Today, we had an exercise in hype and entertainment, and it didn’t even feel like work.
First period, I taught this:
Figure 1: INSTANT engagement for students
The prescribed curriculum has me teach this way:
Angles 1 and 2 are supplementary angles, Angle 2 = 40B0
Angles 2 and 10 are alternate interior angles, Angle 10 =B 40B0
Angles 8, 9, and 10 make a straight angle, Angle 8 = 60B0
Angles 8 and 11 are alternate interior angles, Angle 11 = 60B0
Oooo. Ahhh.
Instead, we did this:
Pass out a ton of triangles, all different shapes. Students cut them out and label the angles. Colored paper helps. Shading the angle helps also for students who have a hard time identifying the vertex.
First, tear off angle A and align its vertex onto the vertex of the straight angle, then the angle side on the side of the straight angle.
Do the same thing with angle B.
Students now have a little gap, as you can see here:
Now, the next part is very important, so I’ll explain it step by step:
1.) Clap your hands loudly and jump on a desk. Sweep your hand over the class and declare, “Magic has arrived!” in a triumphant tone.
2.) You likely have the students’ attention now.
3.) In the same majestic voice, announce, “At this point… every page in the class has a different triangle* with angles labeled differently. All of us have a gap between the two angles.
With my magic powers… I predict… (roll your Rs; it really sets the mood) B that your one remaining angle will fit perfectly between the other two… go!”
4.) Students fit the third angle between the first two, then exclaim with wonder and throw roses at your feet. Third period gave a standing ovation and asked how long I was in town. One girl is bringing her parents to the matinee tomorrow.
5.) Explain that they can perform the same trick at home, and you’ll give away your secret right now: The sum of all the angles inB any triangle is always 180B0, just like the straight line upon which they are perched.
See? Wasn’t that better than this?
Figure 2: Reading an owner’s manual about magic.
To be fair, we went actually tackled the above problem after the magic show, but–and you can quote me on this–it’s way easier to hold students’ focus when there is magic involved.
*There were only 12 different triangles, but I didn’t tell them how to label the angles, so the odds are one in 144 that two students had the same situation.
There’s a lot happening in and around my class, specifically with regard to the students’ 20% Projects, so how about I just tell you what I told him.
The TED talk notes on Stage Presence were in conjunction with prepping my iPad class on their 20% projects. I got the idea from Kate Acker, who had her seniors watch TED videos on mute, making observations on stage presence only.
As you may imagine, about 20% of the notes were potent (a fitting ratio), but it led to a good class discussion with a few students declaring their intent.
“I’m gonna make sure to look at the audience!”
“Can I walk around the room? Sweet!”
What I neglected to mention to Robert (until now) is how the shared Note-taking thing worked (and how it worked out).
Shared Note-Taking
1.) This class has 1:1 iPads. They had previously downloaded the Google Drive app and logged in with one of my Gmail accounts (created specifically for this purpose).
2.) All students open Google Drive and open the spreadsheet that I had previously created for them. As you can see, student names run down the left, name of the speaker runs across the top.
3.) With 17 students all active on the same spreadsheet, it gets a little glitchy. Toward the end, some students are getting frustrated, insisting “Franz deleted my note!”.
4.) Only 17 students (out of the 22) are participating on their iPads, because two students have theirs confiscated pending a parent conference. One is absent, and one is lazy; she sits vacantly at her seat until I poke her with a pencil, at which point, she mumbles, “I can’t log in.” Super.
5.) The resulting notes (spread over a couple days) give us fodder for a class discussion on stage presence. I highlight a few boxes that interest me and we talk about them. Hopefully, they’ll take them to heart when we do a rehearsal next Wednesday.
As long as I’m hoping for things…
~Matt “100 by 100” Vaudrey
*It’s also notable here that I first heard of shared note-taking at the CUE conference in a session by Bill Selak.
…whew!.. all those links… I gotta catch my breath.
This post is actually more about Productivity, a math game that I acquired my first year teaching and still use every year.
Productivity:
Each pair or trio of students gets the worksheet and a deck of cards, and we walk through the first one together.
…and I stack the deck so there’s a face card in the example.
on the board, it says something like this:
It’s a fabulous activity for a sub (once they’ve done it before) and a great way to get some math done on a minimum day or the last day before a break.
Extensions:
EveryB n minutes, change the green numbers.
After a group finishes one side, they are slow to do the same thing. I tell them, “Now you can change the order of the cards before you write them down.”
Today, I took a risk. I’ll present it to you in the same way I told my 6th period (who all have iPads).
The Intro
“That was the bell. Sit. Fergie; you didn’t ask if you could get water. Sit. Maria, eyes over here.
[Dramatic Pause] Today… you will begin… for the first time… ever… your Twenty. Percent. Project.”
A couple “huh?”s, a chuckle, then a few started clapping. The whole class gave a round of applause for something they knew nothing about.
This is clearly a safe class to take risks.
Accustomed as I am to a class full of adoring, applauding adolescents, I waited until their awe subsided and I said, “Go ahead. Ask me.”
In unison, they chimed, “What’s a 20% project?”
Akin to Kate Petty, I said, “You’ve got iPads. Figure it out. Do some Googling.”
So they did. After about 12 minutes, I killed the mood music and asked, “Okay; what did you find out?”
Belinda: It’s a Google thing.
Louie: It involves 20% of the time.
Kathy: No kidding!
Harrison: [reading off the screen] Employees will dedicate twenty percent of the work day toward–
Vaudrey: BORED! Somebody else, who isn’t going to read it.
Robert: Research?
Destiny: Like… um… you look up stuff that isn’t part of school.
Vicki: [reading] Students will create a proposal and a presentation–
Vaudrey: BORED! Somebody else, summarize what you’re reading.
Vicki: Hey, you didn’t say ‘summarize’.
Louie: We research anything we want?
Vaudrey: Let’s watch a video.
I had previously searched YouTube and–what luck!–found Kevin Brookhouser‘s video showing 5-10 second chunks of his students’ 20% presentations.
Vaudrey: Okay, what did you see?
Fergie: Novels.
Vicki: Cookbooks.
Nadia: Music.
Vasily: Raising money for cancer.
Buzz: Tutoring.
As veteran teachers will tell you, there’s a fine line between baiting the hook and stringing them along. One of them gets them interested, the other gets them frustrated. This group was approaching the threshold. Time to bring it home.
Vaudrey: For 20% of our week–every Friday–you get to learn about whatever you want. You get to pick something that interests you and learn about it.
Kathy: Anything we want?
Vaudrey: Anything that is interesting to you… and school-appropriate.
Two idiots: Awww!
Vicki: Like… what do you mean?
It’s notable that Kate and Kevin executed this project with 16-18 year-old students. My students are 11-13 and in a Math Support class (with iPads as part of the strategy). Developmentally, it was unlikely that they would understand the concept without some prodding and leading.
Vaudrey: Okay, Vicki. What’s something that interests you?
Vicki: Soccer.
Vaudrey: What about soccer?
Vicki: Um… the cleats.
Vaudrey: Keep going.
Vicki: Like… how are they made? Some are made from carbon fiber.
Vaudrey: That sounds like something that you could research and then teach us about.
Louie: We have to present this?
Vaudrey: Yup. At the end of the Trimester to parents and teachers.
[Cries of distress and gnashing of teeth]
Vaudrey: …but the final product isn’t graded. You’re graded on your work along the way.
[Blank, confused stares. I’ve hit the overload. Time for some exploration.]
Vaudrey: Take the next 15 minutes. Do some research on something that is interesting to you. What do you want to learn about?
And they were off. After checking with a couple groups, I was stoked. Photography, engine design, taking risks as a professional athlete, anime, sound engineering, art therapy; they were diving in, and it was pretty sweet.
Also, there were a couple of these:
Vaudrey: What do you have so far?
Anna: Nothing.
Vaudrey: Okay. What’s something that interests you?
Anna: Nothing.
Vaudrey: Okay. What’s something that you like?
Anna: Nothing.
[I wait and stare at her until she cracks]
Anna: I donno… like… music?
Vaudrey: Okay. What about music is interesting?
Anna: I don’t know.
Vaudrey: What’s on your iPod right now?
Anna: Songs.
I’ll have mercy and spare you the rest, but there’s probably a reason that this project is done with high school students instead of middle-schoolers.
Same reason that we let the dough rise for a while before we make pizza out of it.
Questions I Didn’t Expect
Beatrice: Are we allowed to change it up?
Vaudrey: Uhh… sure.B Because you’re probably having a hard time committing to one thing and you’re more likely to lighten up if it’s temporary in your head.
Vicki: Some of those students were in pairs or teams. Can we work in teams?
Vaudrey: Once you’ve decided what you’re researching, you might pair up, yes.
James: Mark! Me and you!
Vaudrey: Nope. That’s not how it works. Stop. Stop pointing at each other. If two people are interested in the same thing, then I might group you together.
Anna: We can’t pick our own groups?
Vaudrey: No.
Anna: Why not?
Vaudrey: I forget. Whose class is this?
Students: Mister Vaudrey’s class.
Vaudrey: So who is the boss, the divine ruler, the king?
Proletariat students: You are, sir.
Louie: Can I do SpongeBob?
Vaudrey: What about that is interesting?
Louie: Uh…why’s he so happy?
Vaudrey: Well… that’s a silly question. I could answer that with 4 minutes of searching on the Nickelodeon website.
Louie: Awwwww, What?
Vaudrey: Also, if you pick an easy thing, I’m going to make sure that you still have to work hard.
Louie: Oh. I’ll pick something else.
Vaudrey: Good idea.
Recent days at work have been great. The first month of school was tough; within the top 3 frustrating Augusts of my teaching career, but recent developments (and freedom to do whatever I want with 6th period) have freed me from the chains of canned curriculum, and given my tethered wings…
Much like when I was in college, the online courses don’t command my attention unless I pick time during the week to dedicate to them.
As a result, I’m a little behind in the How to Learn Maths course by Stanford professor Jo Boaler, though it’s not from lack of solid material.
(Truth be told, I had a busy weekend and had a lot on my mind.)
To that end, I’m posting here my Concept Map (not really) for the discussion of why students are averse to maths education.
As you can see, the Easy and Practical maths (Quadrant I, top right) are brightest because they’re easiest and quickest to consume. While I can’t speak for the U.K. or other areas, the United States is very interested in quick consumption and disposal with no lasting effect.
…this extends to their math as well.
Quadrant I holds maths that are quickly calculated using simple formulas and requiring no greater understanding of mathematics. These are especially appealing to American teenagers; the Big Mac of maths, if you will.
Quadrant II (top left) is math that is easy to grasp, but not typically applicable to real life. Many of the 3-Acts fall into this category, and that’s okay.
Quadrant IV (bottom right) is math that is easy to do, but won’t be used often in real life. If it can be done easily in Excel or Google Sheets, it goes here.
And the student interest fades with the colors as we travel to Quadrant III (bottom left) where math is difficult, uninspiring, and never used again after the course.
I asked my (physician) father if I should take Calculus 2 and 3 in college. He responded, “Only if you want a job as a very narrow form of geek.”
Today, we had Day 2 of the Mullet Ratio. The best part of sharing digital media with other math teachers is the constant improvement of lessons. Today, I pulled in a bunch of ideas from last year’s comments, threw in some Photoshop, and had a pretty good day.
As many of you know, my fourth Period is Algebra Concepts, which means its students require more scaffolding and more explicit directions, plus usually some modeling.
And white space. Oh, man; that’s the best advice I ever got about worksheet making. Fawn Nguyen has excellent worksheets, not just because they challenge students to think conceptually, one accessible step at a time. Also, because they have a ton of white space.
Two years ago, I had a student named Ricky. Every day, Ricky would regale the class with the bountiful meals that his mom would prepare. One day, it went like this:
Ricky: Last night, my mom made spaghetti tacos.
Vaudrey: Huh? That sounds terrible.
Ricky: No, they’re sooooo good! Do you like spaghetti?
Vaudrey: Yes.
Ricky: And tacos?
Vaudrey: …yes…
Ricky: That’s what it is! Two great things that are even better together!
Today, I ripped off two great blog posts, added a few sprinkles of my own “marinara” and had some pretty tasty learning for a Friday.
First, we discussed square roots and squares in terms of Cheese crackers, based on a sweet idea from Julie Reulbach. I modified the worksheetB to include a horizontal number line and a couple more columns for Perimeter and Area.
(This is a good spot to mention that I teach 8th grade, not 6th grade like Julie does. Plus I have a mixture of RSP students, discipline problems, and students who blow through any activity in half the time that I expected.)
Like the three men in this picture, respectively. (Clockwise)
We started by discussing measurements, and agreed that “cracker length” would be our standard measurement. Perimeter and Area aren’t hit very hard in our Algebra curriculum, but luckily the students remembered them quickly. The steps went like this:
Build a square that is two sides by two sides. How many crackers did you use? What is the perimeter? What is the area?
Now build one that’s three by three. Crackers? Perimeter? Area?
Roam the class, make sure that students aren’t making 3×2 rectangles.
Briefly discuss the difference between square and rectangle, begin to dive deep into quadrilaterals.
Realize that there are 19 days left and your Algebra students aren’t interested in the intricacies of polygon classification.
And it takes a special teacher to make “five interior right angles” interesting.
Around the time we got to building 4×4 squares out of cheese crackers, students were generalizing patterns all over the room.1 Here is some student chatter:
The perimeter is just four times the side length.
The number of crackers is the same as the area!
I need more Cheez Nips! “Can you do the math without them? What patterns do you see?“
This column is just this number times itself.
We just added by fours and got each one.
Do I have to build the cracker square? I can do the math without it.
This is pretty hard work for a Friday.
That last one made me feel good. I was worried about taking a 6th grade concept and porting it to my Algebra class, but it was surprisingly effective.
Especially with this:
This is the latest edition to my EduArsenal: the Yeti microphone by Blue. I plugged this bad boy into my classroom’s Macbook Air and voilC !
An instant video studio in the class, and I’m the director.
Less than half the videos actually got made. Here’s why:
The students wanted to make sure they understood the concept, so they rehearsed for several minutes and ran out of time to record.
How sweet is that?
Also, we followed the cracker activity with the Showdown.
Stolen–again–from Julie’s website, it’s just a bunch of quick square root practice. I threw in a one-on-one faceoff and give it a name like “ShowDown”, and the students are all about it.
Frantically scribbling roots on whiteboards, shouting and yelling, and debating each other; it was magical.
Even the fourth period–who is usually slow to jump on board with discussions–was arguing with each other over the fine points of simplifying radicals:
“No, look! If you have TWO of the same ones in the … thingy, then it’s just one of ’em!”
Close enough. I’ll take it.
Post-Script
Today, I didn’t have time forB this idea–from Sarah Hagan–to estimate square roots. It can be done on a low-tech scale with dice at students’ desks, but a SmartBoard could make it into a Showdown.
Of which–of course–I’m a fan.
Julie emphasized the estimation of square roots, while I was content to work on square numbers. Monday, we do Pythagorean Theorem, and I wantedB a day some food and a fun activity.
Because there are 19 days left. Judge me if you must.
I have enough content in my head to talk about this project for hours.
Read the whole thing, and you’ll be rewarded with a ton of shared docs at the end (feel free to skip the reading and go straight there).
1. Pre-Game
As I posted a month ago, my students have been working on a half-hour lesson to be “Teacher 4 a Day”. The big state test is next week, and instead of blowing through 60+ sample test questions, I opted for depth of learning this year instead of breadth.
In past years, the “review everything” approach only served to remind the kids how much they’ve forgotten and overwhelm them.
Many students came in before school, after school, and during lunch to get advice, build presentations, and prepare worksheets. The filled in lesson plans, timing maps, and goal sheets, they prepared quizzes, and they got really nervous (some of them).
Do I have to dress up? What if I don’t have a dress? Can I wear a burka? Oh, God!
IfB students are the teachers in Mr. Vaudrey’s class, so then Mr. Vaudrey would be the…
“Bro, can I have summa those Hot Chee-Tos?”
I dressed like a middle school student and sat in the back of the class while the “teachers” led the lesson.
“My dad bought the new Call of Duty yesterday.”
The assistant principal (with whom I checked for Dress Code Violations each day) advised that I model perfect student behavior, even though I dressed like many of the kids that spend time in her office.
“Marco! … Hey! … Marco! … Text me!”
With my iPad and a seat in the back row, I opened up the grading Form I built earlier and behaved like a polite student.
Each group started by reading this:
Predictably, some groups attempted to do the minimum. Two boys on the first day half-heartedly wrote a sample problem in the corner of the whiteboard, talked about it, then assigned practice problems for the students. The “lesson” itself was no more interactive than a Khan Academy video, and they completely omitted the quiz. The group before them was no better.
I made a point to regroup and discuss, and after that period, I “put them on blast“.
Vaudrey: What are some good things you saw today and some things you would change? Hillary: Having a PowerPoint helped a lot. Fiona: Yeah, it kept the class focused. Ariel: When the class is doing something, they aren’t as noisy. Vaudrey: Yep. What are some things you would change?
[Silence] Vaudrey: You don’t wanna put anybody on blast? Class: Nope. Vaudrey: Okay, then I will. I’m not impressed so far. [gasps] Natalie and Amayrany, you guys clearly prepared and worked hard ahead of time. Nice work, well done. You other guys, however, could have done much better. You had three days in class and two weeks of Spring Break, and the best you could do was example problems on the whiteboard? You all have iPads, and I saw none of them today. Step it up.
I put on my best “Mitt Romney when asked about taxes” face.
Parents and teachers reading this will note that verbalizing one’s disappointment is one way to galvanize students to action. When I said iPads, two students in the back fist-bumped. My emphasis on hard work may have been a bit overzealous; one student wouldn’t get her Powerpoint to open and wept in frustration. She got an extra day.
3. The “Best Of”
This student had a sound cue to play a b quiz songb . Clearly, my own musical cues have made an impact.Friendly color scheme. Can’t go wrong.This group did research and found the SWBAT acronym, AND they read it out loud: “Students will be able to…” I was impressed.Occasional groups had hidden mistakes within their lesson. Some rolled with it better than others. It took about 4 minutes for this group to notice the problem was “unfactorable”.iPad students figured out how Google Image Search works.This was the solo project of one student whose partner did nothing. Despite the poor grammar, she absolutely nailed it, and I called her house to rave about it. I’m so proud, especially because she and I had lots of discipline issues earlier in the year.
Other highlights from the presentations:
“Mr. Vaudrey, I don’t see how you like this [teaching].”
“I noticed how Abby was strict and the class got quiet. The other two were giggling and the class was loud.”
“Since the discriminant is negative there is no solution… well, no real solution.”
“Oh, so they can talk during the quiz, but when I talk, I get in trouble?”
“Raise your hand and wait until I call on you! Don’t shout at me! I can give you a marker if you raise your hand!”
“You kids wanna try me today, huh?”
“You sassin’ the teacher?”
“You are not the brightest apple in the bunch.”
“If you’re talking during my quiz, that’s a zero. Yeah. I’m lookin’ straight at you.”
“No talking during the quiz.” “I wasn’t talking, I was singing.”
“If I see you talking, that’s a F!”
“My word is law! No bathroom breaks!”
Obviously, some students hammed it up with a captive audience, and several became drunk with power quickly. One “teacher” even called the principal to deal with an unruly student, which later spawned a great class discussion about a teacher managing his/her own discipline in-house.
I was giddy the entire week, sitting in the back row in Converse hi-tops watching the slow dawning of enlightenment on each student. Most of them said, at some point, “Mr. Vaudrey,B this is hard.”
“That’s right.” I replied. “And how long did you plan for your 30-minute lesson? I teach 90 minutes every day, several times.”
“Oh, man!”B Their eyes widened, “I don’t think I could do that.”
I’m sending these kiddos to high school in 34 school days, and they will have a new respect for their teachers.
4. Teacher Materials & Execution
Click here for the folder on my Google Drive with everything in it. They’re named below, instead of linked.
If you use it, please let me know. I’m curious if my effort to share this will be worth it.
Here’s the order:
First, distribute a list of the learning goals for the year. (This list was already changing a week after its inception. Modify it to fit your class.) Most students picked easy stuff from the single digits, or stuff from Quadratics (the most recent unit we covered). Next year: do this project before EVERY test. For the year-end lessons, force a spread of learning goals.
Next, I passed out the project description with the rubric. Students filled in how they would deliver the “Direct Instruction”, what the “Guided Practice” would be, and which “Exit Quiz” questions they would use. The following day, I passed out the lesson plan form. The Timing Breakdown came the following week. Next year: model the timing in columns during one of my lessons. “What am I doing right now? What are you doing right now?
Once all students had settled into planning their lessons, I built the Presentation Schedule so each student knew which day they were presenting (though one still managed to arrive to class with nothing done, lamenting “I’m goin’ today?!“). The Tutoring Sign-up was posted on my door. Next year: During in-class work, visit groups as they work and go through their lesson with them.
The day after they presented, each group completed a Peer Grading formB to assess somebody else’s lesson. The Grading Schedule details which day they grade. The iPad students completed the form online, linked from my skeleton Google Site (which I am still too ashamed to link). Also on that dreadful site is the Teacher Grading form that I used to grade each group.
Next week, all students will head to a computer class and complete the Partner Analysis form to discretely and secretly grade their partner. I predict some scathing reviews from fourth period.
Finally, I’m still developing an algorithm to grade each project as accurately as possible. I’m certain that it’s not worth the effort I’m spending, but it’s fun and I like doing it, so get off my back.
@MrVaudrey vV+pP+sS+aA divided by 4, where v, p, s, a are different weights?
Even today, I’ve been editing rubrics and spreadsheets and forms. We never arrive.
Let me know what you think of all this. I worked very hard on this project, and it improved with every minute of student presentation. I’ll post an update once I’ve arrived on a grading setup.
