Summer Summer Summertime!

Wow, I haven't updated since March! The school year ended on a positive note and it seems like the entire year was a blur. My hypothesis is that the more experienced you become, the more you know what to expect, the easier things are to manage, and the faster the years go by.

This summer we've been using ratios and rates from Pearson for the first domain. I will probably pull resources from IXL or A-Net and even the 2016 released questions to count towards the student portfolios. This summer session is comprised of two groups of students. Some of whom I'm assuming did not do so well on the test, and the others whom just did not produce any work all year. Nevertheless, the days have been going fast (we're on day 3) and pretty soon it will be time for another vacation.

This summer my plan is to come up with a group-management system. I feel that when I group students, they fall into three categories:

A) Students that do all of their work all of the time and actually discuss the work and attempt to complete the problems (what I want to focus on this year and what I want my new system to address)

B) A group where one or two students produce work but they mostly work individually, and the third student does not produce anything or attempts to just copy from their group members


C) Students that do not produce any sort of answer or work, are heavily off task, and do not attempt to discuss the problem

The biggest part of the problem obviously stems from the fact that a large portion of students are far behind where they are supposed to be and simply do not understand the work or problem. And so, they shut down, tune out, or act out. However, I would be content if the kids made serious attempts to work together to try to at least discuss the problems and attempt to come up with a solution. I have been thinking about using the wheel as a template. Going to spend some time this month thinking about it. Stay tuned! P.S. - Kudos to you if you know what song the title of this post refers to!

The New Wheel of Improvement

Here is a picture of the old Wheel of Improvement:

I tried my best to make the boxes and image a lot more even but ultimately I wasn't able to get it.

After a lesson in using shift to straighten out lines (and being told that I could bring this to life via staples or kinkos) I chose to make a new wheel:

 I can't wait to introduce this to the students to see who is interested and wants to participate. I'll make a post later on what I've been thinking.  

The Mathematician's Wheel of Improvement

Going back to what I said in an earlier post I have finally finished creating a model of what I want in the classroom for students to be able to see where they are in terms of their improvement.

Something like this isn't bad so long as it's nice and colorful. Students can move their wooden pegs or something stick with their name on it attached to the edges of the board. What I may do is cut each section in half so there are more sections for students to move along. Prizes for each one. This can also be used for different topics, and the further you go along the board, the more difficult the problems of that topic become. I may not use it like that though. Hopefully I can create something in real life that looks like this with the help of the art teacher, as I want to start this program not too long after the beginning of next year.

The VSC Math Peer Tutoring Program

I have failed to finalize what I want to with the idea I've come up with for a lunchtime peer-tutoring program. I did enjoy my break though. I needed it. Teaching is literally a never-ending job. My loose ideas were:

A) A classroom that mimics a library. A "mathematician's luncheon". The purpose is for students to come away with work completed of 90% accuracy or higher.

B) Zero tolerance for disruptions. A place where the idea/theme of being there to improve is explicit and taken very seriously.

C) A very visible chart/graph/system of improvement where students can immediately see where they are and their level of progression

D) Higher level students peer-tutor struggling students

E) My role - to help everyone, tutors and peers alike, and make sure that everyone walks away with a stronger foundation and greater conceptual knowledge

F) An incentive. The kids are already familiar with tokens, so something along those lines. An "improvement token" was the first thought. As for what they'd do with them, not sure.

(Current) Kinks

A) What exactly do I want it to look like? What kind of work will students have? I want it to be separate from class. How will it be managed?

B) What sort of time-efficient system will be used to determine how students are improving? Furthermore, the improvement of students MUST be visible. This is undoubtedly the most vital piece. This is the big idea I had in mind and I won't start this until this piece is figured out. Making the assignments worth points, and/or having tokens align to points along with a chart (i.e. a chart listing points and their respective levels - 500 points  = Math Apprentice, 1000 points = Math Guru) have all come to mind in the past.

This could be done a different way without points, where the chart just lists the number of tokens along with its respective level (i.e. 3+ tokens = Math Novice, 10+ tokens = Math Apprentice, 15+ tokens = Math Admirer, etc), and these amount of tokens can serve as "checkpoints", where students earn different prizes once they reach these checkpoints. 7th grade math teacher has a "device" (it's wooden..) where she uses these wooden pegs to move names. Perhaps I could use something similar.

C) What incentive do the stronger students have to tutor/help out? What incentive do the weaker students have to stay (we know the answer, but this has to be sold to kids...)?

D) If I use improvement tokens, what will the students do with them/use them for? How will they use them?

E) How often will this be each week with the other recognition pieces that normally take place on Thursday and Friday (and have been creeping into Monday thanks to holidays..). I can't give up my lunch period everyday. Perhaps 1 day out of the week to start?