Scaffolding

Scaffolding is all about connecting content with students' experiences, whether they are real life applications or things they have learned in previous classes. The math curriculum is set up to provide scaffolding for almost every content strand. From Math I to Math II to Math III and even through the higher level maths, concepts build on one another. 

Krystal and I (because, yes we are the best team ever!) are giving ourselves and our students the opportunity to scaffold throughout their math courses with the math notebooks we are doing. Many of you know already, but students will essentially use the same notebooks through Math II and Math III (and hopefully their college classes as well!) The notebooks are section by broad concept topics (Expressions, Functions, Quadratics, Exponentials, Geometry, Trigonometry, Statistics & Probability) so that we can continue to add to concepts we've already talked about. 

My students are liking the notebooks for organization. They don't necessarily see the value just yet (we haven't truly gone back to a topic that we have already talked about to add a page). I think they'll like it a lot next year when they need to review for upcoming concepts. I'll like it a lot better when I can say "I know you've looked at this before. It's on page G4". 

Classroom Talk

Like I said in my last post, Krystal and I are really trying to get away from the "sit and get" style of learning in our classroom. We have worked hard throughout the semester to find activities for our Math II classes. My Essentials of College Math course has activities built in to the curriculum that was given to me. I'm pretty happy with the types of learning taking place.

As everyone knows, my classroom is set up in groups. This is definitely the easiest way to make classroom talk happen. My groups for my freshmen are set up with purpose. I allowed my seniors and sophomores to choose their seats from the first day (and they never got on my nerves with excessive talking, so they kept that privilege!) The seniors and sophomores have moved seats some (mostly based on their "friends" and drama, but a few have moved in order to have a better learning experience!). The freshmen tables have at least 1 A student and I tried not to put too many struggling students together. They are also based on who talks way too much, though I think some of the freshmen would talk to a brick wall if no one else was around.

I have been impressed with the mathematical talk happening in the many different activities. One recent example is the volume discovery we did with the geometric solids and sand from prom. First, the students grouped the solids into prisms, pyramids, and other. They had to discuss the difference between the prisms and pyramids (prisms are stacked shapes and have parallel bases, pyramids come to a point). Then, they had to match prisms and pyramids based on their bases (triangular prisms and triangular pyramids match, etc). I heard many good vocabulary words and explanations happening within the groups. Finally, they took the prom sand, dumped it in the pyramid, then found out how many times a pyramid fills up the prism with the same base (which was 3). Students also had to think about the volume, and write what they thought the formulas would be. We did some other things with the shapes, but this was the most self-guided and had the best outcome as far as classroom talk.

Questioning

When anyone thinks of a typical math class, they immediately think of a teacher at the board talking and writing while students are taking notes. Then, students get 40 problems for homework and that's it. However, Krystal and I are trying to do things very very differently.

At times, questioning in math is very direct. There are often right or wrong answers with no wiggle room. However with enough preparation, there are plenty of opportunities for students to be creative in their responses. In comes the Geometric Proof Portfolio. Krystal and I worked on this Portfolio for over 3 hours one afternoon. The time grading was much much larger. However, with our portfolio, we gave students the opportunity to express their knowledge in a way that there wasn't just a right or wrong answer. In the portfolio, they were able to draw, describe, explain, and answer questions in a much better way than a multiple choice test. 

During the Questioning session at our in-house PD and the PD Krystal and I attended, we talked about the Webb's Depth of Knowledge. The program the county uses to make tests have DOK levels printed for multiple choice tests. Most of the levels are 1 and 2... Use, Recall, State, Tell, Infer, Construct, Summarize. However, most of our questions in the portfolio questions fall under the 4th level... Design, Synthesize, Create, Critique. 

While most students did not receive high grades on this portfolio, I was very impressed with the ones that did. Most students lost points for not following directions. Laziness, the fact they "had to" do it over Spring Break (even though they were given an entire class period to work on it), and not paying attention to detail were the biggest causes of low grades. 

High-level questioning can be tough, but with enough planning (and Starbucks), great work can be achieved! 

Low-Stakes Writing

Journals are fabulous.  I love having kids write random stuff.  It's no pressure writing that gets kids talking and comfortable with sharing their ideas.

One of my favorite resources is this Photo Writing Prompt presentation I created by pulling prompts from two Tumblr accounts.  I had to start putting the prompts in the Google Presentation because Tumblr was blocked.  Now, however, about 350 people have shared the document, so it is constantly changing.

In addition to journals, I like to assign quick paragraph writings.  When we read Night, I have students write one paragraph that students explain how Elie shows humanity in Chapter 1.  Students must use 1 quote from a chart we complete together as their evidence.  Once I get this paragraph, I proofread the paragraph and return it.  Students will then rewrite the paragraph until I am happy with it.  It can take up to three rewrites until they get it right.

I like this activity because it isn't graded but is also a practice in revising techniques.  I have to continuously remind students that the first draft is not the one to submit.  Rewriting is expected and okay.

Overall, we write a lot in English class. Surprise, right? I like low-stakes writing because it is an easy way to reinforce skills and less grading fro me.

Writing to Learn

Writing to learn in an English classroom is probably much simpler to implement than in others. I use a variety of writing methods to engage students in both high and low stakes writing experiences. There is this really cool photo blog presentation that Ms. Payseur and I (and several other English teachers in the county) use for warm-ups (here's the link). Some of these journals, which I evaluate purely on completion, have led to hilarious stories and deep conversations in my class. I love the ones that require students to make up a story based on a picture because everyone interprets it differently and the stories are so diverse. One of the lessons I try to impress on my public speaking students is that speeches are very much like writing and to apply the organizational and research skills we develop in class to English 10 in the spring. I've found that many students are much better speakers as a form of communication than writers, so I try to use their strengths to help them bridge that gap. While we do not do much high stakes writing in public speaking, I make them adhere to organizational structures (outlining) that they can then apply to future writing assignments. It is really cool to see how they develop as communicators over the semester.

Silent Reflection

For my silence activity, I borrowed an idea from the presentation and had students complete a silent gallery walk. We are studying "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens" in public speaking. For one of the chapters, I created questions based on the reading students had completed the night before. Each student was given a marker and instructed to circle the room and answer the questions quietly on chart paper. It's never an easy feat to keep teenagers from talking the entire writing period, but they did pretty well. I made sure to include around 10 questions so there would be a variety of questions and to keep students from crowding around one question. As facilitator, I clarified questions and kept students moving. After all students had answered, I distributed the chart paper to different students and we discussed the answers provided as a whole group. I found this activity was a great way for students to all have input on questions and it didn't take a lot of time to do. The responses on the papers gave way to in-depth classroom discussion that I think would be lacking if we had discussed the chapter in a more traditional fashion. This is an activity that I would definitely try again.

Writing to Learn

I have found that, like myself, many of my students write for three primary reasons: to communicate something, to clarify thinking, and to learn new concepts and information (or at least to make notes when attempting to do the latter). When Common Core and Essential Standards came on the scene, it was made clear that every teacher, no matter the subject, must include writing in the curriculum. Great! I already do that since there are discussion questions on every assessment I give. The writing I was "including" in my instruction did little to benefit the learning taking place.  One significant challenge in my classes is how to move students from thinking about science as a collection of facts to be memorized toward a deeper understanding of concepts and scientific ways of thinking. Having students complete essay questions was just another way for them to regurgitate information they had simply memorized for the sake of testing. Something had to be done about that...enter Pinterest.

Though I resisted the it's lure for several years, I finally gave in to the Pinterest craze last year. How I ever found novel ways to teach concepts prior to that remains a mystery! I found that neon dry erase markers write beautifully on my lab tables because they are made of a nonporous substance. My classes thought I had made the short trip to crazy when I had them clear their tables, take a neon marker, and write ON THEIR TABLES! Several times, we've used them to brainstorm and generate prior knowledge about a particular topic. One student took a picture of the destruction to public property and sent it to me via e-mail so I could use their ideas for discussion starters the next day.

As we began the heredity unit in biology, my students did the brainstorming activity. I've included one group's results here.

The following day, we discussed the results of each group. As students asked questions, I made a list...why can brown-eyed parents have blue-eyed children? Are dominant traits always the most common traits? If a dark skinned African-American person marries a light-skinned person, what color would the children be? What do mutations have to do with genetics? Lots of questions from inquiring minds. And, for the most part, they weren't asking questions to be funny. They wanted legitimate answers. I went on with the remainder of the lesson.

When class resumed the next day, it was time for writing to learn. Instead of using the large post-it papers, the writing took place on the tables. I crafted some genetics/heredity problems from the list generated in the previous class. Students wrote responses to the questions or problems I posed. Some were hesitant for fear of being wrong until I reminded them that this is a risk-free assessment. I can't fix flawed thinking until I know where the broken parts are. In the end, students did a final survey to see what additional comments had been made to their initial statements and that served as some powerful reinforcement for them.