Hot Glue Hot Hassle

Hmph! Way back in forever this year, I was so excited about finding something that finally worked to put things up on the walls - hot glue. I tested it out; I put some on the wall; I waited; it didn't fall down; the next day it peeled off easily. I was set to hot glue to my heart's content.

This week, the chickens have come home to roost ... or the eggs have hatched in the basket ... or the 2 bushes ... or hands ... or whatever.

It's TAKS week (tres exciting), and so everything that is mathy or school-y must come off the walls in my room and in the hallways. I had posters of Thomas Edison. I had smaller paper posters of logic problems. I had globs of hot glue that stuck to the stucco, and still remains long after the papers are gone.

It is now my daily meditation: I will chisel off at least 4 globs per day until they are all gone. Hmmmm, math problem, If Ms. D. put up ___ this many posters and used 4 globs per poster and there are about 5 weeks left of school and she wants to tackle 4 globs a day, will she be done by summer? Follow up question. For the love of all things scholastic, is there anything out there that will stay up and not peel off the paint and be easy to remove? Bonus points for a correct answer.

Ackh! I just realized I have WAY more globs than that. There are still tons of "artsy" things in my room that have been globbed on. Depressed. Must. Administer. Ice Cream. Therapy.

Multitasking

I told one of my classes today that I was going to put up a poster listing my additional fees for duties ON TOP OF MY teaching them math. Then I would send their parents the bill. We all laughed and moved on, but seriously people.

You can probably guess one of the myriad of situations that caused this statement.

Here's my idea:

Circle Equation Exploration on GeoGebra

Tomorrow my students will learn how to graph circles on the coordinate plane. I was JUST about to do my usual "lecture/Socratic-questions/practice approach" when I stopped myself short and remembered GeoGebra. That was a close one. I haven't tested it out yet, but here's the first draft:

New World Order

Before
Students would start a question or a statement or an answer with one of the following:
* This is probably stupid, but ...
* I'm probably wrong, but ...
* This may be a dumb question, but ...
* I'm probably insane, but ...

And I would either inwardly roll my eyes or widen them and wait for them to continue.

Now
Students start a question/statement with the same as above.

My new response: "start over".
(repeat as often as needed until the demeaning preface is omitted).

Smaller Learning Communities...

Probably like many high schools around, we have a version of "smaller learning communities" where students choose a pathway and take a course or two along that pathway track in addition to their other core courses. In this way, possibly they travel to the same teachers (in some larger schools), and have a focus for their studies.

When I'd first heard of this, and young teens picking "majors" in high school, my impression was, "right! I didn't know what I really wanted to be until I was in my 30's. How are they going to decide?". Then when I heard testimonials from students that had been through such programs, I had a shift of thinking, "okay, they may not ultimately pick this as a career, but isn't it nice to test it out now in HS and know instead of paying time and money in college and THEN change your mind."

I had a conversation with one of my students who is in the engineering track at our school. She said something to the effect of, "they shoved this down our throats, and I don't want to be an engineer." She went on about the 'other' things she wanted to do, but her "shoving" comment stuck in my craw. Partially, I think she was just pushing buttons for effect, but partially, maybe she felt that way.

I had another way to explain it to her. Think about buying a dress. You can't just go home after picking it off the hanger and have it fit perfectly. You have to go in the dressing room and try it on first and look this way and that, and THEN make the decision. Maybe you buy it and maybe you don't. That's sort of what you're doing here. You're in the dressing room for your future career.

Coi-cles

Is anyone else panicking that there are less class days left than what you comfortably need to do a good job on all you have left (or want) to teach? Sometimes I'm going along, and then if I get up the nerve, I look at how many non-interrupted-by-other-things classes we have left and compare that to content time needed. SCARY.

Anyway, we started circles just the other day. In true girly fashion, I had them make a foldable that gives the notes in question form on the outside flap and answers (chord, tangent, minor arc, etc) on the inside of the flap.

Some Always, Sometimes, Never, True, False questions that came up:
1. All chords are congruent. (TF?)
2. A chord can contain a diameter. (ASN?)
3. A chord can contain a radius. (ASN?)
4. Concentric circles are similar. (ASN?)
5. If 2 segments are tangent to a circle, then they are congruent (TF?)

And, I made up a new quiz. (Obviously, you can just enter a fake name. I have this so that elsewhere I can know which of my students have taken the quiz.):

Circle Terminology & Practice » exam software

What If You're Awesome, And You Don't Know It?

At my 1st teaching gig in central New Jersey, I taught at a newly opened school in a great district. We started out as only a 9th grade campus in 1997 where the kids fed into the "other" high school. Then the 2nd year, we were 9th and 10th, and again the kids fed into the "other" high school. Eventually, we were a full 9-12 school and fed ourselves.

In those 6 years I taught there, we started out with 6 or 7 math teachers and became pretty close. They showed me daily/monthly/yearly examples of what an awesome teacher and an awesome/sharing math department looked like. I'm still really good friends with 2 of them (hey! let's visit each other once a year or two) (even though none of us are at that school or in NJ any more) and keep in Christmas/birthday card contact with 3 of the other teachers.

Anyway, what does this have to do with this post? Eh .... only indirectly because one of the HS teachers shared this story with me one time about one year when she was teaching 4th grade, and she described it as a "magical year". She clicked with the kids, they did cool projects, they gelled, the kids loved her, she loved them, and amazing learning went on, etc. (FYI she told me this story because at that time, I taught a 9th grader that had been in her 4th grade class). Anyway, this is one phrase I always remember: "magical year".

Side note: maybe some people right now are making a goofy face and and saying, "yeah! I got your magical year, lady." because you're at a struggling school or have non-cooperating-in-some-way students or whatever. Feel your pain. Been there at other times. Sorry. Hugs. Enough about you.

Back to me.

So, you see where I'm going with this. This year. In my IED (engineering class). I'm having a magical year. Have I mentioned this before? I yap about it all the time in "real life". The kids in there are smart. They work hard. They ask great "what if" questions. They push me to be better and deliver better. We go beyond the curriculum and explore, just because we want to learn and do and be. They're MUCH smarter and harder working and savvy than I was at that age. In my mind they are rock stars.

And so I think that's obvious to them. Let's see. 14 years of teaching. Approximately 120 (rough rough rough) kids per year. Ish. 120 x 14 = 1680 kids. Yeah, I can get a general feel for average and above average students. It's a no-brainer to me that they are above average. I think of them as poised and self-confident and bla bla bla.

Well. I don't think they think so or know so. Which has altered my reality. Note that these are freshmen. Fourteen to fifteen years old. I have such a high opinion of them that it doesn't always register with me that they've had a limited view of the world. Here are 2 things that have happened lately.

First: a few of them were having trouble with another teacher. Long story short, they felt intimidated in class and stupid and not worthy for various reasons. .... What?! This is SO not the population I thought would feel "unsmart".

Second: today in IED we were having a visit to get nationally certified as a PLTW program. That means that a gentleman came for the day and put us under the microscope and asked questions and probed adults and students and counselors, etc. So. He was in my 9th grade class and talked with various students, and I saw him talking to one of my amazing girls and didn't think anything of it. Come to find out later. She told the other PLTW teacher that she was so nervous and intimidated when he was asking her questions about her classwork and such. Hah! In my mind, I was all, "Score! He's talking to one of my superstars. We'll look great! She'll be great!". And here all this time she's probably thinking, "oh no! Big scary adult talking to me. Nervous!"

She's awesome and doesn't know it. How does that slip past you? But then when I ask that question, the answer is obvious. As a person, you only have your point of view and how you act and how you think things should be done. You just think it's business as usual. There's probably other people around you going, "WHOOOOOOO! Superstar!", but they don't mention that to the person because they think it's a no brainer, and the Superstar MUST know they're great ..... so maybe no one ever TELLS them they're great ..... it's like if a person has brown hair, no one ever goes around and thinks to mention, "hey! Do you know you have brown hair?". They think it's SO obvious it doesn't bear mentioning.

And then there's that OTHER problem where HOW you complement someone affects the outcome. They may just discount your praise with a "yeah, but...." in their heads and not absorb the information.

Anyway, ramble ramble ramble. P.S. we got certified. Yay! And I'm having a magical year with my cute 9th grade IED kidlets. And I have to think of a way to get them to know they're phenomenal.

State Test Craziness

Oy! I'll be semi-happier after the April 25 week when our math TAKS tests are over. For the last forever amount of weeks, I've been tutoring 3 sets of kids, once a week, during advisory, strictly for this test. And last Friday some words came out of my mouth to my group of tutees that now have me thinking.

I didn't want them to think they were just in there because we thought they'd have a high chance of failing. That's definitely not the case. And, I guess I'm a product of the "feel good about yourself" school of growing up .... though from what-all I'm reading, I have to think about how I offer THOSE words of praise. So after we went over some material, I said something to the effect of, "okay! we're going for commended!" and I went on with going over problems.

Well, a 10th grader in that group came up to me afterward. She's a diligent, hard-working, come-in-for-tutoring if she thinks she needs it kind of math student. It does not come easily to her at ALL, and I had her last year for algebra and this year for geometry, and I've seen a great improvement in her algebra skills this year after her having time to absorb it.

Anyway, she came up to me and said, I'm really discouraged about this math TAKS. I haven't been commended on the math portion since the 5th grade. She's passed every year, but here we are, a higher performing school, and the message we're encouraged to give is, "don't just PASS, go for commended!". So not getting commended is apparently the new failing for these students. Crap! It didn't occur to me until that moment how students may feel every year when, yes, they may pass, but, oh no, I've let down my teachers by not being commended.

I don't know how successfully, but I told her that one of the main reasons we've been saying that (in my opinion) is to get the kids to try and do their best, and I already see she puts out her effort on every question she goes through, and that's the type of diligence that's going to get her far in the world, not the "oh yay! I passed and got commended on a state test." ... It's even telling that she's stressing about the 10th grade TAKS, and it's not really as high stakes for the kids as the exit level in 11th grade.

Regardless, here's another bad side effect of these tests and what we may seem like we expect from the kids all in the name of some outside random measure of "are we doing our jobs as teachers" test.

Trig and Teaching and Knocking

TEACHING:
Lately I've been noticing in various forms of teaching or discussions about teaching, sometimes the "speaker/blogger/writer", either intentionally or not, conveys the message that, "if you don't do things THIS way, you're doing it wrong!" ... or ... "why in the WORLD would you even CONSIDER teaching so-and-so THAT way, you hack!". Or maybe it's just how I'm reading into things.

I think for the most part we're all trying to do the best job we can, and obviously there's no magic bullet that's going to work for all topics and all days and all teachers all of the time. We (and by "we" I obviously mean "me" because that's obviously who it's all about) should just stop beating ourselves up when someone speaks/writes/communicates how they do something, and it sounds so perfect and rosy, and my (our?) first thought is, "sheesh, THAT person has it all figured out. What's wrong with me?". Okay, my self-pep talk is over.

KNOCKING:
Anti-Joke of the moment I love:

Knock, Knock.
Who's there?
To.
To Who?
To "Whom".

TRIGONOMETRY:
As with all things we do the 1st time through (or maybe it's just me), there are kinks to be worked out with the activity I wrote about last time. The last 2 days I took my students to the computer lab, and they self-taught basic trigonometry ratios with my GeoGebra file and the 4 page packet. I realize I'm fortunate to (this year) have frequent access to a computer lab.

I know that that was one of the BIG reasons before that I didn't like Geometer's Sketchpad or even bother to learn GeoGebra. Once the kids grasped it on the one time a semester I actually got to go to the lab, then they forgot it all the next semester when we could go back, so basically what was the point. I guess that's why I'm liking this GeoGebra, because if a student has computer access at home (and I know that's not always the case), at least this is an extra resource for absorbing things. Anyway, choir .... preaching .... bla bla bla

I would do the activity again next year, but here are some things that happened and how I'd revamp. I teach a 1.5 hour class, and after we went over homework and did another small activity, we had about an hour for this activity ... WAY too little time for them to be set on their own and finish up.

The first thing I changed was I had them cross out 2 of the cases for each of the 6 tables. So they were only checking sin/cos/tan twice for each acute angle. Next year, I think I'd change it even more: check just once total and then check what a neighbor or 2 got and notice.

I also would take out the ratio of sides on my GeoGebra activity. Invariably, once a kid had to fill in column 2, they didn't read very carefully, and just used my #s above, even though they may not be the correct ratio of sides ... but HEY, all the letters started to blend together.

Other than that, with periodic "giddyup-ing" by me in the form of "you have 30 more seconds to finish up to ______". "Okay, the main point of that was _______. Now do the next section." ..... I think it went well ... Especially, since I seem to have lost my voice YET again this year. Chronic sick-fest.

Learning Trigonometry

Now I'm almost ready to start my trigonometry unit. Here is the 4-page self-teaching packet I'll hand my students tomorrow, along with a graphing calculator and an e-mail message that has all the links they need. My goals for them are to be able to: identify opposite and adjacent sides of an angle in a right triangle, find the sine, cosine, and tangent ratios of a triangle given the 3 side lengths, and link these skills to the special triangles they just "learned". Once I make up a homework sheet (or use the textbook), I'm good to go.









Also, on a cheery, vacationy note, here are some Marfa and Fort Davis, Texas pictures from our short Spring Break trip.

Quiz Anyone?

I'm writing up my worksheet to go along with my geogebra "baby trigonometry" applet, and I found I needed/wanted a quiz for them to take online. I couldn't find any with the right number of questions or types of questions, so I made one up. We'll see Monday if it's a success or a stinker.

SO excited about Geogebra

A nice person commented from my last post and showed me some applets she'd made for Geogebra (thank you Lsquared). This must have planted a seed in my mind, because today I was tinkering around with how to start up my trigonometry unit. I went to the Geogebra site. I clicked "download". Then I clicked "Applet Start". I figured my kids don't have downloading capabilities on the school computers, so this would be fine.

I tinkered around with things and came up with this activity. I'm going to make a worksheet that goes with it to guide them through a self teaching, first day of trig, what is sine/cosine/tangent activity. I think some of the questions may even be of the effect of, "set your triangles, set up your calculator just so, press cos ____ (degree shown), compare it to ratio."

I would love feedback on this "non applet". Effective? Hard to manage? Fine?

Note: I tested out opening the file on another computer. It "failed" with Firefox, but worked fine with Explorer. I DID have to change the window size to 200% or something like that. But there is a way to show WHOLE picture.

Anyway! Off to write the worksheet. I'll share. Okay, really off to dinner then Lindy Hop, then Marfa, THEN to write the worksheet.

Spring Break

Phew! I can't tell you what a consistent 9 hours of sleep each night can do for a person ... or maybe I can. I feel great! Here are some pressing activities on my plate:

1. Watch cheesy bad movies on Netflix streaming (Blackbelt Jones, Cherry 2000, ....)
2. Read book(s) (Saving Fish from Drowning)
3. Catch up on grading (test corrections)
4. Sign up for the Digital Electronics STI workshop for PLTW (soooooo excited)
5. Prep myself for the Cardboard Chair Project for my engineering class (design, test, create a cheap durable cardboard chair for a dorm room ... cool "hook" video)
6. Prep myself for my PBL unit (project based learning) of trigonometry
7. Take a blanket out to local parks and laze around and soak up sun and outdoors
8. Go to Marfa, TX (Thursday)
9. Do my "train" project on Inventor for IED (I'm doing the homework with my students this year ... keeps me honest)
10. Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles (hiyawake puzzles my new favorite)
11. Get ready for the PLTW certification visit on 4/1/11 (eek! hope that's not portentous)
12. Sleep more than 7 hours a night (or did I mention that already?)
13. Get my IED students to write thank you e-mails for a recent speaker/friend that came to visit and talk about his engineering experiences. (It was useful to send my students THIS e-mail as a primer):

Hey! Let's be green (and timely since it's Spring Break). Here is your EXTRA homework to turn in to me NEXT Monday 3/14/11 .... and by that I mean 3 days from now .... OVER spring break.

Please send me an e-mail, either with an attachment of a thank you card for Mr. H., or your thank you words inside the e-mail message.

I will then gather them all up together in one e-mail and send them along to him.

Thank YOU for saying more than just "thank you for coming to speak to us". Maybe indicate what you liked or found interesting or learned or whatever.

Example, here's my "thank you" to YOU, my IED students:

Dear IED students of 2010-2011,

I love teaching you because you're so creative and make me think of new things and ways to teach you. I also love that you're excited about the various things we do and learn. I look forward to your questions because they make me think through the why's and how's of various concepts.

Signed,

Ms. ______


I look forward to your thank yous for Mr. H.
Ms. _____


(I've gotten 6 out of 12 back so far)

Anyway .... must go exercise with my other latest craze (as of 4 weeks).

Special Quadrilaterals

We finished studying special quadrilaterals a while ago, took a test, and now the kids are trickling in for their retests. Ew. Something didn't stick or even get through to some students, and I'm trying to process how to improve it for next year.

Here is how I taught it:
parallelograms: I had 4 already printed on a paper, and they were to use their rulers and protractors to measure various things to discover the facts about the angles and diagonals.

squares/rhombi/rectangles: I had them neatly draw one each in their grid notebooks (I gave the instructions on where to put the vertices). Then I had them again use their protractors and rulers to measure various things and fill out a chart as to which had which properties (diagonals congruent, diagonals perpendicular, diagonals bisecting opposite angles).

trapezoid/kite: I had a sheet with some drawn we worked through the logic of things to get to their properties.

All this went in their notes. They had review problems. At no time did I have them (and apparently they didn't think they needed to) gather all the information into one place (foldable? 1/2 page) to have a quick summary. (I will change this for next year).

Okay, then test time. The usual suspects did well, but too many kids had no idea about things they should have. For example, when a student was coming in for a retest, and I asked her about what a rhombus was, she was silent. Oy! Now I know this particular student coasts by and can look like she's playing school, but .... Regardless, I want them to learn despite themselves.

I think something happened at another tutoring session that will make me either add a day to my lessons, or replace the previous lessons with this. I'm leaning towards add to the lesson.

Another student was studying rhombuses, so that she could take the retest, and she still wasn't understanding or processing things she should know. She couldn't even draw a vaguely accurate rhombus. I took a piece of colored construction paper, and pretty quickly used a ruler to cut it into a rhombus (it turned out to be approximately 8.5" per side). I liked that it was big enough to see things on and to write on and play with. Then I had her folding it to make the diagonals. Then we stared at it. It was clear the diagonals were perpendicular. It was clear that they were bisected. It was clear which angles were congruent (you could match them up and check). It was clear that the diagonals bisected the angles (again you could fold and check).

Then as she was trying to redo a test problem, I had her write the given information on the rhombus, and then figure out the rest. ... I don't know if this will stick. I guess we'll see when she actually does a retest, but maybe the extra visual and tactile properties of the shape will be clearer in her mind.

Pythagorean Theorem Video

Today we started reviewing radicals, and talking about Pythagorean Theorem. I know they've seen it before, but they still need help on the harder problems. I found this cool, short video that I showed a few times in a row until they understood it. It was a fun discussion on what he was trying to do.

Then we built up their skills with individual problems of varying difficulties:

(the terms listed are "a", "b", and "c" for a right triangle with hypotenuse "c"):

FIND x
1. x, 4, 10
2. 3, 9, x
3. 2*sqrt(3), x, 4
4. x, 3, sqrt(17)
5. x, 3x, 20
6. some sort of trapezoid with 90 degree angles on one side.

Anyway, I just wanted to post about the water video. Done. Dinner.

Room Fustiness

Phew! Stinky Room Alert! I don't know what it is .... well, maybe I do, but the last few weeks while I'm teaching in my room for hours on end, I don't notice anything. But step out of the room for a few minutes and walk back in after a gaggle of teenagers have been in there, and Stink City.

It's not that way in the morning when I first get to work. It's not that way right before 1st period. But after I teach a class or two and leave the room and come back. Ew. Not HORRIBLE horrible, but noticeably smelly/musty.

So my question is, is it just my particular group of teens? They don't really smell strongly, but I guess get enough of them together and have them in there for an hour and a half and watch out. I don't like the fake smell of room deodorizers. I can't open my windows. I have one plant in there (which sometimes causes its own problems with teeny bugs that flutter around and like to hover around the vacuum of your nose only to be accidentally sucked in and EWWWW). Do we think more plants would help? Certain plants? Has anyone successfully overcome this TRAGIC situation?

Signed,

Singed Nosed Sufferer

Algebra/Basics Review in Geometry

I'm basically teaching two levels of geometry this year even though we call them both "preAP". I have the 8th and 9th graders in one class, and for the most part they whiz through everything and delight in the challenging problems. I'm also teaching 10th graders that are in other sections, and they approach math in a different way. I have to keep reminding myself not to rush rush rush through topics and to keep remembering that they need more practice on everything to make it stick and to make it make sense.

I am doing one thing, though, to help them keep their algebra skills fresh: ALGEBRA :). For example, for the last few topics, I made sure to make up geometry problems that ended up having a factorable quadratic equation in it at some point. This led us to recall FOILing and ("claw"ing .... Thanks, Mrs. H) and factoring. Now I'm making sure to include quadratics that CAN'T be factored (hello quadratic formula review).

BUT. Here are some things that I didn't think would come up, but did/do, and REALLY I should make a mental (or better) note to myself of where things can go askew, so that I can make more problems throughout the year to have such examples, so that we can have a discussion about them and keep them fresh in our minds.


Example 1:
A student is solving: 2x + 4 = (1/2)x + 8, for example.
Hmmmm, I don't like that (1/2)x,
so I'll just remember that I can do the opposite to x to undo it,
and I multiply ONLY the 2x and the (1/2)x by 2 to end up with:
4x + 4 = x + 8. Eeeeek.

Example 2:
A student gets to a point in an equation where they have (13/2)x = 14. Well, heaven forbid we keep things in fractions and go the easier route of multiplying both sides by 2/13 to get x = 28/13. Boom. Done.
No.
We convert to 6.5x = 14.
We stress that 14 is not easily divided by 6.5.
We chug through and do long division and create pain and suffering for ourselves.
We curse the teacher for such a hard problem and no calculator.

Example 3:
Teacher takes the expedient route frequently and makes up problems where the answers are integers. This saves time, she thinks, so that they're not struggling with messy things and they're concentrating on new material.
Students freak out the first instance an answer is not integer.
Gasp! I must have done something wrong. Things ALWAYS work out nice and pretty in "math world". Fractions are not REAL numbers, no matter WHAT my teacher says. Oh, and by the way, "your answer key says 3/2. Is it okay if I write it as 1.5? As 1 1/2?"

Example 4:
A problem comes up where you're asked to find the height of a person. The decimal answer is 4.666666666 feet. You think this either means 4' 6" or 4' 7" (if you round). You DON'T think that 2/3 of a foot is not either of these answers.

Inspired by the TI-nspire.....

I was SO ready not to "drink the kool-aid" of the fancy what-sa-ma-gadgets that were newer than the TI-84s. I was feverishly searching for talks at the T^3 conference that were not TI-nspire or "navigator" based. I was looking for good calculator activities that would supplement my teaching and help the kids absorb and understand more about the math they were learning. Well, you see where this is going, right? Sip, sip, gulp, wipe the red-dye #5 off my chin.

The first 2 talks I went to were baby/basic/"the on button is here" types of talks about the TI-nspire and the Navigator. Boom, that's all it took. I was hooked. For those of you like me (or maybe I'm the only one left that doesn't know much about these things), here are some basic functions and reasons I'm sold.

TI-nspire:
1. There are a ton of resources (example) for most (all?) math levels that include teacher notes, student worksheets, programs for your calculator, etc.
2. The students get to explore a topic by playing around with slopes or points or triangles or such.
3. If a student is taking the AP Calculus exam, they can "create new pages" for work for (say) each problem, and then save and refer back to the work as needed (it stays on the page).
4. One of the teacher presenters there mentioned that she has kids referring back to an exploration weeks after they had done it, and it still stuck in their head.
5. The key strokes and such are intuitive (I got the hang of it after 1-2 sessions).
6. Example lessons we worked with: someone had created a program that guided us/students through discovering how slope works. On the calculator was a line with 2 points highlighted and their coordinates showing. The "right triangle" rise over run dotted lines were showing. Above the graph the slope was showing. The kids could grab a point and move it and see what happened to the slope. ..... You know, stuff you probably do anyway, but with maybe a worksheet(s) with them walking through your problems. Now it can all be condensed on the screen and you can be green (ar ar ar). The kids are also asked various questions about the situation. I'm sure you can make up your own questions, but I like the fact that the program is readily available to download to all the kids' calculators. There was also a calculus example where the tangent to the slope was shown that you could move around and see what the instantaneous rate of change was.
7. There are options for calculator pages, graph pages (which talk in f(x) notation), spreadsheet capabilities, scatterplots, .....
8. There is math type availability .... I'm guessing somehow you could also do things on your calculator and then screen capture and cut/paste to tests (??)
9. Cabri is basically on the calculator and easier to play around with (bigger screen) AND the activities and programs prewritten make it more accessible and easier to use daily (rather than find a time when a computer lab is open to take your kids to use Geometer's Sketchpad .... which they've forgotten since it's been a month or 2 since they last saw it).

Navigator:
This is the presenter option where you can see what all is going on in your class. You can make a kid's calculator the "presenter", and they could be doing the key strokes while you're talking.

Anyway, glad I went. I actually bought a TI-nspire and have been playing around with it. I want to download some programs to see further just what's available .... and maybe write a grant to get some class sets for next year.

A Good Week

I just found out I passed the Computer Science 8-12 teaching certificate test, so that was a great capper to the week. I'm not sure if we'll offer it next year due to a variety of reasons (budget cuts, small school, only put on the upper class-kid's choice sheets, so low enrollment,...), but maybe in the future we can offer it.

Also, we had professional development yesterday, and I went to 4 different math sessions that had good things to offer:

1. Found out the T^3 conference is in San Antonio next weekend. I've never been but am thinking of going. The PD presenter also mentioned some potentially good websites:
mathbits.com
mathplayground.com
education.ti.com/calculators/timath/

She also mentioned that there's this new feature on the calculators (don't know what operating system) where you can push 3 buttons at a time, and it disables the apps and such .... think TAKS test. It seems like an easier way than clearing ALL the memory and apps and then having to reload them. And then to get it back, you somehow link to another calculator and do something basic (forget what). It's called PRESS TO TEST, and you can probably google it and your calculator type to find out more.

2. The "Web 2.0 tools" talk showed some great websites as resources:
mathvm.pbworks.com

this is a "warehouse" of math related sites and on the far right of the table there are videos that explain their usage/power.

3. I went to a "using stations in high schools" talk that just may get me out of my "rut" of doing things the same way all the time.

4. I went to a foldables talk and got some more ideas.

Now off to grade some IED projects to enter for the 6 weeks grades.

RollerCoaster Week

Ugh! This was the LONGEST week ever: I was cranky, the kids are overwhelmed, I was getting over a cold and coughing "wetly" all week, we started TAKS tutoring during our advisory periods, I had to pick up a cell phone from a stealth texter, we had two meetings that took up morning planning time, and on and on and on.

Then the capper was on Thursday after school when I had students staying for tutoring and retesting of math concepts. I was going along on my merry way, and one of the girls decided to "share" with me, "you know, Ms. ____, in class, we're not laughing WITH you; we're laughing AT you."

Thanks. That basically put the final sour grapes on my week. She was smiling the whole time. She's also the girl that when I'd lost my voice a few weeks ago and was rallying on teaching in a harsh whisper ALL week, said one day, "oh! Ms. ____. Your voice!". Thinking she was commiserating with me, I said/rasped, "I know. It doesn't hurt, though." Then she said, with a pained expression and her hands over her ears, "no. I mean my ears. You're hurting my ears." ....

Anyway. So I went into work on Friday in a miserable mood, grumbling and muttering to myself about the ungrateful little tykes, and I open up this e-mail from a former student:

Hello
You have been on my mind. How have you been? I'm at _____ doing my clinicals. I'm level 1 nursing. You would be so proud. thank you I owe you so much you are a wonderful person.


That turned things around 540 degrees! Here was a student that had gotten pregnant her junior year, and somehow figured out a way to graduate and move on with her life and now is a successful nursing student. Love her! And SO appreciate her taking the time to basically make my week end on a great note.

Time For Parallelogram Review...

Well, we had a snow day on Friday, and I got sick, and I like puzzles, and I was trapped at home, and on Monday we're having a "C" day with shortened classes to make up for our lost day and so we don't go off our predestined ABABABABABAB schedule for the rest of the year, so......

This is what I'm having them work on and review so far in our special quadrilaterals unit:



I've checked it a few times, and I THINK I've worked out the bugs, but I guess I'll see how it goes tomorrow. I tried to mix in some algebra review of quadratics and such in there. Hopefully, it'll be a good mix of easy/medium/hard problems.

What's enough for a parallelogram to appear?

Whew! We've graduated PAST triangles to quadrilaterals in geometry, and now we're cruising. The first day I showed some Internet clips/pics about scissor lifts and pantographs and wood routers that are made like pantographs and such to show parallelograms in "the real world". Then we explored by measuring and conjecturing about the 5 (6) properties of parallelograms. The 2nd day I started with this sheet:





I had a brief discussion with them about what could you "get away with" and magically GET a parallelogram for free if you were creating an object that needed to be a parallelogram. It may be more costly or time consuming to force 2 pairs of parallel opposite sides instead of some other properties that might save you some time or money. Then they discussed with whatever tools they wanted, and then we converged as a class. I made sure to either have them draw a picture at the end as a counter example to the shape being FORCED to being a parallelogram, or we did a "flow proof" to show some were forced.

Today was a crazy day. It started out as 17 degrees F in the morning and up to the 20's during the day, and our city/state had rolling brown outs to be able to handle the load of everyone trying to stay warm I guess. Anyway, at school we were in a ratio of 45:15 off:on electricity practically all day. Sheesh! Thank goodness we have TONS of windows. But BOOOO on the lack of microwaves and coffee pots for the essentials: lunch and caffeine!

Teaching The Sine Graph

I still get requests for the file I used to teach the sine graph WAY back when in the days I taught precalculus (side note: I'll be teaching it again at my new school next year). This is an idea (I forgot where I heard/saw it from) that I wrote up. It involves string, spaghetti, and the worksheet. The kids use the string to wrap around a circle to mark off random angles/marks on the circle. They transfer this to the "linear" xy plane. Then at these angles, they measure the y value on the circle with the spaghetti and transfer that height over to the linear graph. Kids should have prior knowledge of radians, calculator/triangle practice with calculating sine (I forget what else....). Here's the file.

Coolest Foldable Yet

This year we hired a new chemistry teacher, and she is now OFFICIALLY my "creative genius" idol. Every time I have been in her room, she has all these inventive ideas of things she's done with the kids to get them to learn. The latest is this foldable I saw her kids doing, and I just knew I had to do it soon. We're on the "special quadrilaterals" unit, and I'm going to do something with this.

Anyway, here is the general idea:
1. Fold a paper (longest side) into quarters.
2. Cut any size slits down the center two folds.
3. Cut 2 other papers so that they're just a sliver shy of 1/4 of page.
4. Weave them through the 1st paper as shown.

The beauty is that you get a SECRET extra "side" by prying open the middles. Notice the numbering on the pink strips. You eventually get "12" parts with how I cut it.

A Challenge for my Geometry preAP Kiddies...

In an effort to provide a challenge worthy of the students who always get EVERYTHING, I put the following problem on their last review packet with the intention that not everyone would get it, but that it would give the super smarties something to chew on.

Consider line AB that goes through an x-intercept of -8 and a y-intercept of 3. This line goes through the altitude in triangle DEF from vertex D. Find D, E, and F, and convince me that your points satisfy these conditions.

I gave my students the key to every other problem in the packet, so they could study for their test, but not this one. I was gone to a workshop while they took their test, and today when I came back, I had some students present their answers. No one got it (yet), but it provided some great conversation about what they did and how we knew it didn't work.

I was interested to see that some students just used a slope approach, and tried to find D, E, and F using slopes of things they knew. Mixed success. Some students forgot how to find points on a line, so we had a bit of review. I still didn't tell them the way (a way) to solve this, and mentioned that somehow, before the end of the 6 weeks, they have to each convince me that they can do it (for a grade). It's interesting having students come up to the document camera and present. We get to have a conversation on how to do so and how to talk to an audience. I also get to pick their brains about their understanding and also poll the class about their understanding (even though they're not the ones in front). ... We'll see what they come up with next.

Can You Say Busy?

Whew! Coming up for air temporarily ... won't go into all the details because I'm sure everyone else either is or has been in the same place. I just got back from a PLTW training in Dallas that was awesome, and I learned so much.

One great side note about this is how one teacher handled students working in groups. You know how there's always "group issues": someone slacks or someone bosses everyone else around or friends always want to work together or whatever. Here are some tips from one teacher:

* During the year on his various group projects, the rule he mentions to the kids at the start of the year and as a reminder throughout the year is that you can never work in a group with the same person twice.
* He hands out a team management sheet that the kids have to maintain (online?) it has columns for task that needs to be done, who's responsible, target due date, completion date, comments. If the "responsible" person doesn't do their job, his/her name is scratched out and the "doer's" name is put there. That way there's a record of what/who.
* The teacher mentions that he should be cc'ed on all e-mails, so this way he can address various issues and kids as the project gets done as opposed to hearing at the end that so and so didn't pull their weight or so and so overwhelmed everyone else.

I liked his approach, and I'll try it next time, and institute it more next year. There was also this PHENOMENAL "cardboard chair" project for IED he mentioned. The kids actually go through this 9 week project and all aspects of polling people, making mock ups, doing the statistical analysis of body measurements, etc. to build this functional chair out of cardboard that should hold up to 200 lbs and weigh no more than 16 lbs. COOL! Hopefully, I'll get my act together this year to try it out.

There was also some great information on how to make short "desk top" videos to provide instruction for your kids (don't have my notes with me). That way, for the things you say 2000 times, or for the kids that are absent or for the kids that have to hear things again, you/they have this resource.

Ocean Beach

I went on a solo vacation this MLK 3-day weekend holiday to Ocean Beach, CA, which is in/near San Diego. I'm guessing I left at a good weather time since it was drizzly and "cold" in our town. Brrrrr, 40's and 50's (spoiled TX person talking here). As I was walking around OB in jeans and thin layered tee's, I was hot and had to change to shorts. Nice. Well, except for the pasty white leg skin.

My hotel was RIGHT on the beach and had this view out the door:



People were surfing and walking the pier all weekend:



Palm trees everywhere, day and night:





Most of the electrical boxes were decorated:



A little south of town, there were dramatic cliffs:



I had to laugh at this sign on a church .... is this therapy for teachers who've HAD it with state-wide-testing?



It's a funky little town, and you can walk it all and get by without a car. I took the super shuttle in from the airport (10 minutes away). I took the public bus and trolley to old town and downtown. All in all a relaxing and fun diversion before the school craziness starts again on Tuesday.

Ribbon Hanging and Paper Foldables

I wanted to display all my students' posters, but appARENTLY hot glue ruins the backs of paper. I don't know why I didn't process that. I'm new to this whole hot glue on the wall business, and I saw that it just peeled off easily FROM the wall, and so I didn't think it further .... or something like that. Or maybe all the previous things I hot-glued were laminated. Anyhow, I asked our awesome librarian if she had any suggestions for displaying 90 plus papers. She suggested this:



You staple the papers to nice wide ribbon, and then hot glue the RIBBON to the wall. Presto!

Also, we just finished the Isosceles Triangle Theorem and its converse buddy, and here is how my students took notes. Love it.

CPCTC

Is there a more fun thing that spills out of your mouth from geometry? I told my students that part of their homework was to repeat "CPCTC" 5,000 times correctly, and if they messed up, they had to start back at 1 (same for the whole phrase "corresponding parts of ...").

Anyway, this went well. I had them complete part of the following sheet in class JUST for proving the triangles congruent, so what three facts did they need to know and could they deduce from the picture to prove WHICH triangles congruent AND by what theorem/postulate. We did 1 together, then they did 2 on their own and we talked. Then 4 and 5 similarly (because they have special issues the kids come up against). I partly liked this sheet because it forced them to think about what they needed to use the theorems. They also messed up on #4 and claimed angle S congruent to angle S, so we had a discussion on naming conventions. They also messed up on #5 and put that angle W congruent to angle Y instead of claiming that the triangles were right. We discussed why the change/need and how ultimately you could just assume the triangles are right from the diagram.

Then I asked what extra things could they figure out BECAUSE they knew the triangles were congruent AND WHY. Then, in the white space on the right, we drew the 3 arrows from the triangle congruence statement to the 3 extra things we knew (flow proof style). They were fine with #1, and then some messed up with #2 because they were on autopilot and just put the 3 sets of angles were congruent (just like #1). We discussed how that's not NEW information and fixed it. Then I had them guess what reason we might claim. We finally got around to CPCTC. They finished the rest for homework.

Here's the sheet we worked on:

Geometry Cartoon Results

Love My Kids! I showed them my "beautifully rendered" cartoon depicting the SAS congruence postulate, and gave them their assignment. I basically wrote on the back of that cartoon something to the following effect:

1. Pick one of the following thms/posts
2. Create a cartoon, fairytale, soap opera, .... that shows your thm/post
3. Make it neat, accurate, .....
4. Suggestion: pick soon, then mull over your idea since that's the hardest part, THEN tomorrow create it. (we're on block schedule)

We had a discussion about it not looking like it's a last minute haphazard work.

Here are some samples of what I got back. It's a good mix, and I'd say about 90% of my students created something on par with these. I think I partly got good results because it's the 1st week back from break, so they don't have TOO much other homework. Also, I haven't done many "fun" homeworks for these 10th grade geometry students, so that's another potential reason.

This student is also taking French:


This is how she talks, so it's really funny. I freakin' love it:


Love the classroom theme:


Jerry Springer-esque. Hysterical:


Some people went above and beyond:

Holy Cow, a fairy tale in a booklet:


Very Creative:

Idea for Tomorrow's HWK...

I'm still batting around the idea, but I created this comic as an example for my geometry students. They were having difficulty applying theorems and parsing out what goes where in proofs. We'll do a whole class-worth of activities in a variety of ways to drive things home, but I thought their homework could be to create something like this that "uses" one of the theorems they've "learned".

Slug Behavior

Yeesh! Okay, so I'm sick, and my favorite activities involve sitting a lot, but holy cow, one reason I'll be glad school is starting again is that it prevents me from lounging around and expanding in front of the gas fireplace and doing puzzles ... or walking a few steps to the cushy couch to do puzzles ... or walking to the computer to do online puzzles ... or using my husband's iPad to play Arctopia or Sudoku. Honestly, I burned 1 calorie yesterday, and that was just from the exertion of blowing my nose repeatedly.

I did get this great new puzzle book, "The Monster Book of Logic Puzzles & Sudoku", and that made me search on line to see if nikoli had a website. YES!. My new favorites are Heyawake, and Yajilin.

I think I'd be in danger of becoming like those chair people in Wall-E if I don't watch it. On a positive note, we're going to Alamo Drafthouse for a movie and dinner tonight (True Grit) - a great way to end vacation. Dinner WHILE you're watching a movie ... does it get any better?

1/1/11

Okay, I just had to write that somewhere before it was too late, and I'm probably not going out today and writing a check. Last night was nice and relaxed. Had drinks with my friend, then went to dinner with my husband and another couple, Macaroni Grill. Oooh, high life. I was shocked, SHOCKED I tell you that this other couple had never been there. She started getting worried when I was drawing all over the "table cloth" with the provided crayons.

Got home around 10:15pm and looked on the Internet at the live stream from Times Square. I never did that when we were in NJ, but it's still fun to see it from afar. I think I'd get too claustrophobic being there. That and cold and worried that I wouldn't be able to find a bathroom and stressing about all the trash that would have to be cleaned up. But other than that, I'm sure it would be great :). I also like to go online on 1/1/11 (or 1/1/**) and see New Year's Eve pictures from around the world.

I think I lasted until about 11:30pm until I hit the sack after reading a bit in my new great book, "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie".

I have one resolution for me, and I thoughtfully made one for my husband.
Mine: Try one new recipe a month. Need to get out of my cooking-the-same-thing rut.
His: Take wife out on a date once a month.

See, what a nice wife I am. Now he doesn't have to worry about coming up with a resolution AND he gets a date consistently. You're welcome.

Tests Tests and More Tests

I know and have lived (like everyone else) the variety of stresses surrounding testing (assessing) students. I also know I hate when others claim that THEIR method beats all and you should, need to, must try it and if you don't then you're failing your kids and bla bla bla and what are you waiting for? Superman? ar ar ar ar.

I also know I've lived the horrors of even the word "retest". I'd never heard of it when I started teaching in New Jersey. My first year in Texas, one of my first math tests I gave, AS I HANDED IT OUT, a students asked me, "when is the retest?" I scrunched up my confused face and said there was no retest. That was the start of my journey. Then I got indoctrinated (or desensitized or whatever) and started giving retests in various forms:

* one retest only and you could keep your highest grade of the two tests
* only retesting if you've done all your homework
* averaging of the test and retest grades

None of it ever sat well with me. Then as I've mentioned before, this past summer I did various types of reading (blogs, books, ASCD magazines...) and something clicked for me.

My results are not globally stunning (I calculated the average final exam grade of my 3 geometry classes ... without curving what-so-ever), and they were roughly: 71%, 80%, and 76% (stem and leaf plot, I love you). But this was the FIRST time this happened for me with my "regular" classes. I'm guessing before I used to have final exam grade averages of 60% or lower.

Two commenters asked about details, so I thought I'd combine my responses here.

First of all, I make up all my own tests. I've been fortunate enough to work in schools and with people where this is the norm and/or this is okay. I'd hate to be forced to administer someone else's test. Every class is different, and you focus on different things when you teach. I comb through what they've learned and what types of problems we had done for homework and through the bazillion of math texts I've amassed from the years of teaching and through the Internet, etc. Then I make up my tests. I make up new tests every year, and sometimes if I've taught a topic before I cut and paste old test problems. We hand back all our tests and the students can keep them.

Here's what I've been doing this year in my regular geometry class (though it's called preAP).

I give about 2 tests every 6 weeks (that's our grading period, and I teach on block schedule). I made it so that the 1st test is in about week one or two of the 6 weeks, and the 2nd test is about the 4th week. This gives them time to come in and study with me and reassess. They have until the end of the 6 weeks to finish any retests of that marking period. Here is a rough outline of my last geometry test:

Section A: I had one problem with a "complicated" triangle/parallel lines type picture with some angles written in, and they had to find the measures of various missing angles.

Section B: I had a diagram with 4 intersecting lines with angles labeled (think tic-tac-toe), and 4 questions:
1. name 2 sets of corresponding angles
2. name 2 sets of alternate interior angles
3. .... alt ext
4. same side int
oh, and by the way, make sure you use each of the 16 angles at least once.


Section C: I had portions of proofs with statements labeled, and they had to give me the reason/theorem/postulate/definition we could conclude various things.

Section D: I had 2 questions that they needed to use algebra with to find the values of various angles.

Section E: a question about lines (review) .... given an equation, find 4 points on the line .... or something like that. P.S. this is another reason I'm loving this retesting thing, because I don't feel guilty reviewing algebra, and it's forcing them to get it to stick in their heads.

Each section was worth 10 points regardless of the number of questions in the section. I graded roughly as follows:

They have no clue what they're doing: 0
They started out right but tanked early: 3-5
They started out right but tanked late in the problem: 5-7
They knew what they were doing but made a careless error: 8-9
They nailed it: 10

Those are just rough guides. I just asked myself as I penned in the grade, "do they know it or not and to what degree?".

Then the students had the opportunity to come in and retest for each section as many times as they wanted to get an ultimate final grade of 8 out of 10 on a section. I made up little 1/2 sheets of tests for each of the sections and made various versions and kept a store of them near me. With geometry (and maybe just so far), since I've taught it for so long, it was not too bad for me to make up the retests. And usually I could grade it that night or on the spot and quickly update GradeSpeed (that had 5 different columns for the tests). I kept the retests, so that I could reuse the problems for different kids on different days.

I'm guessing my success with it so far is that this forces the kids to go over and over something until they get it. And again, I'm lucky I only do this with roughly 50 total kids, AND some of them do great the 1st test and don't come in for retests. Again, this is what is working for me and my style and my kids and my situation.

I mentioned that I'm learning JAVA with that "Head First" book. This has also gotten me thinking about this retesting/relearning/learning situation. I'm guilty of being on the teaching treadmill: "learn" a topic one class, practice it for homework, move on to another topic the next class. Repeat until the test. Ackh! I know I've vowed to change my ways, and here I am vowing again ... slow learner. BUT.

First of all, I don't consider myself stupid or a slow learner, and yet when I'm going through that JAVA book (18 chapters, currently on chapter 9, doing about a chapter a day, roughly) .... I find myself scrunching my face in the "what was that????" action on things they've mentioned way back in a previous chapter that made perfect sense, and then they're just using it as a given currently and I'm wide-eyed with the deer/headlight thing going on as I flip back a few pages to refresh my memory on what's what. Then the, "oh yea, THAT", expression, and I move on.

That got me thinking about my kids. We'll go over something, practice, do homework, move on, and then when I mention or expect them to have instant recall on something later, they do what I just described above. AND I don't do it out loud or with any facial expressions, but I've been guilty of thinking in the past, "ackh! we did that, you know that, I taught that, get ON with it". Or I'm on my internal high horse thinking, "welllllll, they just need to see it several times, bless their hearts." Ew! I obviously have been served a lesson. If you happen to be human and are learning something new, you need to see it over and over and over again in various forms and that'll give it more chances to stick.

So all this to say, that maybe my new-found "success" is because this mechanism of my retesting is allowing the kids to spend more time with the topics than they have in the past.

Christmas in Toronto

I'm spending a week in Toronto for Christmas with the in-laws. My body is wondering at the sudden change in temperatures and units. We went from a balmy 75ish degrees F to a super chilly -3 degrees C. Though I've heard that Texas now has a cold front with temperatures in the 50's F. Oooooh, discussion about the weather ... Well, there's some math in there, right?

I'm also having fun learning JAVA with the "Head First" book. It's also giving me teaching ideas ... Since they devote a whole first few pages on how people learn. I like their fireside chats with various new concepts and pictures to explain concepts and such.

Okay, off to downtown.

Who'd a Thunk

I'm freeeeeeee. The last finals have been graded and entered. All the grades are done. No more school for 2 weeks. AND I got an early Christmas present in terms of final exam grades.

This year, for the 1st time in, oh say the last 8 years, I have not had to "curve" the living daylights out of their final exam grades to make them come out of the great dark cavern that would be their grade. Now I'm talking about my "average, grade level" students, my 10th grade geometry kids. Their grades went in as they stood, and everything was fine. Their final exam grades averaged in with their 6 weeks grades reflected how they did all semester. What happened? What was different?

The only thing I did drastically different this year was my form of retesting, or as I now like to think about it: benchmarking or "seeing-if-you-know-it-yetting". The fact that the kids HAD to come in multiple times to grasp a concept in order to be checked off on that concept made them really dig down deeper than they normally would and had them work through the repetition of practicing so that things had a better chance of sticking in their heads. With the old way, if they didn't know it by my set test time, well then oh well, too bad, we're moving on and won't visit this topic again until finals and good luck with that. With the new method, it's, oh? you don't know it yet? well keep trying and keep trying again and come on you can do it.

I think I've gotten over my: ackh! now they can slack off and not study for the FIRST test and just see what's on it way of thinking. Sure, they can do that, and for some maybe they do do that. The way I have it structured is that the MOST they can eventually make on a retest is 80% on a portion. That made it palatable for me in that they couldn't get 100%, and it wasn't as "bad" as an eventual 70% ... it was an extra carrot (but not TOO big of a carrot) for putting in the extra brain power to finish strong. AND now my final exam grades have cemented it for me.

Now. I only did this with 3 classes of size 19, 13, and 21. Ooh, I realize how lucky I am with small class sizes (from the days when I had sizes of 38, 44, 35,...). And I only did it with my "grade level" students. My advanced students did test corrections, and were good at it, and it served them well, and they were the population that got 96%, 98%, 90%, etc. on the final anyway. I don't know how I'd manage this or if it would be TOO unmanageable if I did it with more classes and had more kids. I guess maybe I'll find out next year depending on the type of classes I teach. But for now, I'm extremely happy with the whole process.

Perceptions of Our Kids

Today in tap dancing we had a substitute teacher. I'm always pleasantly surprised when we do for 2 reasons. One, the person teaches slightly differently than our awesome regular teacher. Even though I enjoy class on a regular basis, it's nice to have a variety sometimes. Second, the substitute invariably comes in without knowing anything about us, and that usually leads to them teaching us "harder" stuff. We don't always get it, but it's nice to be presented with it just to test it out ... knowing we'll go back to our normal routine next time and there's no anxiety if we "get it or not" because it's "not our routine".

Then on my drive home, I started thinking about me being the "regular teacher" in my math classes. I basically do the same thing every day. Yes, there are variations ... about once a month or so (?), but hmmm, maybe it's time to spice it up more often. Second, I know my kids. Especially since I've had more than half of them for the 2nd year now. I guess I have certain expectations of what they can and can't do. But now I'm thinking I need to again, sometimes spice it up.

Maybe I can toss in a "hard" day or a "hard" problem every week or couple of weeks. Well scaffolded, and with the very clear disclaimer that it's not business as usual, but they should just dip their toes in the water. Maybe not everyone would "get it", but the variety would be good, and the "faster" kids would get their cookie crumb every now and then.

They're Just Teenagers

I had an epiphany the other day. Now maybe it's obvious to others, but it's my epiphany, so allow me to be thrilled. Background: I don't have children. And as such, I'm sure I'm an expert on rearing children (cough cough).

Anyway, in the back of my head, or sometimes out of my mouth are phrases like, "well, in college .... or in your upper level classes ... you'll be expected to ______." or "you need to learn to do ________ by yourself." or "it's up to you to review, you have all the materials; systematically go through them from scratch; you don't need new review material." or "I don't want to baby them and hand hold them through things." With the thought that if I did things for them, and "enabled" them, then they'd never learn to do on their own. Or, I'll do such things for them but have a bad taste in my mouth because I feel I'm doing them a disservice by doing the "heavy lifting".

Then I thought about parenting. Your children don't automatically clean their rooms or cook dinner because "when you're on your own in your apartment, you'll need to be able to do this." They don't notice they have no clothes and then immediately wash a load because "that's what they're expected to do as adults" and parents "won't baby them by reminding them and showing them how and giving consequences if they don't". Parents have to teach such behaviors and tasks.

This makes me feel better about "babying them sometimes" by guiding them on how to do things and "hand holding them", that should just be a given later on WHEN THEY'RE OLDER ... but not now. So if I teach them how to review, and provide them with a guideline or extra practice, or if I discuss strategies of studying without expecting them to be born with the knowledge, or a ton of other things that are learning-related, then that's just a part of growing up.

Finals Time...

As probably everyone else in the world, I can't believe fall finals are here already. It'll be great to be off and be able to get enough sleep. I think I'll also spend the holiday studying. Maybe I'll have some time for fun tasks.

Here's a sheet I made and the kids did for part of their geometry review.

Inspiring Words of Study Wisdom

It's time for finals, and I'm trying to think of a variety of ways to say, "study". Since different combinations of words work for different kids, I figure if I say it in many ways, one or more may filter through to more kids. Here's what I've said so far:

* Don't let your grades just happen to you. Take charge of your grades.

* You can't expect to play a great game of soccer just by reading about soccer and watching others play; you actually have to practice. Similarly, you can't do well on a math test by just reading over what you or someone else did before on a problem; you actually have to do/practice problems from scratch.

* Study time won't just magically appear out of thin air, you have to allot time and find pockets of time and manage your time.

* Try your best, and that's all you can do. But don't just pay lip service to this phrase, if you dig down deep enough and are honest enough with yourself, did you really put out your best effort?

Hopefully, I can think of a few more to be "rah rah queen" for the next (last) class before they take their finals next week. Eek.

College Visits...

Just got back from visiting colleges with some of our students. Things I learned:

* "Are there opportunities for foreign students to obtain scholarships and work study?" is a safe way of inquiring for undocumented students.

* High school students need to be taught hotel behavior for late night arrivals (and hotel patrons need to bend your ear several times that evening and the next morning about such incidents).

* With each subsequent visit, students have more confidence asking a variety of questions about the college programs/resources.

* Young children are not the only age group that will watch the same movie over and over (and over) again ("White Chicks" anyone?).

* Long bus rides are an opportunity to see how you'd fare in a sardine can situation with other stinky sardines with whom you're not necessarily swimming buddies.

* Ear plugs are a must have for sane travel (la la la la la, I can't HEAR you).

* What does not kill you, either drives you to drink (immediately upon return of said field trip) or makes you stronger (or both).

* Hearing about study habits (and perils of having a lack of them) from a college student pulls more weight than hearing it from a teacher/adult. (What? We have to actually study in college? Who knew?)

* Student ideas about emergencies (as in don't knock on our door unless there is one) are vastly different from adult ideas of emergencies. Cases in point: I left my cell phone charger on the bus vs. my roommate got run over by a bus. Or .... The tap water tastes funny vs. my room is flooding from a tap water tragedy.

* Interacting with students for an extended period of time outside of your class setting allows you to have fun with them in a more relaxed setting without the get-your-work-done pressure.