November 30, 2013

Nix the Tricks: The Book

It is the last day of November. My self-imposed deadline for typesetting Nix the Tricks. And I've done it!

In the beginning, there was a calculus teacher complaining about students' lack of a good definition for slope. Then there was a conversation among my department members on tricks we hate seeing kids show up to our classes with. I expanded the conversation to members of my online math community. We brainstormed and debated what constituted a trick and which were the worst offenders. I organized. More people joined in on the conversation and shared better methods to emphasize understanding over memorization. I organized some more. Contributions started to slow down. The end result was 17 pages. I had grand dreams of a beautifully formatted resource that we could share with teachers everywhere. A few people shared my dream. We discussed formatting and organization and themes. Then the end of the school year craze happened, and suddenly it was August! School started, life got busy, and then I started hearing about NaNoWriMo. I decided that in November I would typeset the whole thing. If someone could write 50,000 words in a month, I could code something that was already mostly written. It was difficult, I had never paid attention to all the types of pages in a book, but the internet was there for me, and today, the last day of the month, I can say:

Hey, I just wrote it,
And this is crazy,
But here's the download,
So read it, maybe!

Check out the website: NixTheTricks.com

And now that I've gotten that song stuck in your head, listen to Tweet Me Maybe from TMC12 while you browse.

Thank you so much to everyone that helped, not just this month, but since the beginning of this project. I am so thankful for this community and all that we offer to each other.

I do ask one more thing of you. As anyone who has coded anything knows, you eventually go cross-eyed and as many times as you re-read something, you are bound to miss an error that is glaring to anyone with fresh eyes. I've been typesetting the document and editing the website all weekend. I tried to check the links, to look for typos and to test several devices. I got an error on my phone once, but I can't replicate it to know how to fix it. So, if you see any issues at all, no matter how small they seem, please let me know. Leave a comment here, send a note via twitter or use the submission form.

Enjoy, share widely and know that I'm rooting for all the teachers who explain and all the students who still ask why.

[Edited 12/3/2013 to add background for newcomers to the blog, like those who are here via the Math Forum Newsletter. Welcome!]

November 24, 2013

Mission #8: Sharing is Caring in the MTBoS

Reblogged from Explore MTBoS:



It's amazing. You're amazing. You joined in the Explore the MathTwitterBlogosphere set of missions, and you've made it to the eighth week. It's Sam Shah here, and whether you only did one or two missions, or you were able to carve out the time and energy to do all seven so far, I am proud of you.

I've seen so many of you find things you didn't know were out there, and you tried them out. Not all of them worked for you. Maybe the twitter chats fell flat, or maybe the whole twitter thing wasn't your thang. But I think I can be pretty confident in saying that you very likely found at least one thing that you found useful, interesting, and usable.

With that in mind, we have our last mission, and it is (in my opinion) the best mission. Why? Because you get to do something to help someone else. A random act of kindness.
sharingiscaring
We want you think about something you saw in the MathTwitterBlogosphere that you think might be useful to a colleague, a department head, an administrator, a student, whatever. And then let them know about it.

Some ideas:
  • You have a colleague teaching Precalculus, and you saw a blog author that has posted a lot of good resources and thinking about Precalculus. You email this resource and why they might find it useful.
  • You have a math coach who may be interested in the Math Mistakes blog. You share it with this math coach!
  • You saw an issue of Math Munch that might spark some interest to one of your particular students (or maybe all of them).
  • You saw an activity on fractions that your middle school colleagues would looooove. You share the wealth!
  • You think a fellow teacher might benefit from joining twitter. You help them take the leap.
  • You attended a Global Math Department meeting and you thought of someone who should have been there! You send the recording to that person.
  • You belong to an AP Statistics list-serv, and there is a great activity you saw on a blog. You email the list-serv.
  • You did an activity inspired by something in the MTBoS. You share that activity with another teacher in your school who teaches the same subject.
  • You ask for 5 minutes in a department meeting to share what you have learned about the online math teacher community.
  • ANYTHING ELSE! Just share, my little Care Bears, share!
In other words, spread the word about something in the MTBoS that you found. You should let someone else who doesn't know about the stuff we're doing (yes, we: if you weren't before, you're one of us now! mwahahahaha!) see it, and know that it's out there for them too!

This is the coda to the work you've done over the past two months. We wanted to show you what was out there because all that good stuff out there helped us and inspired us as teachers. Now we want you to be in our shoes. We want you to show others what is out there in the MTBoS that helped you and inspired you as a teacher!

pay it forwardYour Final Mission
  1. Share!
  2. Write a blog post talking about what you shared, who you shared it with, and why you shared it!
  3. Tweet out your blog post. Include the #MTBoS hashtag.
  4. Include your blogpost in the comments here and then read and comment on the blog posts of the three commenters directly above you. Be sure that you are commenting on their blog and not here.
  5. Please fill out our survey to help guide us in future missions.  We promise, it's very short.  Don't skip the survey as we are planning on compiling all of your fabulous blogs and virtual filing cabinets so we can share them with the world!  :)
If the survey below is not viewable, please click here.

November 22, 2013

A Day In My Life

My day yesterday:

6:20 am Alarm goes off. Normally I snooze or check twitter/email/reader on my phone before getting up, but this week I am dog sitting while Ashli attends a conference so I have to get up and attend to his needs as well as mine.
7:00 am Leave the house. In my mind I leave at 7 am every morning, in reality it's always a few minutes after.
7:04 am Arrive at school. Yup, it's a 4 minute drive to get to school, all right turns and only one light on the way in. Contractually we need to be here at 7:12. Class starts at 7:24, but I have a 90 minute prep first block every day so the motivation to arrive early is lacking. I stop in one coworker's room to say hi, then head to my room to deal with my email. My co-teacher arrives to chat, then another coworker has a question, then another coworker with another question. We all have first block prep which is great for collaborating, but rough because kids are more focused on learning at the beginning of the day than the end, ah well.
8:20 am Finally manage to finish responding to all my email. Realize how late it is and wonder if I'll ever have time to grade. Realize I'm still wearing my winter coat and scarf, remove coat and take a bathroom break while I have the opportunity. Prep for tomorrow's classes. Stop by coworker's room and we head to the copier together. I complain about being cold and she mocks me for not wearing a jacket. I have a fleece on the back of my chair that I usually wear but I thought just maybe it would be warm enough today to be comfortable in a sweater.
8:55 am "bell rings" Well, the bell would ring if we had functioning bells. I think they broke in September, maybe early October, and they're so old it's taking this long to order the part.
9:00 am PreCalculus starts. We have a do now and discuss homework, then I project some problems and have a seat. I've found that if I sit down rather than immediately circulate to see who needs help the students are more likely to use their resources and make an attempt. I clean off my desk then start moving through the room to see who's stuck.
10:00 am Three students have completed the problem set but the rest of the class is making good progress I don't want to interrupt. Two of the students who are done are trying to sneakily do their English homework, I tell them to feel free. I get the third student to help me hang some student work in the hallway (geometry class did the triangle quilt project a few weeks ago and they were still sitting on my desk). Before the end of the class more students are done and so we discuss. As the students leave one asks me if I have a plan for pep rally week. I raise my eyebrow and he explains that he'd like to do something with Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio because they're really cool. Another student asks what Fibonacci numbers are. I remember that on Wednesday we have a weird schedule - regular first block, shortened second block and then the pep rally. Fibonacci numbers sounds like a great idea for the shortened second block, especially if there's a student in Honors PreCalc who doesn't know what they are!
10:26 am PreCalc is dismissed and it's lunch time for half the school. I call this second breakfast and heat up some oatmeal. I eat with mostly math teachers, so I tell them about the student requesting Fibonacci and ask what ideas they have. By the end of lunch I have a list of potential projects and a promised email forward.
10:56 am Lunch ends, time for the geometry meeting. I'm in the sophomore house, which means that all teachers with 3 or more sophomore classes have the same block off. On Monday/Tuesday (depending on how our alternating day schedule works out) we meet as a full team. On the remaining days we meet in curriculum groups; today was a day for the four geometry teachers to meet. We discussed plans to continue reinforcing concepts students struggle with during upcoming units. Including an outline of a midsegment lesson I'm excited for (and hope to share soon - hold me to that?). The curriculum director stopped by the meeting for a while. At one point he says something about how I use "that Dan Meyer stuff" which got a confused look from me. Turns out he was talking about discovery style teaching as opposed to "I do - We do - You do." The reference was amusing. At the end of the meeting we get caught up talking about how to engage one of the new teacher's classes - it's filled with repeaters so there isn't much buy-in.
12:15 pm Finally make it upstairs, I'm a bit late for hall duty. My exciting job is to stand at the end of the hall to the cafeteria during lunch so that kids don't go any further than the bathroom without a pass. Luckily my mentee's classroom is right there and he has a prep so we get to chat every other day for half an hour. Today we worked together on a PreCalc project we'll assign next week.
12:28 pm Lunch duty ends, I race across the school and down two flights of stairs to get to my class before the students do.
12:33 pm Geometry class starts. Most of them have a productive class working through stations.
2:02 pm School ends. I immediately open the tray of brownies and my co-teacher and I each eat one. I made them last night for the club I run after school. Only a couple students show up since powderpuff practice is at the same time and my seniors are there instead. We still manage to redecorate our bulletin board.
2:55 pm Students head out. I clean up a bit and type some random letters in a word document. Leaving an unsaved document prevents the computer from shutting down at automatic shutdown time. It's not energy efficient but it saves me from extreme frustration on the days that the network is down so I can't sign in, plus it takes so long to quit all the programs I don't want running it's much better to let it sleep during the week and only shut down on weekends.
3:15 pm Coworker and I arrive at my house. The dog is very excited to see us and we all head out for a walk around my neighborhood. Nice chance to chat and unwind for the day. Coworker suggests doing this regularly, whether I'm dog sitting or not, which is a great idea.
4:00 pm Arrive at class (also close by, it's at the middle school which is just up the street from the high school). The state recently added an ELL training requirement for licensure so last year I had to do 10 hours of PD and this year I'm taking a full course. It's run by the state so it's not well organized but the instructor is great and it's a chance to work with my co-teacher as well as a few other math teachers from the district, which has been nice.
4:30 pm Break out the last of the brownies. Class still going.
5:00 pm Realize I never ate my sandwich, I usually have lunch at 2 when students leave but I got distracted by brownies. Have a very late lunch. Class still going.
6:40 pm Class ends, 20 minutes earlier than scheduled - thanks instructor!
6:50 pm Arrive home, try to get caught up with the internet.
8:00 pm Realize it's late and I haven't had dinner yet. I had plans to work on Nix the Tricks this evening too. Food takes priority.
8:15 pm My mom calls, I'm finishing dinner as I answer.
8:30 pm Finished with phone call and decide to play on my phone. Too late to do any writing.
9:00 pm I'm exhausted and start heading toward bed. Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday!

November 15, 2013

Nix the Tricks: More Chapters

This week I decided that front matter was more fun than writing regular chapters. So now I have a cover, title page, colophon, epigraph and preface. Then an introduction. Finally, a new chapter of tricks. It's up to 26 pages! Of course, by NaNoWriMo standards I've accomplished very little, that dotted line is where I'm supposed to be to hit the 50,000 word goal.

They don't know that this isn't a novel and 50,000 words was never a goal. I remind myself I have at least an extra thousand 'words' when you include the code. Whatever that means. But I appreciate the email reminders to write, so I stay connected with that organization. The time I spend formatting and making images and researching the parts of a book aren't represented in this graph though, I have been working a lot! The only remaining productive procrastination option would be to figure out how an index works in LaTeX, but mostly all I have left is the regular writing so I'm hoping things move quicker the second half of the month.

I think this week I convinced the linked text to stay active. It definitely works on scribd, maybe while embedded as well. [Update: the links to sections of the document work, but not the ones to the world wide web. Intriguing.]



Two things:

Michael did an amazing job of matching up math mistakes with tricks, but he didn't have one to match every trick. For the new chapter I'm seeking: 1) messing up order of operations by multiplying before dividing 2) cancelling a square and a square root

Editors. Doesn't appear that I'm going to get much feedback by posting here. You want to be an editor? I'll put your name on the verso! (Check out that lingo I learned.)

November 10, 2013

Properties of Triangles

Last year when we started talking about triangles one of my colleagues did the relationship between angles and sides first (the largest angle is opposite the longest side etc.) and found great success.  The angle properties of isosceles and equilateral triangles easily follow the definition, the hypotenuse is obviously the longest side of a right triangle, the impossibility of an obtuse equilateral triangle is quickly apparent. So I wrote down that I would do that first this year. But then I forgot the definition of first, I had students define types of triangles and try to draw obtuse equilateral triangles before discovering this relationship. I know now, first means first. At the very beginning. As soon as we say the word triangle, we should be doing the exploration relating sides to angles.

A fun way to transition from lines to triangles is this activity from Mr. Stadel. I retyped it to get the instructions and diagram on one page, it's exactly the same as his though.



With just a single extra line, you can prove that the angles of a triangle add up to 180:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trigonometry/Proof:_Angles_sum_to_180

Now we've mentioned the word triangle, time to explore sides and angles! This sheet is adapted from one in my textbook. I edited it with my colleagues. It was awesome. Kids sat quietly cutting out their side lengths, trying triangles and figuring out what worked. They weren't just quiet because they were cutting and tracing, there was thinking involved in the process. They were noticing and wondering, because, as one student declared, "You always ask us that!" She was complaining that I asked her to write something down when she finished, but what a great complaint 'You always want to know what we think!' I smiled, I have no idea what thoughts ran through her head, but then she commenced recording her ideas.



I'd have a picture of graph paper rulers, but I forgot to take one. Might remember tomorrow. Idea: cut out rectangles 1 box wide in the length needed. Compasses, wooden rulers and plastic rulers all work as well, but compasses are tough to hold steady and most rulers are long and thus unwieldy. We used graph paper just a bit larger than the standard size. Give kids one full sheet to draw on and a quarter sheet to cut from and they're good to go.

Goals of this activity: figure out what side lengths make a triangle (triangle inequality) and discover the angle-side relationship. Having the side lengths in decreasing order would make the second discovery more obvious. I chose to have kids work for it a bit, but am open to change. This page was typeset in LaTeX, if you want the original file so you can edit it please let me know.

My next step would have been to define all the words that we use to classify triangles, but since I already did that it will be to have kids work through stations practicing and applying the rules they discovered. I'm unreasonably excited about the coupon holder I got at Staples for keeping all of my station activities in order. Organizers are such fun!

November 7, 2013

Nix: Ratios and Proportional Reasoning Chapter

I've realized that while I'm pretending to do NaNoWriMo, it's a week in and I have 2,426 "words" typeset (let's not talk about how many of those are numbers or symbols). Anyone who manages to write 50,000 words in a month is seriously impressive! Still, I have made progress that I want to share. I started with Chapter 2, because I can (and I have a soft spot for proportional reasoning). It has taken a lot of tinkering to figure out how I want to format this thing, but I have something I think I like. Right now I'm working in full page mode, which is good for printing but not a whole lot else. The back of my mind is swirling with eBook and tablet friendly formats, but I'm trying to focus on getting the whole thing typed first. So, without further ado, Chapter 2:




Things I'm excited about: 
Clickable links! (referring back to previous sections, the table of contents - not pictured - and linking to math mistakes)
Words wrapping around images (magic!)

Things I'm wondering about: 
Does it read smoothly?
Are the reasons convincing and the alternatives do-able?
I accidentally made an image set for multiplying fractions when I meant to do addition, so I added in the rectangular array method even though there isn't a trick for that (that I know of). Worth including?

Things I changed:
I didn't feel that Least Common Denominator qualified as a trick, I still included a passage about it which uses all the language we had previously, but it doesn't get a title anymore.
I created illustrations for each trick (with colors! yay keynote!) because there are so many names for tricks that I wanted it to be completely clear what we were talking about.

Up next: 
Michael Fenton is the awesomest! He typed Chapter 1: Operations and Algebraic Thinking into LaTeX so I will be elaborating on and formatting that one next.

I thought you would be able to leave comments on a pdf in google drive like you can any other google doc, but apparently not. Feel free to comment here or tweet me with thoughts. I really want this to be as peer edited as possible. So grammar to content, I'd love your feedback on all of it.

November 3, 2013

Quarter 1 Successes

I haven't changed much about my classroom layout this year, but the one new addition, Mathy McMatherson's Wall of Champions, is awesome!!
Last year any time a student got a perfect score I would stamp their paper with a gold star (because a student told me even high schoolers like stickers and I compromised with stamps). Then I read Dan's post, found yellow star sticky notes at Staples and claimed a spot on the wall. I purposely picked a section of wall in the front of the room near my desk - as soon as the first class had gotten their quizzes back other classes, students I had after school who weren't in my class and colleagues started asking about the stars. Since I took the photo above I've run out of yellow stars and started in on the orange ones (they come in a two pack). Students are competing to get their star the highest on the wall, creating a cluster with all their stars and spreading to other parts of the wall. It's great to see kids celebrating successes and aiming for perfection rather than "good enough."

I started using a required binder system in geometry last year and have fine tuned it this year. For PreCalc I don't require a binder but offer them all the same resources except the structured notes. The very first thing is a plastic sandwich bag we forced through the rings filled with a pencil, a dry erase marker and a cloth for erasing the dry erase marker (cotton face wipes were destroyed within a day, kids did not interpret them as reusable). There are still kids looking for a pencil or pen sometimes, but less often than in the past I think. Next is a plastic sleeve that contains a graph on one side and a problem solving template on the back. Both were essential in our pattern unit. They've gotten less use lately, I need to mix in more word problems and multi-step problems.

The first section is the reference section. Flappers are still working well. Last week my co-teacher had an awesome idea - a notation dictionary. There are plenty of symbols that don't warrant an entire index card for the flappers but students need to have notes on them. Since we started mid-year we did a matching activity where I put all the symbols on the board and they had to match to the definitions. From now on we'll add symbols and definitions as they come up.

The next sections are classwork and homework. Boring. Following those is the assessment section. I made yet another grade recording chart and finally got this one to stick! It helped that I started at the very beginning of the year so either I remember to tell them to fill in the chart as I pass papers back or I see someone flipping to it and tell everyone to do the same. It turned out to have more space than I needed so I'll be modifying it to record their investigations (graded classwork/projects) as well. I wanted to use it when kids requested to reassess, especially if they reassess on the same topic more than once so I give them a different version, but I haven't been remembering to do that. Maybe this quarter...

The final section is the journal. Using "I notice, I wonder" has been great. I'm going to try QR code journaling a la Musing Mathematically, but just with PreCalc to start. Baby steps.

So, students are motivated to do well and have the support to do so with their binders. All that's left is great lessons to let them show off! Having two preps that I taught last year is awesome. My filing system + dropbox + memory (functional since it was just last year) = tons of resources. This year has been much more about "I want to do this - I have this thing that needs a bit of modification" than "I want to do this - should I write it or look for one?" Memory is key in that equation though, I need to remember that I have resources all the time, even when it seems easy to make a new version of a quiz off the top of my head, because that means the retakes I wrote last year won't quite match up. I'm hoping to get better at looking at last year's version first to see if I need to change things.

How about you? How are you faring so far? What are your goals for the school year? The world wants to know.

November 2, 2013

Intentions

As first quarter draws to a close I find myself frustrated with my work flow. I always feel rushed, behind and overwhelmed by my pile of grading. I have ideas but forget to implement them, or do once and then lose them to some other more urgent priority. Some of this can be attributed to the panic the administration is feeling over inadequate progress after a year of being labeled an underperforming school. This panic is passed on to us in the form of more paperwork, requirements and initiatives. However, all of this is out of my control, so I need to find ways to manage the things that are in my control so I'm happy and healthy throughout the school year.

My school runs a block schedule and it worked out this year that I have a 90 min prep first thing both days. It's not been good because I put things off until the next day, knowing I have that chunk of time in the morning. I do use the time productively, but we all know that things come up and a couple times I've been scrambling to finish something as the bell rings (well, the imaginary bell, our system has been broken for weeks). So, I'm setting the intention to be a day ahead in my prep, that way if the bell rings I can save and finish after school.

It will be easier to stay ahead if I take the time to look at my unit plans more frequently. The district wants all the curriculum online, which has actually been good because it means lots of time for conversations about our units and sharing of ideas. For geometry the website has a list of topics, vocabulary and standards; this year we're adding in a suggested order (but are being clear with administration that we have no intention of being in lockstep). For PreCalc we are putting in all of that information as we go, but I have notes from last year to refer to. In both cases, I've taught the class before and have ideas on what works and what needs altering, but I need to take the time to look at all of that. So, I intend to outline the whole unit before starting day to day prep by looking at the online curriculum and my own resources.

Between things I think of, conversations with colleagues and conversations with you (my online math community) I always have new ideas I want to try. I simply don't have time to implement them all, and I need a regular reminder of that. If I try everything then I won't have time to follow through with any of them, and that's not good for anyone. So, I will be really picky about trying new things and follow through on those that make the cut. Note: this is not about lesson ideas - those can happen one day and be gone the next and I always love new lessons, I'm talking about procedures, classroom management methods and other such things that require continuity to work.

All that said, I've done tons of cool things this year that I'm really excited about. I will share some things that have been working in the next post. But before I end this post, a final intention:

Typeset Nix the Tricks. Yes, I just wrote an entire post about how I'm overwhelmed with things to do, but this is an at home project, not a school project (I only do school work at home on Sundays) and this project is one that reminds me why I love teaching. I can give up a couple episodes of Doctor Who a week to work on this. As other people work on their novels for NaNoWriMo I will work on taking this database and turning it into something readable. There are just about 30 tricks right now, so if I average one per day I'll be golden. I'm working in LaTeX because I hate typing formulas in anything else, and it even has a book template, which makes this feel very official. Plus pdf's are everyone friendly. As I finish each chapter, I'll post it here for feedback - I want a lot of feedback. I've realized that it's my project and no one is going to write it for me, but I still need your help! This community is hugely important to me and I want to spread our communal expertise to a still broader audience.

What are your goals for the school year? How are you faring so far? The world wants to know.