In the second post I want to outline how I extended a Desmos lesson with students analyzing each other's responses to items from the previous day. I will also talk about how I helped students improve their skills at giving productive feedback to their peers.
In the third post I outline a study team strategy that motivates students to check their own answers and revise their thinking while working on cooperative problem-based lessons. I want to know other strategies that teachers have been successful with.
In the fourth and final post, I detail how I replaced a textbook lesson with a task from Illustrative Mathematics and extended it to a higher DOK level by having students create their own two questions to investigate and create a two way frequency table.
The first day of school is a big deal for students and teachers. First impressions are important and it's a fresh start for everyone. I tell my students at the beginning of the year that I will not judge them by what they did with another teacher in a previous year. Our relationship is based on what happens between us. A lot of students are relieved when they hear this and appreciate the fresh start especially if they're not a fan of group work or math in general.
I take attendance with the roster at my door on the first day of school because many students have English names that are not on the roster, or go by a nickname. I also like to avoid butchering the pronunciation of a student's name. Then students sit wherever they want before an activity that has them match their card or graph to three other students in the class. It also provides me information about who knows each other.
After saying their name, I offer a high five or fist bump. This tradition continues daily at my door as students enter my room. It's a great way to practice their name from day one on as you greet them and it also provides a positive start to each class period and day. This has in the past made me aware of how a student was feeling about me that I needed to have a conference with to figure out why they weren't feeling comfortable with the high five. This great idea was provided by Glenn Waddell with a video link on his post.
On the first day I borrowed an idea from Sara Vanderwerf and her name tents. It provides a great opportunity for students to ask me questions and for them to review what they learned about that day. It's a big commitment the first 5 days to collect them daily and pass them back, but well worth it. A bonus perk to this is that when you pass the name tents out during the warmup, you are literally taking attendance and streamlining your first 5 days of school (the attendance secretary will be happy they won't have to nag you!). After calculating percent errors using Estimation 180 as the warmup the first ten days a student reflected on the notation of the single quotation mark (apostrophe) and double quotation mark when dealing with Mr. Stadel's height of 6'4". It's a talking point later on in the year during a MARS task where some students interpret 1 foot 6 inches as 1.6 feet (link includes PDF file to 8th grade task via insidemathematics.org).
The last idea is one borrowed from Mark Cote, one of the leaders at College Preparatory Math's Academy of Best Practices professional development, and who used it an activity there. Each of the 32 teachers filled out a slip of paper with their hometown, grades they taught, and something that no one knows about (could even have been a two truths and a lie scenario). Then as a brain break during the sessions everyone would stand up and Mark would say, "Stay standing if you teach middle school. Stay standing if you teach on the west coast." The object is to narrow it down from general qualities to more specific and unique qualities. Last year and this year I have used the Mathography assignment from CPM's Core Connections Course 3 (link).
- I then use these Mathographies weekly, usually on Fridays, as a "Mystery Student" activity. I ask all students to stand up and I say, "Stay standing if you like working in teams, if you see yourself as a leader, if you have at least one sibling, if you play more than one instrument, etc." A funny anecdote was for one student I said, "Standing if you like EDM music?" A student said, "Huh? What's that?" I replied, "If you don't know, than that means you aren't a fan so you should sit down." This activity provides a brain break as well as a chance for students to learn about their similarities and differences. Also, for students that really don't like math and/or school, they will ask, "Can we please do mystery student?"
You also find out about some real issues such as living with a grandparent, parents being divorced, relative being sick, and some that haven't heard of Jo Boaler's research on not telling your child that you were bad at math (rather than lying and say you liked it):
What activities do you incorporate in your classroom to learn about your students and for them to learn about each other? How do you work on improving the culture of your math class? In the next blog post, I will show how I extended a Desmos lesson to the next day without the technology and giving productive feedback to their peers.
Martin Joyce is a middle school math teacher who blogs at http://joyceh1.blogspot.com and tweets from @martinsean. He has taught every level of middle school from 6th grade math support to 8th grade accelerated Algebra 1. His passion is developing student's math identity with cooperative learning, Desmos lessons, peer feedback, and is constantly reading books and blogs to refine his craft.
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