Warm-up

If it takes 4.75 pounds of tomatoes to make one quart of tomato sauce, how many quarts of sauce can you make from 87 pounds of tomatoes?

What is a Mathography? Why Use One?

 

Today I attend the first webinar in a series of four devoted to helping developing collective efficacy in math while engaging students in remote or hybrid settings.  I thought I could get some ideas to use in class to make it better and more interesting.  I came away with so many ideas after the first meeting.  

I came away with several things but they circled the concept of student math identity. Math identity is defined as how a student sees themselves in regard to their ability or lack of to do math.  Part of this identity is based on their perceptions based on the assignments they've had to do over the years.

One activity mentioned that helps a teacher learn more about how they see themselves is to ask them to write a mathography. A mathography is similar to an autobiography in that they talk about themselves and how they feel about math.  In the assignment, students are asked to tell whether they like or dislike math and explain why they fell that way.  They are asked if they are "good" at math and explain why they think that.

They could also share if there are any areas of math they like or dislike and what is it about that area of math that they like or if they don't like a certain type of math why.   Personally, I don't like statistics mostly due to not liking the instructor I had in college who wouldn't clearly explain things so I never took another stats class again.  I'm sure there are others there who dislike a particular area for the same reason.

They could be asked what makes math awesome or horrible for them.  They could also be asked what experiences they've had in math that made them like it or dislike it and why those experiences made them feel that way.  Let them take time to describe their most memorable experience in math either good or bad.  

One should also take the time to ask students how they feel about taking this particular math class and what do they think they might learn.  What do they fear about the class? Ask them that if they could set up a math class, what do they think should be taught in it?

If you want to delve deeper, you could ask them what do they remember about their early experiences with math?  Did they feel awesome at any one topic?  Did they show others how to do it? Were they proud of being able to show others how to do something? If they no longer like math, you could ask what happened to change things or did they struggle every year?

You might also ask them to talk about the things they like to do and have them explain why they like to do it.  You might also have them tell you what they are good at and what they aren't as good at because you can take the things they like to do or are good at and connect math to their interests to show them how math relates to everything in life.  

This writing assignment will give you a lot of information about the student, their past experiences, and their thoughts about their abilities in math.  With this type of information on each student, it gives the teacher enough information to look at ways to reach all their students.  It helps to have a starting point for every student.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Improving Engagement Via Breakout Rooms.

One of the primary ways used to teach students when schools are closed due to the coronavirus is by using some sort of video conferencing program.  It is admitted that using video conferencing programs can sometimes make it more difficult to have students gather in smaller groups to work on specific questions or problems.  Fortunately, there is something called a breakout room that allows students to gather in smaller "rooms" to do collaborative work.  

A breakout room is a smaller room where students are sent to do their group work.  If one is using zoom, this is fairly easy to do because breakout rooms are an inbuilt part of the program. The person setting up the meeting needs to enable the breakout room feature before trying to open any.  Furthermore, one can assign students to breakout rooms ahead of time so the teacher does not need to do it during class time.  The teacher, who is the host, is the only person who can set up the breakout rooms. If the meeting is being recorded locally, the conversation in each room can be recorded but if the recording is being done in the cloud, only the main room can be recorded.

Unfortunately, not every school uses Zoom, some use Google meet for class and it does not have an inherent feature allowing for breakout rooms.  I've heard Google is working on adding the ability to create breakout rooms but I've not heard they did it.  Fortunately, there are ways to work around this by creating several other hangout rooms labeled as breakout room 1, breakout room 2, etc.  Then create a google doc with all the links to the various breakout rooms so when it is time to split up, students can click on the link and head off to the smaller room.  

The other way to do breakout rooms in Google meet is to download one of two  extensions for the chrome browser.  The first is Google Meet Plus which allows people to create breakout rooms but everyone who is going to participate via this extension must have it installed on their computer.  In addition, the basic version is free but the Pro version requires a monthly fee.  It has received a four star rating based on 189 reviews.

The second one is Google Meet Breakout Rooms and allows the teacher to create breakout rooms based on nicks, can be viewed in tile or tab format, allows people to be pre-assigned or done during class, allows the host or teacher to broadcast video and audio to all rooms at the same time, integrates with Google classroom and quite a few other features.  The only person who needs this extension installed is the teacher. Students may download it if they want but it is not necessary for students to participate.  The person who created this extension recommends teachers try it out with friends first because there is a bit of a learning curve.  This extension has received a four star rating based on 69 reviews.  

You may be wondering what are some ways you can use breakout rooms in math.  Breakout rooms are great for small group work, jigsaw activities, turn and talk, think, pair share, or working together on problems where each person has a different problem but the same answer.  Any think you do in class in small groups, can be done in breakout groups.

Breakout rooms help increase student engagement in distance classrooms.  Think about using it if you need to teach by distance.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Back To School.

Just recently, my principal reminded the staff that although we are green, we need to plan lessons should we suddenly have to switch back to hybrid or remote due to cases.  I don't think we'll have a problem due to the restrictions the village has in place but it could happen.  

Last spring, when school suddenly went distance, we relied on packets that didn't have to be returned so most students didn't bother doing anything.  A few did some things and send in photos or texts to show their work but no-one chose the real world math assignments I provided.  The principal stated if we go red, packets won't cut it.

Although I've been researching the topic of teaching remotely, I do not feel I know enough so I went to the state website to see what professional development classes they off.  It turns out they are offering two classes that I think will be worth my while.

The first class is based on the newly published Distance Learning Playbook.  It is taught by the authors of the book over a four webinar series.  The first week looks at considerations for creating both units and modules that are engaging.  

Then the webinar goes on to explore synchronous vs asynchronous, learning goals and success criteria, aligning tasks appropriately, with another webinar on the health and well being of both student and teacher, and ways to improve student - teacher relationships. The final meeting covers ways to carry out assessment both formative and summative, and feedback effectively in a distance situation.  One of the other teachers suggested it because our school, like so many others, is open mostly but could easily switch to being totally online and I need to know more on how to do it.  So I'm taking the course.

The other one I'm taking is on teaching math remotely or in a hybrid model.  It covers building student math identity in individual and group settings, learning to identify areas where students need additional support and prioritizing methods of instruction to increase student learning as much as possible.  It explores creating situations for mathematical discourse in both hybrid and remote classes, selecting tasks that emphasize both problem solving and reasoning for these two situations, when and how to use multiple representations to help students connect ideas.

The first one is a general course while the second is math specific and I think the two combined will provide me with a better foundational knowledge should we move to online.  These two classes will give me that bit I need to improve my lessons for both in class or remote.  In fact, the middle school math teacher is currently taking three classes towards her masters degree and she asked me to share what I learn with her because she wants to know more about creating lessons for the uncertainty of the times.

As I go through the classes, I'll share the points which I think are great for use during lesson planning.  I know I'll be connecting pieces from each class into things I can use.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Warm-up

 How would you go about finding the volume of the fruit jelly if all you had was a 3 by 5 inch index card?

Warm-up

You have a ruler and a doughnut.  Explain how you would find the volume of the doughnut using only the ruler. 

How To Make Activities More Doable During Distance Learning.

Many of us have taken distance classes so we know for us, it often means sitting through a video based class for a couple of hours, scribbling down notes while trying to process everything the professor said.  We know that won't work with most of our students and it isn't necessarily a best practices method for teaching math.

We face the big issue of trying to construct lessons that will involve our students in something more than listening for 55 minutes while you lecture or at least try to have students reply. Fortunately, there are some ways to increase student involvement in class but it requires a bit of forethought and planning.

If you teach geometry, have students bring cereal boxes to class to measure calculate volume or surface area.  Ask them if they have soda cans, bottles,  or circular oatmeal boxes so students can relate formulas to real items rather than something out of a book.  If your school is sending materials home with lunches, see about including rulers, protractors, paper, and scotch tape so students can create their own nets for any of the standard 3 dimensional shapes.  

What about sending maps home so students can use ratios to calculate the distance between two cities using the key on the map.  If it is 1 inch = 50 miles, students can use the ruler to measure the distance between say Chicago and New York, set up the ratios to find the total distance a crow might fly to get there.  Take it one step further by having students look up the average speed of say a crow and let them figure out how long it would take it to fly the distance.

Let students plan a meal for their family and then using on-line sites or a printed list, let them investigate the cost of each item so they can determine how much a meal might cost.  In addition, ask them to scale up or scale down the recipe to feed say 2 people or 80.  Real life math.

Since most student have phones, let students call different phone copies to find out the costs of a couple of plans to determine which is better, or ask students to call the local cable or satellite companies to get the cost of various packages such as cable, internet phone, etc so they can figure out if buying them separately versus the whole package is a better deal.  Let them look at satellite costs to see if buying a package with everything is better cost wise versus buying a basic package and paying extra for one or two channels is better.

This is the perfect opportunity for the students to work together to create a "newsletter" to share various mathematical topics with their parents.  Each student can choose a topic and create an article to explain it so their parents can read about it.  Have your students select a stock from the stock market.  Each day, they can check the price and they can create a scatter plot over a two to three week period.  At the end of the time, they can calculate a line of best fit for these points.

This is the perfect situation to use twitter, facebook, or instagram type activities so students can share the results of various activities, questions, discoveries, impressions.  Matt Miller from Ditch The Textbook has templates for these social media outlets.  Take advantage of student knowledge of social media to engage them with questions, problems, etc.

Look around you.  Check on what the students have access to.  Look at what things students might have around the house to incorporate into the lesson so they are more engaged. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.