Week 40: Reflecting and Looking Forward

Another delayed post based on a list I wrote myself weeks ago. This one is probably the most important (and the list was actually written in the last week of the school year while it was fresh in my mind). Here is the annual reflection of my practices based on things that I want to work on in the future:

1. It was made evident to me (largely by conversations with a couple parents of my Grade 10 students) that many of these kids are still not really equipped to handle the flipped classroom on their own because of two major things: They have never view videos for homework before really; and Many of them have inadequate note-taking skills (i.e. they do not know when to hit pause because they have seen something important that needs to be written down).

I had tried to tackle these issues in the intro to my classroom but clearly I am not even doing an adequate job. Step 1: admit you  have a problem, right? I had been doing the first couple of videos as a class and had tried to show them that they should pause and record rewind if needed - and I do go through a list of "video guidelines" that they should follow for effective learning. Peers have shared that they will have a student be in charge of the mouse during these types of class video viewings so that a kid is in charge of pausing, rewinding, etc but either I am going about it wrong when I do this, or the kids are just too shy to really do what they need to do. I must find a way to better model this process. I think that perhaps I should model note taking myself even...and probably do the videos in class for a few more days than I have been.

2. Further to the note-taking issue, I have been grappling with the idea of losing textbooks as resources altogether and providing them with notes - this may happen if I return to the math department as this is the direction our new department head wants to take (if we have our own resources it does not make sense to pay for textbooks). Another possibility for working on modelling note-taking would be to provide students with outlines that they have to fill in as part of their homework/lesson.

Food for thought. Potentially time consuming. (especially with a new prep to worry about this semester)

3. Working as a flipped classroom teacher the focus is supposed to be on the in-class "stuff" that is assigned to really move the learning forward, allow for individual assessment/feedback time, and really engage the students in the topic and the learning. This has been a big adjustment...just what do you do with all the TIME!? It is, of course, the biggest blessing of this coaching style (I do not really call it teaching anymore - I am a guide to their learning...a facilitator if you will).

I want to make this part a better focus for me next semester. To continue to find engaging and meaningful things for students to do in class while resorting to "do these problems" less and less. Again, finding these many resources, ideas, etc is time consuming. But it has to be the most rewarding...the biggest bang for my buck (if the buck is time). I plan to continue accessing the many resources I have found (which include fellow bloggers, interactive websites/apps, project based learning, inquiry - and to hopefully harness the most effective things as often as possible (and if I can engage in PBL and inquiry this will be newer territory for me in areas that have intrigued me for awhile). I have even thought a bit more about the "genius hour" idea - and really liked the way Matthew Oldridge outlined it in his blog entitled "The Road to #GeniusHour Math"! (I recommend the read if you are math/science and want a starting point for implementing this type of task into your class).

4. I started to repurpose by Twitterchats from many moons ago to use as in-class discussion starters. This was a focus on physics CONTENT (not problem solving) and is supposed to serve as a way to get more effective conversation going in my classroom. My reflection on this is how I want to continue to use this next year (and beyond) by really establishing Accountable Talk practices (conversational norms) for students to use and make habit going forward. I discussed these ideas broadly here.

Looking forward I want to help students create conversational skills that will make them:
Clarify what they think the other person understands.
Asking another person to repeat what they think they just heard (i.e. engaging other group members).
Seeking the opinions of others by asking them if they agree or disagree AND why.
Engaging others and seeking all ideas by asking if there is anything they would like to add.
Using wait time to allow others to think. Not rushing the discussion.

5. I have also blogged this year about using Mathalicious with my Grade 10 math class. I would love to work on implementing these tasks the next time I teach a math course. They are a great foundation to math applications and a more authentic look at the subject, but are not always easy to implement in a way that engages teenagers. I need to work on relating the task to them more AND definitely making sure there is a strong foundation with the math tools needed before assuming it is a feasible task in the time-line I lay out.


Well I think that about covers it. I always have ideas for myself that turn out to be ambitious and maybe not achievable goals but I would way rather have too much I want to accomplish than to become complacent and not have enough.

I think it is safe to say that my priorities in this reflection are 1, 3 and 4. Goal 1 is my focus to help most with continuing to implement my flipped classroom and to build better relationships with students at the start (and parents, by extension). Goals 3 and 4 will be the focus I set out for myself for in-class throughout the semester - if I only do 2 significant things this time around I hope they are to actually create this conversational atmosphere in my class and to try new tasks/ideas/etc as often as possible.

If you have read to the end of this and have any reflections, ideas, questions, thoughts, etc that you would like to share please comment below. Would love to hear from you :)

Week 23 - First Time Using Mathalicious

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my experiences at the 2015 OMCA Conference in Niagara Falls, ON. I wanted to try using it as soon as possible (as they say, if you do not use the new thing right away you probably never will). We were starting off the Grade 10s (after doing a bunch of numeracy review) with Quadratic Relations (not my first choice, but I went with it) so I chose their Wiibates lesson to hope that it would be something engaging as I was planning to use it to introduce the topic (no lessons done in advance at all). My hope was that by starting off with an application it would show the students why they should bother to learn about quadratic relations.

Being the first time trying to do something that was going to be very new to me, and new to my students, I knew that I was going to run into some snags...so here they are:

- I had planned on about 1.5 periods to compete the task and it ended up taking 2+ periods

- All of my students had basically forgotten how to find the equation of a line (seemed to have a weak grasp of slope in terms of its equation although many found it in the context of the question) - this is why I would prefer to start the course with Linear Systems - which is greatly what contributed to the added time needed to complete the task.

- Students were not very engaged by the end of the task, though it started out decently (of course those who actually play video games were the most interested).

These snafus got me to wondering how our Grade 9s are being taught slope? why so easily forgettable? My instinct is that this should be something they remember well because it seems like the Gr 9 curriculum puts a lot of focus on the equation of a line and linear relations in general. I did not find this easy to reflect on as I have only taught MFM 1P once (and it was only 60% of the course as I started at the end of October) and this was 5 years ago. But this is something I would greatly consider when I do finally get to teach MPM 1D.

I definitely plan to try other Mathalicious stories during the semester. The overall concept is still well worth the time and it can only get better with more failure :)

I did ask the class what they thought overall afterward (using thumbs down/sideways/up) and most of them gave it thumbs sideways. At lunch I asked a couple of them for their honest opinions and the consensus was more or less that the lengthy time it took to complete was what made it into a less than ideal experience. They were willing to try something similar later on.

Week 21 - OMCA with Mathalicious

As a mathematics educator I am always looking for ways to show math in an authentic light. It often feels like curriculum limits these opportunities as we feel forced to cover certain topics in a fairly short time-line and we get sucked into it easily. As they say, we often resort to methods and ideas that we were taught with. It takes effort to find new ideas and make changes in education.

So when I heard about the OMCA conference this year and heard that it was featuring the Mathalicious website I wanted to jump on it. Their website has one goal - to use real-life problems to show how math is used as a tool to solve them. Textbooks generally used what is referred to as "canned" math - that is to say that questions are created for the sole purpose of using a specific math tool. What Mathalicious does is take something that is a problem first, and narrate it in a way that allows math to clearly be used as a tool - and generally the end result is something the students will not expect. This can be anything from taking a scene from a play, to looking at pizza to crust ratios, to deciding if a university education is worth the money.

The conference turned out to go as well as we had hoped (I went with a colleague) as the presenter was engaging and sold his product well. We got to try out a bunch of the activities on their site and experience a bunch as an audience. I must say that I don't know that I will ever do the site justice as a presenter myself, but I am still excited to try things out - we got a 6 month subscription with our conference fee. I think what really hit home about the whole experience was that he really forced you to reflect and recall why you had become a math teacher to begin with. We were forced to look at the core of math education and decide what was important - and that is exactly what we did.

By the end of the two days we were ready to head back to work to try something new! The timing of the conference was both terrible (leaving our classes for 2 days in the very first week of he semester was difficult, routines are yet to be established) and perfect - we were able to head back to immediately start using what we had learned. We intend to make use of the website this semester to test out how it might work, where things can be used, gauge student engagement and try to master the art of presenting these well-planned, authentic problems.

First goal is to use one to introduce a topic and to just see how it goes! Basically, to throw ourselves into the deep end - and either sink or swim! (probably a bit of both).

Looking forward I can also see how this has the potential for authentic assessment, great opportunities for collaboration, and the hopes for observation and conversation! It will take me some time to get there (and I can only hope that I will get to teach this course again in the near future - not 5 years down the road again). The excitement of having access to a well-planned, thoughtful resource is invigorating and a great opportunity. I am hopeful that the time they put into these lessons (literally a team putting in at least a week into ONE lesson - time I could never hope to have for one lesson) will only add to my students' experience.

If you have had the chance to try one of the Mathalicious lessons I would appreciate you sharing your story :)