## Goals (#MTBoS) (#SundayFunday)

August 12, 2017

What do I want to accomplish this school year? As I started thinking about this, I decided to break it down into school and home:

School

• Pre-AP Geometry
• Push them harder! Too often, I find myself watering down the lessons I am teaching or providing too much scaffolding. If I want them to be prepared for Pre-AP and AP level work, I need to stop babying them. This change will mainly affect my lesson delivery and practice. I am still committed to flexible deadlines, quiz retakes, and everything else that tells a student, “I don’t care WHEN you learn something as long as you learn it!”
• Incorporate more quadratics into the problems (see previous point).
• Incorporate more Geogebra
• Create a running thread of connecting the logic of programming with the logic of Geometry by teaching them the basics of coding (see CO + DE = MATH).
• Change the seating each week based on which students are on pace and which are behind. Place the students who are behind closer to my desk.
• Astronomy
• I kept the class at too slow a pace last year. There’s definitely a balance between giving students enough time in class to complete their projects and their having so much time that they can just goof off half the time.
• Part of the reason for the slower pace was that I realized part-way through that I didn’t have enough material to fill out the rest of the year. That’s not a problem I’ve ever had before, and it kind of caught me flat-footed. I will definitely address that this year by bringing in more lessons that I had skipped over in previous years.
• I’d really like to find some sort of way to have the students perform some sort of observations. I’m also toying around with having some sort of star party attendance requirement. I’m really nervous about trying to have any kind of official class activity at night, especially off school grounds, but I don’t know what to do.
• One of the pieces I appreciated about the rubric that Matt Baker and Kat Glass shared about their student presentations was that they also graded them on how they spent their time doing prep work. I think if my students knew they were going to receive a grade on how they used their class time, they might take it a little more seriously.
• UIL (I’m UIL Coordinator for our school)
• I wasn’t crazy about it at the time, but after the fact I liked the table I set up during our “VikingFest”, a kind of school fair that is held the first Wednesday of the school year. It let students know what UIL was and all of the different events that were offered. This year, I want to have some flyers printed that list the events, the coaches, and the rooms where they practice.
• I made a whole presentation to a local Rotary Club about how I want to expand student participation, so now it’s time to put those ideas into action. I need to get with the other coaches and set up a rotation of people to speak to the AVID classes to let them know about UIL. I also want to try to talk to some of the upper-level math classes about Calculator, since that’s my baby.
• We’ve had these types of periods before, and they have usually not worked out well, but I’m hopeful that the changes we have made will give this a better shot at working.
• We want students to spend the entire time productively, which means that I need to come up with some “evergreen” activities for students to do if they say they don’t have anything.
• Geometry: Factoring quadratics (X-Puzzles), lightning math, WODB, Estimation180, PSAT practice, coding (trinket.io), student-created videos for lessons
• Astronomy: SAT/ACT practice, ???

Personal

• Plan and prep meals on Saturday. (Sunday never seems to work out.)
• Plan to leave school by 3:30 except on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
• Make time to practice my flute and play with Flutissimo.
• Go to the gym at least three times each week, but ideally Monday-Friday.
• Get back to study of Romans
• I worked all summer finally getting my house clean and tidy, so let’s keep it that way!
• Continue learning Python
• Get back into cross-stitching or quilting.

## First Day Plans (#SundayFunday) (#MTBoS)

August 12, 2017

I want to do all the things! Arrgh!

This year, especially after all of the inspiration at TMC, I’m having trouble narrowing down what I want to do on the first day of school for my two Pre-AP Geometry classes. The last few years, I have tried to get away from reading through the syllabus/procedures and have kids actually doing math. That has come back to bite me a few times because I think I didn’t spend enough time setting norms while we were doing the math. The 1-100 activity by Sara Van Der Werf has been really popular with the MTBoS this year, and I think this setting of norms combined with doing math has a great deal to do with it.

Here’s what I have to get done on the first day:

• I have a flipped classroom, which means that I really need to explain the flow of homework, classwork, and quizzes to my students. The biggest mistake students make in a flipped/mastery learning classroom is getting behind, and I really need to pound that into their heads!
• For the first time, we gave all of the Pre-AP Algebra I students a summer assignment. It wasn’t a huge amount (two pages of problems), but if I’m going to honor those who did the work and take this seriously, I need to do some sort of assessment on that first day. Our plan is to give them a quiz on the first day, and anyone who made less than 80% would then re-take the quiz (different version) on the second day.
• Gather student information. For the last few years, I have used a Google form to collect information such as preferred name, whether they have internet access, favorite subject, how confident are then math, etc. I always have some students who are shocked when I call them by their preferred name almost immediately, and I have to remind them they told me what they wanted to be called!

I’m figuring that will take about half of the class (about 35-40 minutes). With the remaining time, I can’t decide whether to do the 1-100 activity or have them read an excerpt from Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. I’m currently leaning toward doing the 1-100 activity, and then after my 8th graders leave (they have to leave about 20 minutes early every day to catch a bus back to the junior high), use the remaining time to have my 9th graders read the excerpt. Or we might just use the 20 minutes attempting to explain the wacky schedule we’re going to have this year — we’re going to have a 23-minute rotating advisory period every day.

For my three Astronomy classes, I like the plan I’ve used for the last couple of years:

• Let them sit where they like (these are mostly seniors, with a few juniors mixed in), although let them know I reserve the right to change them up if they can’t behave. I usually use a paper form to gather names to make my seating chart, but I’m thinking of integrating it into my Student Info form.
• Collect student information. I have a form similiar to my Geometry form that I collect similart types of data.
• Create a “Pocket Solar System”. I give each student a 3-foot long piece of adding machine paper. We label one end as “Sun” and the other end as “Pluto” (or “Kuiper Belt”), and I ask them to lay out the planets according to how they think they are spaced out. When they are finished, I have them flip the paper over, label the ends the same way, and I show them how the planets are really spaced out. We can then talk about how little mankind has really explored. To give them even more perspective, we will work through calculating how far away the nearest star is.
• I then go over the basic format of the class, how the grading is set up, and what my expectations are. This year, I think I’m going to try using Consensus Rounds to have them come up with respect agreements for Teacher-Student and Student-Student interactions.
• If I have time left, I’m contemplating using the 1-100 activity to get them thinking about group work because they will be starting their first group project the next week.

My final “class” is a class babysitting students as they attempt to make up Algebra I, Geometry, or Algebra II credits using ixl.com. Aside from getting them registered on the site and explaining how the process works, I’m not sure if I’ll do anything else with them.

## Random Assortment of Links (#MTBoS)

August 8, 2017

Or to quote Jessica:

## Summer of Conferences: TMC17

August 8, 2017

I didn’t quite mean for it to turn out this way, but apparently I only go to Twitter Math Camp (TMC) in odd-numbered years, so this was one of those years. The last two TMCs I attended (TMC13 in Philadelphia and TMC15 in Claremont, CA), I rode the train because I generally find it a more relaxing way of traveling. Unfortunately, the only way to go by train from Fort Worth to Atlanta was through Chicago (!), so I flew this time. Because I was attending the Desmos Pre-Conference, I arrived on Tuesday. One of my goals for this conference was to force myself to be socially outgoing because I know there are things I have missed out on in the past, so when Heather Kohn (@heather_kohn) offered to lead a pre-pre-conference tour of Atlanta, I signed up for a tour of the Georgia Aquarium. I wasn’t necessarily interested in seeing the Aquarium (although I’m very glad that I did — it was incredible!), but I wanted the opportunity to meet some people ahead of the conference and so have some built-in familiar faces for when the conference started.

The Desmos conference was very interesting. I ended up in a two-person session on Polygraphs with Chris Danielson, and we actually ended up playing the polygraph I created for my Astronomy class — which was great, because it made me realize that I needed to edit the pictures to make the names more readible. We ended up working on a possible polygraph idea for parallel lines and transversals, which I’m definitely going to work on this year.

The other session that I found interesting was First Steps with the Computation Layer. This has kind of been my summer for programming, and I thought it would be interesting to drill down into what makes Desmos tick. It was fun, in a frustrating kind of way, but I’m not sure the additional flexibility is really worth my time investment right now.

Again, trying to be more outgoing, I spent the evening playing games with a table of guys — thanks Chris (@Plspeak), Jonathan (@rawrdimus), Bill (@roughlynormal), and Josh for making me welcome!

Thursday, the actual TMC17 conference began. Here are my recaps and takeaways:

Morning Session: Playing with Exeter Math
I already wrote up how much of a blast I had in this session. Part of the reason I chose this session is because my summer conference load has been pretty heavy and I wanted some time just to play with math. The other reason I chose this was to give me an opportunity to experience math from a student’s perspective — expecially the frustrations that happen when you can’t quite get things to work the way you want. I was very glad I picked this session!

Session #1: “An Object to Think With”: The whole body as a tool for mathematical sense making by Malke Rosenfield and Max Ray-Riek
This didn’t really turn out to be what I thought it was. We ended up making 3-D structures out of rolled-up newspaper sticks and tape. What I found interesting was the way Malke and Max facilitate the session: they started us up very open-ended and added structure as we went along. It was also fascinating how different the three groups’ structures were (my group’s was very free-form). I’m not sure what takeaways I have for my classes, but it was a lot of fun.

Session #2: Expos: Student Presentations in Math Class by Matt Baker and Kat Glass
I really found this session to be interesting because they use student presentations to (a) review before tests and (b) practice giving presentations. I especially liked the rubric that they shared with us. I already do presentations in Astronomy, and I think I’m going to add giving students grades on how they work in their groups on the presentation. Part of me really wants to have my Geometry students do presentations for review and part of me is a little nervous about the time commitments by both the students and me.

Session #3: A Trig Exploration: Exact Values and the Golden Triangle by Rachel Kernodle, Jamie Collins, and Molly Tanner
This was a whole lot of fun! After refreshing our memories of 45-45-90 and 30-60-90 triangles (and the corresponding trig values), we were then given a 36-72-72 triangle and asked if there was any way we could use this to find more exact trig values. Very cool!

Session #4: CO + DE = MATH by Stephanie Reilly and Tamar McPherson
This might be one of the most useful sessions I attended at TMC. One of the reasons I’ve been getting back into programming is because I think there’s got to be some way to correlate the logical thinking from programming with the logical thinking in Geometry. This session may have given me a really good tool by introducing me to Trinket.io. Until my laptop’s battery died, I was able to take their templates and build a tool for finding the third side of a right triangle, as well as one for calculating the distance between two points. I’m definitely going to be playing with this as school gets started!

Session #5: An Hour of Codebreaking by Bob Lochel
This was a fun session to play with different types of code makers and code breakers. The simulation of the Enigma machine especially boggled my mind. I’m not sure how much (if any) I can use in Geometry, but it was a good session.

Session #6: Clothesline Math by Chris Shore
I was so happy they added this session on because this I wasn’t able to attend his earlier presentation. I’m not sure I can adequately convey how much my mind was blown by the simple arrangement of some paper markers on a piece of string. For the initial stages, it was interesting to discuss what was the absolute minimum amount of information needed to fully represent $\frac{1}{2}$, $\frac{1}{3}$, and $\frac{1}{4}$ on a number line; and I also enjoyed the discussion generated by placing $-x$, $x+1$, and $x+2$ on a number line containing 0, 1, and $x$. It wasn’t until we were looking at solving an equation, $2x+9=3x-6$ that things exploded. On the number line, we placed $2x+9$ and $3x-6$ clothespinned together. Chris then had us place $2x$ and $3x$, and that’s when we realized that $2x$ had to be 9 units away from the equality on the left and $3x$ was 6 units away on the right. The gap between was 15, which was $x$. Wild! From a teacher standpoint, Chris also gave us some good words of advice, such as making sure the students not at the board have whiteboards or the equivalent, so they have something to do.

This post has gone on too long, but I don’t want to forget about my favorite My Favorites:
What Else Can Google Slides Do? by Jennifer Fairbanks
Dynamic Web Sketches by David Petro

Maybe next year, I’ll be able to break my pattern and go to TMC18, even though it’s an even-numbered year!

## Summer of Conferences: CAMT17

August 8, 2017

CAMT (the Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching) was being held in Fort Worth this year, and my principal agreed to pay the registration fee for any math teacher who wanted to go. Because of other scheduling conflicts, Brenda and I were the only ones who were able to go. I figured we would probably not be attending the same sessions, since she would be focused on PreCalc and I would be focused on Geometry, and that’s pretty much the way it turned out. What I did not expect to happen was to run into Tiffany, one of my good friends from my UTA Master’s program. We saw each other after the first sessions of the day, and pretty much hung out together for the rest of the conference. I also ran into Anita, a teacher who used to teach Pre-AP Geometry at my school, as well as two or three other teachers who had been there. It was somewhat surreal.

This is my recap of what I learned at CAMT this year:

Even though this session was listed for 6-8, I decided to attend because I have followed Andrew for years on Twitter. It was definitely worth it. One of the things I will definitely use this year is having students guesstimate how a bottle’s circumference compares to its height as a reminder about circumference.

Session: Plick Me! Flipping Geometry by Sarah Ashley
While I have been saying I wanted to use Plickers for a couple of years now, I always seem to find some reason why it’s never the right time. What I appreciated about this session was that she actually had us using the Plickers and showed us how she set things up. She also provided some links to some useful sites, most of which either required iPhones or I already knew about such as Desmos or Geogebra, but she did mention a few I hadd not heard of such as Splashtop.

Session: The Importance of Getting It Wrong by Michele Adams
I’m not sure this session really answered their question of how to get students to persist, but it did have some interesting activities that reminded me why I shouldn’t forget about the Shell Centre for Mathematical Education resources. The activity that I especially want to remember when we hit volume was comparing bottles and graphs of their volume vs. height.

Session: Engage and Motivate All Students by Aaron Daffern
This was one of those sessions where you make a pre-judgement based on your initial impression of the presenter that turns out to be completely wrong. Aaron is an interesting guy. He’s currently a curriculum direcctor for a charter school which he had previously served as principal. One thing he said that really stuck with me was that as principal, he should be able to “walk into any classroom and teach any subject.” I know my current principal also has that philosophy, which (although it can sometimes come across as arrogant) is such a change from having principals stand up and publicly state that they aren’t that good at math (laugh, laugh). Aaron had us model a strategy that I’m probably going to use for my first day classes: consensus rounds. He initially had us come up with three to five characteristics of a good math lesson. At the beginning of the session he had given everyone slips of paper that had three different groupings on it. He then had us find our first group (which got rather chaotic in a room of ~100 people) and come to a consensus of three characteristics. He insisted that each member of the group needed to “own” the list. It was also important that we each write the list down because after two minutes, we regrouped and did it again. After two minutes, we regrouped one last time. By this point, most groups had talked through different ideas, but the main consensus of the whole room for the main characteristic of a good math lesson was “student engagement”. Of course, how we achieve engagement is the tricky part.

Session: Revamping a Classic: Interactive Notebooks Gone Digital by Amanda Packard and Rita Gongora
Although this was billed as a commercial product demonstration, Tiffany and I decided to attend because we thought it might give us some good ideas, which it did. We saw some good uses for OneNote for Classroom, as well as using Google Slides to make a template that students would then use to fill in for their notes.

Session: Breaking Down Barriers – Geometry Redesigned by Julie Kidder and Caroline Robb

This was a very interesting session. These two teachers are fortunate enough to teach at a private school that let them completely redesign their Geometry curriculum. One of the most fascinating decisions they made was to eliminate Pre-AP (Honors) Geometry as a separate course and put all different skill levels in the same classes. How they then handled the Pre-AP part was to designate parts of their assignments as “Honors”, and students had to accumulate a certain number of points to have their course credited as honors. Students were given a choice of ways to accumulate those points, which also included things such as competing in UIL events. While I certainly can’t implement that sort of thing in my classes, I really did like their lesson design.