and reviewing for their test. I did a few problems with the class on Wednesday, passed out permission slips for TPA 4, and administered my student survey via GoogleForms. In AVID, I tutored. Mostly, the students work with one another and the tutors walk around waiting for questions or probing the students to ask questions. Finally, I help out and want to continue to help in an algebra class for English learners with a teacher who is involved with Math for America. I get some additional insight from his teaching and helping his students. I am excited for this second week, and the many more weeks to come.

Business Math Rap

So, I am lesson planning away for the business math class I'm teaching this semester. Everyday there is some vocabulary to go over and I am trying to teach it so the students remember it and so it is fun! I wanted to share a poem/rap I wrote for a life insurance section's vocabulary words: 

Whole life insurance is for

When you die or need more…cash

Cash value is the money you get when you cancel

These lines don’t rhyme

But, different types of life insurances are

limited payment policy where you pay for a certain amount of time

& universal life insurance, you pay a minimum, the rest earns interest

What do you think, should this go on Pinterest?

One Teacher's Friday Ritual

Some of you may have seen him in the Twitter world, John Berray, a math teacher from Santee (check out his blog: http://johnberray.wordpress.com/). I read one of his posts, "My Friday Ritual," where he writes about the fun stuff he does between classes on a Friday, and like the sub-title of his blog, tries to "make math class awesome." Every week, Berray chooses one or two students, who have shown him something notable. This can be something like a student asked good questions, improved greatly, or showed consistent hard-work. This could also be something like a student helped another with an academic or life problem or stood up for a peer. Berray creates a slideshow that he plays between classes, complete with music!

Example of one slide:


His rationale for doing this is that the students "deserve more attention than they get." As teachers, we are often the people who get to interact with young people the most, so we should praise them. Something else interesting that Berray noted was how having to pick students every week made him a better teacher. Usually deciding on which student to choose is easy, but when it's not, that's good. During those times, he gets to dig deeper and find something positive about everyone. He has to be reflective about his students and get to know them better. The lessons get to be tailored more and more to the students' interests and skill-levels. Anything to make the school day more exciting, make the students feel good, and help the teachers design better lessons should be a wonderful adaptation. I love this idea!

Observation Reflection: iPads in the Classroom

On 3/12/12, half of the CSUSM Single Subject Credential program went to El Camino High School to observe two high school math teachers use iPads in their classrooms. My group observed the following classes: geometry and math analysis with one teacher, and geometry again with another teacher. Since I have been observing at ECHS the last several weeks, nothing was too new to me, but it was a fun experience to show everyone around and see my future students. As for reflecting on iPads in the classroom, these math classes use them almost always. Only sometimes is bookwork done at home. It apparently promotes student learning because students did considerably well in the classes, and they were able to ask questions of the teacher one-on-one. Furthermore, the students could look-up and store any information online at anytime in the class period. I believe that as long as students know where to find information and can apply it to a problem they are trying to solve then they will be successful in life. However, for standardized testing, these students may have a disadvantage because maybe they haven't gotten used to memorizing formulas and certain pieces of information. When the principal spoke during debrief, I learned about what makes the school unique - that they care the most about making sure students learn. This day of observing relates to the theme of EDSS530 because it is expected that everyone will use technology at their own pace, but there are certain requirements so that students learn enough to be competent in the new age of technology.

Are Grades Necessary for Learning?

Watching Dan Pink speak about how he took French for many years and always got an A, but now knows no French, shows something is wrong with our educational system. Also, this is an issue I have had throughout a good amount of my classes; where I pretty much just did the work and passed, but felt like I didn't learn anything. The difficult question to answer is what would happen if we took grades out of the equation? I believe that if we did, it would have to be a process. There would have to be some way in order for us to see that the students were ready to participate in class and complete their work simply so that they learn and not for a grade. I think it is more important that we grade based on individual student growth, and we shouldn't compare students against one another. Also, the students should have the opportunity to assess themselves, reflect on how they grew, and identify what they learned. These kinds of higher level questions increase student's cognitive development. In addition, students would probably, more often than not, learn more if they didn't earn a grade because there would be no set standard and the students would probably grow above and beyond what they would have if they simply got an A. 

Disrupting Class (Chapters 1-5)

1. Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity.  How is education currently organized?  
Interdependence and modularity are ways to describe the way a product's components relate to one another. If components are interdependent of one another, they are dependent on each other's design. If additions are interdependent, it makes the most sense for them to be created at the same time because the future is unpredictable, and if a lot of time and energy goes into one addition, hopefully the subsequent additions fit it. On the other hand, modular architecture allows for customization. The components will fit together, therefore they need to be well-understood, have to meet specifications, and have to be flexible. Our education is currently highly interdependent because we have standards that are not flexible and there are interdependent structures, such as hierarchy and physical. Customizing an interdependent product is expensive. 

2. Explain the disruptive innovation theory.  What does this have to do with schools?

The disruptive innovation theory explains struggles with innovation and how to succeed in innovation. The innovation disrupts the product's trajectory of improvement by bringing a good or service. These changes happen in order to benefit the nonconsumers (those who weren't using the original product). Therefore, the changes may not be better, but they are different. 

This relates to schools because changes to public schools have required them to adjust, and they have also improved. They have done a good job of preserving the important values while doing the best they can at new innovations. NCLB and Nation at Risk report are examples of disruptive innovation.

3.  Why doesn’t cramming computers in schools work?  Explain this in terms of the lessons from Rachmaninoff (what does it mean to compete against nonconsumption?)
Cramming computers into schools will not allow for student-centered classrooms. Computers have the opportunity, though, to disrupt current instruction and allow teachers to provide more individual attention. In terms of the lessons from Rachmaninoff, the idea of playing a phonograph instead of hearing live music relates to putting computers in a class and expecting them to teach instead of the teacher. Technology should only compete against nonconsumption, where there is no alternative to taking a class from the computer, that  it would be necessary instead of supplementary. 

4a. Explain the pattern of disruption. 
Disruptions first compete against nonconsumption so that the technology improves and the cost declines. Then, the technology starts applying original applications to the new plane to eventually create student-centric technology. This transition's pace follows an S-curve, which means that the initial pace is slow, then it steepens a lot, and finally it slows down and approaches the entire market.

4b. Explain the trap of monolithic instruction.  How does student-centric learning help this problem?
The trap of monolithic instruction is the idea that teachers must meet all of the same expectations for all students. Therefore more advanced or other classes are frequently unfunded for differently-abled students. Student-centric learning helps with this problem because teachers have more time to meet individual needs, and can push students to meet their furthest potential. Specifically, students can be taught based on their learning styles.

5. Explain public education’s commercial system.  What does it mean to say it is a value-chain business?  How does this affect student-centric learning?
Presently, education is a like a VAP (or value-chain) business, which means value-adding process. These types of businesses bring inputs of materials into one end, add higher value, and deliver the higher-value products to their customers at the other end. This affects student-centric learning because we have a lot of opportunities to improve on it, but at the same time there aren't many supports because it is new. 

Problem Based Learning

In the math methods class, we have been working on an assignment where we design unit plans with a local high school. The units are problem based, which means that a "big" problem is proposed, and the tools that are needed to solve it are the lessons to be taught subsequently. In most of these types of units (or at least ours), the students first decide what kind of information they know and need to know in order to solve the problem. I love this idea because with real-life problems we will not be told what tools we need to use or how to use them. However, there are ways to use our resources and prior knowledge to figure this out. Next, the students are guided and taught what they need to know. Students collaborate along the way and are interested in each other's thinking and ideas. Typically, what is collected at the end is a portfolio of work completed leading up to the solving of the unit problem. It has been an insightful and valuable experience to be able to plan and observe lessons for this assignment. If you are interested in learning more about PBL, check this out for strategies: http://www.studygs.net/pbl.htm

Educational Chats

This week, I participated in two educational chats, #iPadchat and #edchat. In general, it was nice to casually chat with people who are passionate about education and have all different connections to it. The two chats were vastly different though.
Edchat was so popular and the stream of information was moving so fast that it was hard to read the tweets. The topic was, "how do we know when our students are engaged?" I re-tweeted my favorite tweets, and added a couple of my own insights. Some common tweets included, "when students do not leave their seats when the bell rings" and "when they do not ask if the information is going to be on the test." I added that it is awesome when students quiet down their peers so that they can learn. At a few occasions, the chat started to get more deep by  people discussing how a teacher should be to make class engaging. A lot of people were re-tweeting the comment, "If we expect our students to be engaged, we (teachers) must be engaged." Something I found interesting and is often true is that teachers sometimes inhibit the engagement out of fear of how their class will look to administrators. In general, what I gained from this chat is that teachers being curious and active in classwork and lessons increase student engagement, and that can be best measured by talking to students to see what they are learning.
iPadchat was a lot less popular. I think maybe five people participated. However, I received a few great links, which I added to my Diigo bookmarks. So, from this chat, I increased my web presence and gained some resources.
Overall, it's fun to participate in educational chats on Twitter. The only occasional downfalls are that there aren't enough participants or it is overwhelming how many participants there are. The chats are great opportunities to increase one's PLC, learn something new, and reflect on what one knows and does already.

Reflection: Learning in New Media Environments

The YouTube Video, "Learning in New Media Environments" is about how we are often constrained by four walls in classrooms, and are not creating students who are ready to go out into the world and make a difference. The best part of the movie to me was at the end: the speaker makes a point to say that they actually failed in their concluding simulation because the students didn't solve the world's problems... but they failed in a "good way" because the students left not thinking about what they need to know for the test, but they left thinking more about how they can better get to know the world. As an educator, I am reminded how important it is that I give my students relevant information that they are able to apply to the real world. I don't want to give busy work; it is about quality over quantity. It is my goal to apply everything I teach to their unit and to real life. 

Dan Meyer on Real-World Math

Dan Meyer gave a talk on this at the GSDMC last weekend. Very interesting! Time to take my camera out and look for inspiration. This idea of making word problems more exciting can be used in any content area, not just math!

Visitor vs Resident

People use the world of the Internet in a variety of ways. The narrator of the video, Visitors & Residents: The Video, pigeon-holes users into two different groups, visitor and resident. Visitors tend to leave no trace, are private, only use the Internet to complete assignments or get something done, and feel no need to establish online identities and networks. Residents live a good portion of their lives online, try to be visible, are communal, and strive to make their comments short and of good quality instead of unnecessarily wordy. I see myself mostly as a visitor of the Internet for reasons including: I often simply use it to accomplish tasks, I haven't yet become well known in social networks, and I tend to stay private. In my experiences so far, trying to become a resident has been more of a daunting activity than a helpful one. However, in the future, I see myself getting helpful information and ideas online from teachers locally and around the world. Also, it will be more common for people to have social networks on the Internet, and therefore I will be probably be more communal and less private.