Substitute days are tricky for a teacher.B A successful lesson for the sub is one where these things happen:
B Students are productive (Read: BUSY) the whole period doing something mathematical
…yet are happy to see me when I return.
The sub is happy that the class worked hard.
And my classroom is intact, nothing stolen, punched, or burned down.
To that end, this was a successful lesson, just like last year. I left a sample list of some words they could use and they got to work.
Here are some of my favorites:
And, as usual, a Valentine for my wife using stolen lines from the student work:
Dear Andrea,
The formula of love is Me + You.B You are theB solution to all my problems. Your expressions are the cutest ever. You addB happiness to my soul, youB intersect my heart. You give me theB power to do anything I desire.
You’re the numerator to my fraction. You and I equal a perfect square. You’re so radical; I want us to be binomials.
Roses are red, Violets are blue, But the only flower I choose…
After our Start-of-the-Period Routine, my first period sat quietly as we made a foldable together. They asked pertinent questions about the Discriminant as we colored, cut, and took notes on colored paper.
I then gave them options for two different activities, one of which involves walking around the class and submitting answers on digital responders. The instant I put on Pandora[1], the entire class…
…went to work. Every one of them started one of the activities, grabbed whiteboards to show their work, and murmured quiet calculations in pairs or trios.
“Class, please return to your sea-! Oh… never mind.”
I looked around the class for something to do and I noticed…
…they don’t need me.
And that is how I define a successful class.
The class average for the responders was 90%. All that’s missing to make my class complete heaven is Han Solo giving me a high-five.
[1]The Pandora stations that I use for quiet studying are Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Ludovico Einaudi, and City and Colour (make sure explicit content is turned off).
I’ve written before about how teenagers can be stupid. This post addresses how I combat stupidity with procedure.
Let me address a comment:
My goal is a self-starting classroom. It varies year to year, but it’s pretty consistently what you see below (the black portions remain unchanged day to day, and I write today’s agenda between the squiggly lines.):
Now let me be clear about two things:
Most of those first items are happening at the same time.
It took many weeks of training to get this to run smoothly without me. My special class still requires much prompting.
I have trained my students (through mind-numbing repetition) to pick up whatever papers are on the table by the door as soon as they enter. If there’s no table there, then they pick up nothing.
Then they sit down–papers in hand–and instructions for those papers are on the board.
After the notebook item is folded and glued, the student writes the assignment in her planner. Once the planner is completed, the student moves it to the side of her desk and begins the warm-up.
NOTE: Three key things are happening in the midst of all this:
Each day, I write the names of three random students on the board (pic below). Once they enter class, theyb without my promptingb discuss with each other who will present each problem, get a small whiteboard, and prepare to explain it to the class.
An eight-minute timer is running. Once the timer hits 0:00, it kills the “walk-in-and-get-started” music and plays a siren. That app can be found here for free or here without ads. The student that presents problem #1 stops the siren and begins.
A student patrols the class with a date stamp and my clipboard. This student date-stamps each planner (once the assignment is written down1) and stamps the assignment that is due today (recording the score on my clipboard).
After the timer hits 0:00, here’s what happens:
Student #1 walks to the front of class, stops the timer, and says, “I have #1. First, subtract _____, then divide ____, then _____. The answer is _____. Any questions?”
Class waits for questions, thinking silently, “One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi, Three-Mississippi” then applauds for #1, who erases the board and returns to his/her seat
Student #2 stands and presents theirs in the same way.
After clapping for number two2, presenter #3 stands and teaches the class #3.
After the Warm-up, students take guesses at the Jeopardy question of the day.
Also, you can see the breakdown of the class roles for the day.
There’s no pedagogical reason for this. It’s just fun. It only takes 15-30 seconds and is totally worth it. I’m an adult, and still interested in learning fun, useless stuff.
Next comes Good Things; I play a 45-second clip of this song and students chat with each other about “Good Things” going on in their lives. When the song ends, I pick three students to share a “good thing” with the class. Then we clap, because life is good.
As the clapping dies down, I cue the “Take out today’s assignment” song and switch to the document camera. I show the answers and ask for questions, every day reminding the students, “If you copy, copy on a separate page so you can try the problems later to see if you were correct.”
Then I read aloud the goal of the day and advance slides to the Daily Doozyb a college-level problem on the today’s topic. More on that here.
While the Doozy still echoes in their heads, I prompt the next thing that we’re doing3, and our class starts. From start to finish, our pre-lesson routine runs between 15-20 minutes. (…though I should mention that it takes about a half-hour during the first week of school.)
Not only does the routine give me time to fine-tune anything for the day, but it provides a consistent routine and alternate voice of authorityB for the students.
I cannot emphasize enough how important this is: I’m not the one directing them to begin.
Instead of, “Mark, please sit down and take out your planner.” I can say, “Anna, what is everyone else doing right now?”
Or even better, “Damien, the song’s over.”
All of which let the class weed out and re-direct the black sheep.
In closing, I didn’t do all of this at once. I started with one or two things in August, then every few days added a song or another item.
Questions? For quickest response, ask on Twitter or via email.
1 The date stamp is mostly for the parents. The parent says, “He doesn’t write down the homework.” And I say, “Bull Pucky. Here’s a stamp with the date. You just weren’t checking it.” 2 Much like my wife and I will do, when we potty-train our baby. 3 This could be notes, Algebra Tiles, a short video, whatever. By this point in the class, whatever garbage happened during lunch or the passing period has faded to the back of their minds.
Today, my iPad class all got trained in DropBox, the online file-sharing service.
One student got a tough lesson.
Embarrassing, like the time I asked Mitt if his full name was Mittens.
All students downloaded the app and signed in with the same email and password. If you’re interested, click here to see how and why.
During the installation process, I specifically said, “Click LOGIN, then wait and do nothing.”
One student clicked ALLOW AUTO UPLOAD and a few dozen of her picturesB uploaded to the class folder. A nicer teacher would have quickly deleted them.
Guess who didn’t?
The whole class could see my iPad mirrored on the screen as I scrolled through OneDirection, Justin Bieber and a few of her self-portraits with duckface.
The student was, of course, mortified as I showed how easy it is to save a picture of Bruno Mars and use it as my background.
I’m an educator. Today, I taught about online privacy.
(Credit to my brother for the Romney joke. It made the debates adorable.)
Given that I recently sent a link to this website to my administrators and other higher-ups, the following post may be unwise.
… but if you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you know that I will take that risk every time, even if falling on my face is likely.
I had to choose between this quote or one from the football coach’s office.
In a recent reading, a fellow Twittee and digital colleague lamented that her students appeared to be seeking her help at home, instead of consulting the myriad of resources on the internet, in the study guide, or in the damn book.
In reading that, I (and, I’m sure, many other educators) chuckle, saying to ourselves:
Every year these children get dumber. Why, I had a student once that asked me if we were having a fire drill while the alarm was going off! He works in politics now.
Then, ShaunaB finished the writing with:
Advice/Criticism is welcome.
On the internet? That’s brave of you.
Dear Shauna,
A piece of this frustrating puzzle that you didn’t mention is the adolescence of our students. Try as we may, we can’t make that puny frontal lobe develop any quicker, so every year, we will have stupefied students sputter, “Wait, we have a test today?”
And every year, we must grind our molars and say, “Yes. Check your planner, we wrote it in there last week.”
We can all relate to your sentiment:
Really, kid? You’re an honors student who can’t use the index in the book? Or the syllabus from August that has the outline w/ chapter references? Or the wiki which has it sectioned off for you? Or the handouts I made that said “CHI-SQUARED (CH 26)” at the top?
I know it helps my mood some to list the litany of things that we have done to prepare the student to tackle this problem without our help. But alas, Adolescents are, by their very nature,
stupid.
Exhibit A
I don’t teach at your school, but I bet that your students ALSO spend their lunch money on Gatorade and Hot Chee-tos.
They also know the names of each member of OneDirection, but don’t know their zip code.
They think that the capital of Montana is Hannah. Every period.
Some of mine even think that Katy Perry was the first American woman in space.
I majored in Youth Ministry and Adolescent Development in college, so it’s probably easier for me to smile when I hear dumb adolescent junk like that. But even I get tired of, “Wait, we had homework last night?”
or my favorite: “What are we doing?”
Which is asked immediately after I explain the instructions and say, “go”.
Huh…Ba…*sigh* Ask your neighbor.
When we decided to teach teenagers, we agreed to daily wield a double-edged sword: we teach teenagers who have baby-sized, undeveloped brains and grown-up looking bodies. They look like they are adults, but they’re not. Every year, they will be stupid and every year, we have to make them a little smarter.
And only some of that is the math.
So be encouraged–Shauna, parents, and teachers–they were stupid when you got them and they will be slightly less stupid after they leave.
Grinding teeth and rubbing temples along with you,
~Matt Vaudrey
P.S. If you are a student and stumbled on this website, don’t read the previous several paragraphs.
In one of my favorite TV shows, Dr. Gaius Baltar is called in to help with questioning a prisoner. He says, “You’ve tried the stick; it’s time to try the carrot.”
That was me two months ago.
But, you know… without the creepy smirk.
Not just sick of detentions, tardies, phone calls, and discipline, I was sick of the time and energy I was giving to the students who earned it the least.
Outside the frame, 29 obedient students are NOT getting the teacher’s attention.
It took my wife to point it out. The conversation went like this:
Vaudrey: I have six students that are consistent behavior problems. If each one gets a warning, a conference outside, and a detention, that’s 18 things.
Hot Wife: Why just send them out right away?
Vaudrey: Well, that’s not fair to those kids. I have to go through my steps.
Hot Wife: Well, it’s not exactly fair to the rest of your students that their education is interrupted by distractors. Also, those rotten kids are getting all of your attention.
Truth Bomb.
So I went to observe another teacher in the district who has SDC students for math support all day. These are students who ALL struggle with math, and a myriad of behavior issues come with it.
She awards her students with poker chips when they are on task.
Let’s just stop there–that’s the change that I made.
Yes, I know that Alfie Kohn wouldn’t be a big fan of a rewards-based system for discipline. Sorry, Alfie–this worked.
Also, not a mathematician.
A roll of tickets is cheaper for me than poker chips, so I went with that. I prepped each class on how the tickets would be awarded and jumped in.
The bell rings, I do a round of tickets for those already on the warm-up.
I play the Notes Song, I do a round of tickets right when it ends to students already noting.
During classwork, I do a round of tickets to those focused.
I started noticing signs of on-task-ness that I hadn’t before: A pencil in hand is the best example.
Fast forward four weeks to today, a minimum day before winter break. Auction Day.
Like this, but with less Levis.
I printed a list of auction items, brought in a cowboy hat (don’t all auctioneers wear those?), and displayed the items attractively on the wall.
I laid down a fairness rule: One item per student.
Then we went to town. This was the highlight:
Ryan (yes, that Ryan) proclaiming, “I’m finna git that Gatorade!” Then, after a student bid four tickets, Ryan screamed, “Thirty-nine!” Then he drank the entire 32 ounces in about 3 minutes. Pointing to his distended stomach, he boasts, “Look! I’m all pregnant!”
Improvements for the next Auction (which will probably be in six weeks):
Use Poker Chips instead.
Which means: Buy individual student bags and one bin per period for those bags to be stored.
Assign a Banker to collect and pass out the bags at the beginning and end of class.
Multiple auction items per student? Maybe.
No poker chips changing hands during the auction. Savvy students who wanted two items gave their tickets to another student and said, “Get those glowsticks for me!”
Kick out students that disrupt. I wanted so badly for this to be fun for everyone that I just spoke louder and louder. I know–I realize how silly it is. But it’s the day before winter break; they were probably going to be difficult anyway.
Some kind of activity to keep those busy who already bought an item. (See previous bullet)
In case anyone is interested, here are the coupons I used.
I added that last line to the slide because I had 4 or 5 students who finished the Daily Doozy and proclaim, “That wasB easy!” I reminded them that it probably isn’t easy forB allB the students. Instead, they can proclaim, “My, what an appropriate challenge!”
I do declare!
UPDATE 17 April 2013: Per Dan’s request, hereB are a few more.
