Month: September 2022

Prove It

We’re about to begin the Reasoning and Proof unit in geometry, and judging by the looks on the faces of some of my students when I introduced it Wednesday and Thursday, well, its reputation certainly precedes it.

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Our curriculum map skips over logic statements and inductive reasoning, but back in the day I started doing a little writing activity as an application of the Law of Syllogism and it still holds up pretty well, and allows us to ease into a challenging subject.

I’ve been fortunate that my schedule has varied from year to year, toggling back and forth between Algebra II and Geometry the last 7 years or so. It keeps things fresh. I’m a believer in “teach 20 years but don’t teach one year 20 times”. But I also subscribe to the theory that in this business you keep what works and throw out the rest.

Thus, the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie project made its grand reappearance in Room 247.

(After an online convo this week I realized I hadn’t written about this one yet, so here we go. Take it and make it awesome-er if you want).

Student handout here. When I resurrected this activity after a long layoff teaching Algebra 1 and engineering, I couldn’t find the doc I had made back in 20-oh-whatever. A quick search online turned up this one, which I edited for my purposes. I don’t know who originally made it tho, so if it’s you, thanks.

We start the day with a video bellringer:

In a Google form I ask students to write down two “if-then” statements they heard in the story.

Then we talk about “cause and effect” – what happens if you stay up late binge watching a show? You are tired in the morning. What happens when you are tired in the morning? You hit snooze on your alarm. What happens if you hit snooze on your alarm? You wake up late. What happens if you wake up late? You miss the bus. And so forth.

All my kids can relate. In one class a student interjected, “so, you mean a chain of events?” Exactly. Let’s go.

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The assignment is to write a story in the style of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. Eight linked if-then statements that tell a cohesive, school-appropriate story, with a title/author/cover illustration.

Stick figures are definitely allowed.

My handout provides a lot of scaffolding – separate boxes for each of the eight sentences and then one more for the end where they link the hypothesis of the first sentence to the conclusion of the last, sometimes to great comedic effect. I make it a small quiz grade (15 points) because this unit does kind of grind up kids on the actual proofs quiz, and IYGAMAC serves as balance grade-wise. Plus, just about everyone can pinpoint that cascade of interrelated events in their own lives and the next thing you know they’ve got 8 good sentences. Some of them tap into their deep well of creativity and hilarity ensues.

It’s a good day. We get creative, we write in math, my check for understanding at the end of class usually reveals that everyone gets the idea of a syllogism, so we connect the activity back to the vocabulary. Checks a lot of boxes.

In an A/B block schedule I have to be careful about taking a day to step out of the curriculum map. But this activity has a high ROI in terms of understanding building an argument of factual statements. Worth the cost.

If I had four hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first two hours sharpening the axe

Not said by who you think said it, by the way

Monday we can go back to furrowing our brows over proving angles congruent or whatever.

The Journey Begins

I first heard of the New Tech schools probably 15 years ago, when I was doing a deep dive online to figure out how to do teaching better. The first New Tech High School was located in Northern California to better equip graduates for the demands of the late 20th workplace. Now they’ve spread across the country. New Tech has been in my area for a little over a decade, and now has reached my district.

We are onboarding one grade level at a time, starting with the freshmen last year and moving to the sophomores this year. Our 10th grade teachers trained up on the project-based and problem-based learning model over the summer, and last week the geometry PLN rolled out its first problem-based activity. With support from our ICs we worked together as a team to create the activity (I started a planning doc that I shared with the team, our department chair, and our math instructional coach). Everybody had a hand in the planning and legit we were tweaking it right up to the day we debuted it on Monday. Of note:

My math people will recognize the 3-Act Task bloodline in this activity. We offered a scenario where a student group wants to build and maintain a community garden on the school grounds. We tell them the budget allows for 50 feet of fence to keep small animals out, and ask them to design the garden. So they have the perimeter (without us using that word), and they will start thinking about area.

We begin with an estimation exercise (too high/too low/game show guess) for “what is the area that can be enclosed by 50 feet of fence?”, move on to brainstorming the “knows” and “need-to-knows” for the design in small groups, writing the ideas on post-its and placing them on a large poster board on the wall.

(The brainstorming and post-it process reminded me of the classic Nightline episode where the design house IDEO is challneged with re-imagining the shopping cart. )

Each group then goes and views the board containing the whole-class thoughts and heads back to their area to write down what they learned from the share-out.

They individually write how they would design the garden (what shape, what dimensions, where is it located, what to plant), and then sketch out their design on grid paper with dimensions included.

Next up is the actual, formal math of calculating the area of the garden they designed. The extensions are: look back at your “game show guess”. Compare the area of your actual design. How would you have to change your design to create a garden with the area you guessed back when we started? And: what if the concept was to design the biggest possible garden? How would that change your design?

Planning doc here, student handout here.

In the New Tech problem-based learning model, grading is done by a rubric of some number of the five New Tech Learning Outcomes (thinking and knowledge, oral communication, written communication, collaborations, and agency). We selected two indicators from thinking and knowledge, and one indicator from collaboration for our areas.

With all the magic happening in groups, I had plenty of time to make my way around the room, listen in on conversations, ask questions (and occasionally answer questions, although they figured out most of what they needed to know on their own – score!), and subtly tweaking when required. I saw some quality thinking and collaborating and mathing. A couple groups went right to Google (156.25 square feet for a game show guess was a dead giveaway) but that number is probably low compared to a traditional activity. An extremely cool moment was when I started to hear some of the groups (unprompted by me) use the word “perimeter” in their conversations.

It was glorious. I’m obviously already sold on PBL, now I’m hopeful that I can continue to ease the transition for my colleagues.

I had laid the groundwork for this project back in August with 100×100, my intention was to introduce what a problem-based activity could look like, focusing on one problem for an entire class period, working in small groups, discussing, considering “knows” and “need to knows”, accepting that the answer is not obvious and some of the information information that might be handed right over in a textbook problem is going to require rubbing some brain cells together.

I think that was a wise choice. My kids moved pretty seamlessly into collaboration mode when the project called for it. The group members all get the benefit of the group’s common math thought and output, which I think encouraged some of the more reluctant students to be willing to collaborate. The other big motivator to doing pencil-paper work was each person did an individual design first, then they compared, then they selected one to be the group’s design. Everybody felt like they had a voice in the process. I had very few holdouts. Many fewer than I would have had with a traditional pencil-paper (or even Desmos) quiz.

We’re off to a good start. I’ve got a handful of projects I’ve been doing for some time that I can continue to offer the group and I work with some creative teachers who are going to bring their own ideas to the table. And our instructional coaches have also pointed us to several sites where we can get ideas, even all the way on up to full-blown projects that other teachers have created. That “journey of a thousand miles”? We’ve made our first step.

Oh, and there was this as well, from back in early August at the NTN training:

It’s always cool to know that someone is watching. Also, Katie is a powerhouse and I still use things I learned from her at the very first South Shore e-Learning Conference I ever attended. So when I get feedback from her I feel like I’m doing something right.

Don’t know if that community garden ever gets built. But we definitely are building something big at my school. Looking forward to seeing what the geometry team plans next.

Planting Seeds

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I tried to plant some seeds over the weekend.

I attended the opening session for the Indiana Department of Education’s Teacher Leader Bootcamp Cohort 4 – returning this year as a mentor/table leader for this year’s group of teachers who are examining their own practice in hopes of creating change in their buildings, districts, and communities. They are studying the 5 Essentials for school improvment outlined by researchers at the University of Chicago and will design and implement an action research project over the course of the school year. This is the fourth year of the program initiated by former Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Jennifer McCormick. By May there will be 200 teachers who have participated. Compared to the statewide teacher corps that’s a tiny sliver – a third of one percent of all public school teachers in the state. 

So what good is that? It’s a literal drop in the ocean.

“What’s said here, stays here. What’s learned here, travels far.”

That’s one of the norms for another group I have the privilege of working with this year. The teachers of TLB4 are going to spread what they learn. They will lead. And maybe save the profession. 

I said what I said. 

The program is the brainchild of the former top educator in the state of Indiana and is now administered by the IDOE office of retention. That office sees the program as a powerful pathway to enagage and retain teachers. As our trainer from University of Chicago pointed out, “teacher retention is improved when a school is healthy.”

Four cohorts and a pandemic later, with teachers exiting the profession in record numbers, the office recognizes that Teacher Leader Bootcamp attracts teachers who are committed to their schools and their kids and their communities, and want to be around to see the seeds sprout and grow.

I touched base with my table group a week or so before the kickoff so we could introduce ourselves to each other. As you might have guessed, it is a powerhouse group.

Not gonna lie, I’ll never stop being that kid that gets nervous when I get called to the principal’s office and I’ll never stop being that teacher with Imposter Syndrome.

But I didn’t have that Maverick “who’s the best?” question floating around in my head. In truth, I can’t wait to see the incredible work they do this year. They all left the conference room in Suburban Indianapolis with “heads full of ideas and caffeine”. And ready to tackle a project that was manageable and controllable and would make a difference in their classrooms and their buildings.

It’s gonna be f’n EPIC.

So, what about the mentors? During training I touched base with some of the multi-year returning mentors and asked if they continued to perform action research even after they had “graduated” from the program.

And you could guess the answer.

Of course they are. The Teacher Leader Bootcamp experience has permamently changed how they approach their craft.

So with that in mind I took two steps:

  1. I dug out my notes from TLB3 when I examined my school through the 5 Essentials lens, so I could compare my 2022 answers
  2. I started thinking about our shift to a Project-Based Learning school and how that might be a subject of an action research project.

In some ways it is an unfair comparison. Last year my building was in the midst of a consolidation, combining staffs and student body into an existing building. Supply Chain issues meant we were really not ready to open doors on Day One. Looking back, it’s hard to really judge how we stacked up on the markers of the 5 essentials back then.

But that said my answers didn’t vary much. I felt then, as now, that we have strong leadership and a culture of collaboration. I felt that we have room to grow in engaging our students (a remnant of remote learning), in parent input, and in school safety.

Urban district. Some of the things you don’t want to know.

But I’m struck by something I wrote back in late summer of 2021: In response to the question “Across the strength and opportunities you identified, do you notice any patterns, trends, or relationships?”

And I wrote, “Quality PD/Collaboration/Academic personalism. We’re pretty good at relationships.”

Whhich obviously is a good place to start when you are trying to plant the seeds of change.

So we’ll meet virtually Thursday evening, the topic “Creating Change“. Keep an eye on this space and I’ll keep you up to date on our progress. Cuz I got to spread what I learn far and wide.