Math Circles...an update

So I started our math circles with my class yesterday and I was really excited about how it went.  If you missed that post, click here.  The kids were engaged when we were talking about the different jobs, and they liked that they all got to pick their jobs.  We also got an opportunity to begin the night's homework, so everyone had a head start.  I was nervously anticipating the next day when we would be able to put our math circles into action.

Today was that day.  We did a very guided type of math circle, where the students all did their responsibilities in their group, but I led them through the discussion steps.

I wanted to share a few really cool things that happened during this time:

1) All students (even the ones who quizzed out of this learning goal) participated in the discussions.
2) Almost all students did their homework.
3) Many of the students had to step up and become a leader, or their group went down the drain...and they did (become leaders, I mean).
4) After the discussions were done, the students got a chance to work on their practice problems.

Here's where things got really interesting.  I had a large amount of students who didn't need to do the practice problems because they already quizzed out of the next unit.  I know students do best when you give them choices, so they had a whole bunch of choices.

• Do the back side of the practice problems (review problems)...surprisingly, I did have a few that wanted to do this.
• Make a short example video of how to solve problems that are the same as our learning goal

• Work out of the 6th grade book (similar topic, slightly harder).

• Help other students if they were stuck.

I was pleasantly surprised by how many different students chose different things.  I will continue to keep you updated on all this as I learn...

On a final note, I also had a student who was absent today.  Her group attempted to record their entire discussion because they didn't want her to miss out...unfortunately, they hit stop, not record, and the lesson didn't work :(  However, I love the idea, and I'll work with the next group with an absent kid so that we don't have that problem again.

Math Circles...Discussion Groups...Collaboration...You get the idea

UPDATE (4/9/13): For an update to my math circles, click here.

As you can see by the title of this post I am a bit conflicted on what I want to title my new math project...for now I'm going with Math Circles because the idea stemmed from Literature Circles.

So here was/is my dilemma.  I spend the majority of my time during math class having discussions about the videos the students watched the previous night.  I do think this is valuable, but I want my students to take more ownership in this part of their learning.  That being said, if I just told my 5th graders to go off & start sharing, they would either:
A - look at me like I'm nuts
or
B - head off to discuss many things (very few being math related)

Since I want neither of those things, I needed to find a way to make their group work both meaningful and spelled out for them.

What I came up with was Math Circles.  I have had success in the past using Literature Circles in my classroom.  Each student had a job, and they held each other accountable.  That is exactly what I want for my math kiddos as well, so why not take the idea of Lit. Circles and mold it into something that works for math.  After talking to my co-teacher, we came up with the following "jobs" for our math groups:

Discussion Director - Leads the discussion and keeps everyone on track.

Calculator - Makes sure that the groups answers to the questions from the video are actually correct.

Spokesperson - Is the voice of the group.  This person summarizes the groups guiding questions (HOT question at the end of the video) and shares them with the teacher.

Task Master - Keeps track of who did/didn't come prepared, and how often people within their group share.

I have a list of procedures spelled out for the groups.

I plan on beginning this after spring break with the students.  I hope they get as excited as I am (although that's unlikely because I'm pretty dang excited about it).

I'm not one to pimp my own stuff, but if you'd like a copy of my Math Circles information, you can get it here.

Reflection brings about change

Last week I spent some time reflecting on how the year has been going, and some of the data I've gotten.  This week I want to talk about some changes I'd like to make.

I've been struggling with a couple things in my classroom, & I think it'll be easiest to just list them out here:

• Students who aren't meeting with me during a discussion have a tendency to not work very efficiently (that's a nice way of saying they tend to mess around).
• Students are finishing up their "practice problems" before I get a chance to see how they did.  I'm finding that most of the students who get some wrong (as shown on the quizzes) had just marked their practice problems wrong & then tried the quiz.  They missed that important step where they had to actually seek out why they got the answers wrong.
• While I love meeting with students and talking math with them, I wish I had more time to help them with their application problems.
• Once students finish up their practice problems, and they quiz on the assigned lesson, I don't feel like I have something really good for them to work on.  They have a few choices, but the only one I really like is student made videos.

So what am I going to do about it?  I'll take these one at a time & work through them...as always, I would love to hear any recommendations you have.

Students who aren't meeting with me during a discussion have a tendency to not work very efficiently (that's a nice way of saying they tend to mess around).

I have literature circles in my reading class that requires each student to have a "job" in their group.  I would like to start putting students into groups that I assign (until they get a little bit better at choosing their own groups), and assigning them jobs.  I think I'll open up the discussion of jobs to the class & see what type of jobs they come up with.  I'm thinking groups will have 3-4 students in them.  

You know what, I might just share this whole problem with the class & see what they come up with.  I can always recommend the assigned groups idea if no else comes up with it.

Students are finishing up their "practice problems" before I get a chance to see how they did.  I'm finding that most of the students who get some wrong (as shown on the quizzes) had just marked their practice problems wrong & then tried the quiz.  They missed that important step where they had to actually seek out why they got the answers wrong.

I think that if I end up putting the students into groups, this might help alleviate this issue.  On the flip side, it might breed another issue (students just copying their group's papers).  Perhaps a contract of some sort might help.  Something along the lines of "I swear to help everyone in my group understand the questions and answers."  In my dream world, I would love it if everyone in the group took it upon themselves to make sure that everyone understood the math.  Since the students have to pass one quiz to move on to another, maybe the group can't move on until everyone understands.  I think that could go 1 of 2 ways: First, students hate it because they can't move ahead when they know what they're doing.  Second, students become great collaborators & see the value in helping others.

While I love meeting with students and talking math with them, I wish I had more time to help them with their application problems.

Perhaps taking a step back from the discussions & letting the students lead them would help here...but I do find that I can easily help troubleshoot issues before they become issues when I'm there for discussions.  To be continued, I guess, I'd love some feedback on this.

Once students finish up their practice problems, and they quiz on the assigned lesson, I don't feel like I have something really good for them to work on.  They have a few choices, but the only one I really like is student made videos.

As of now, here are the options when my students finish their work...

• start the next lesson - this works out really well for students who hate having homework, or for students who don't have access at home
• play some on-line math games - my honest opinion on this is, meh (imagine with a shoulder shrug)...it does allow students to get some additional practice, but it's usually practice on what they already know
• create videos using Educreations - I actually really like this one, but I need to do a better job teaching students what must be included in their videos...some get a little sidetracked trying to make them funny & entertaining, and lose the math along the way

I need/want more meaningful activities that are going to make the kids WANT to finish early.  Say what?!? Yup, I want the kids to want to finish early because the extra activities are THAT awesome.  An idea I have now become just a tiny bit obsessed with is Video Story Problems.  I haven't done anything with Video Story Problems yet, and I really really really want to try.  Has anyone out there tried these with their class?  If so, please let me know how it went, what you did, etc.  I found a really informative video by Ben Rimes that explains Video Story Problems better than I could...check it out if you're interested.

Where do I go from here?

It has been a year and a half since I flipped my classroom, and I feel like I'm in need of some time to reflect.

2010-2011 School Year (my first year teaching 5th grade)
Number of students: 22
Style: Traditional
Beginning of the year RIT: 202.3
End of the year RIT: 212.5
Growth: 10.2
Average on in class assignments: 82.92%

2011-2012 School Year

Number of students: 28
Style: Flipped 101
Beginning of the year RIT: 208.1
End of the year RIT: 215.2
Growth: 7.1
Average on in class assignments: 84.55%

2012-2013 School Year (thus far)

Number of students: 30
Style: Flipped Mastery (sort of...self paced within the unit)
Beginning of the year RIT: 203.8
Middle of the year RIT: 210.9
Growth so far: 7.1
Average on in class assignments: 86.67%

So what do I notice when I look at the numbers?
#1 My class keeps getting bigger!
#2 The average on in-class assessments continues to improve.
#3 My students did not show as much growth on the MAP test in my first year of flipping as they did the year I taught traditional...interesting...I need to come back to that one.
#4 This year is looking really positive, as they have already met the growth (mid-way through the year) that my class made last year as a whole.

Hmmmm....
I want to go back to #3 on the list above.  I was quite surprised to see that the growth for those students was lower than my traditional group.  Besides the flipped classroom, what was the difference?  Well, there were far fewer students, for starters.  In addition, my flipclass group started higher, which makes it more difficult to show as much growth.  It's not an excuse, just one possible factor.  Another factor might be behavior.  The class in my first flipped group had a video a night...but it also had a large group that didn't do their homework.  That led to some of the changes I made for this year.  But looking back at the numbers, I feel like I might have let my high kids down a little by making them follow my pace.  I look at this year's class and I see my high students being able to skip lessons they already know and given a chance to stretch their knowledge.  I also have implemented math inquiry projects at the beginning/end of each unit.  The students absolutely love these projects.  This year's class also has to do a lot of writing within math.

So where do I go from here?
I definitely want to develop more inquiry projects, and more time to do real-world & hands on activities in the classroom.  I think the issue I'm having is trying to figure out the most useful way to handle in-class time.  Keep in mind, I flip math, so one of the things I want my students to be able to do is during class is practice solving math problems.  The issue I'm running into is that I spend most of my in class time doing discussions in small groups on the board, which leaves me with very little time monitoring the students who are working.

I think next year I might begin having somewhat assigned groups, where each student has a "role", so-to-speak, that way they can get their discussion started, and I can come over when it's time to try some problems.

So what else?  I'd love to have all my quizzes on the computer, but until our county updates to the newest version of Moodle, and I get some training in it, I won't be able to do that either.

Finally...and most important (in my opinion), are the inquiry projects.  I'd like to integrate these throughout my different lessons, rather than just the end, just the beginning, or both.  Honestly, I'm running into a bit of a wall trying to come up with them.  This is where my #pln needs to help me out.  As I mentioned in a previous post, John Fritszky & I created a google doc that has all the ccss for 5th grade math in it.  We are trying to compile good inquiries to go with all the standards.  This is a massive undertaking, but you know what they say, we're better together, so please, if you teach 5th grade, or know someone who teaches 5th grade, share this document.  Ask (or beg if you must) for them to share what the math projects they have done.  We need to stop working in isolation and sharing out what we know is good teaching.

Some things are starting to come together

This week was a good week...looking back on some recent posts, I've noticed they were a touch on the negative side, and I need to make up for that.  So here's the skinny on some really excellent things that were happening in my class this week.

Monday
On Monday I got to speak at the "Fired Up" Conference for local student teachers.  I love talking to educators about #flipclass.  Especially excited, energetic student teachers who want to soak it all in!  If you're interested in any of the information/resources I shared, please check out this document.

Monday night I joined the #flipclass twitter chat, which I've been missing lately due to life/kids/work/kids/exercise/etc...you get the point.  I'm so glad I was able to join in because I got to connect with @JohnFritzky.  Independently, we've both been trying to come up with math investigations that are more than solving problems.  We're talking real world application where the kids have to do the thinking.  Rather than try to do it all on our own, John put together a google doc with all the 5th grade ccss on it, & we're slowly filling it in with projects.  So far we have projects involving Bungee Jumping Barbies and Strawberry Shortcake recipe disasters.  If you want have any projects you can add...or you just want to check out what we've got, go here.

Tuesday
My students took their fractions test...I'm not going to lie, I was afraid...very afraid.  One kind of cool thing I did on this unit was have the students write story problems before the test.  I picked a few, and made them our extra credit problems.  The students LOVED this (especially when theirs got chosen).

So I took the tests home, and low-and-behold, the two classes combined to average a 92%...I'll say it again 92% ON A FRACTIONS TEST!!  Whoop, whoop!  I was so ridiculously proud of them that I did a happy dance for all to see.  One of my students mentioned that he'd rather see my breakdancing than happy dance.  I told him they'd have to something even more amazing for me to breakdance ;)

Wednesday
Students worked on an inquiry project applying their newly acquired knowledge of fractions.  The overview of the activity was the students were to make strawberry shortcake with a given recipe, but their dog ate all the measuring cups they were going to use & they had to recreate the recipe with the ones they had left.  Then they had to advertise the grand opening of their bakery.

Thursday
Earlier in the week I had a few of my students ask me about our next inquiry (they're really starting to like the projects), and I told them the truth...I don't have it done yet.  Then they asked me if they could make it.  Ummm, let me think about it...YES!  I gave them the learning goals for the next unit, very little instruction and said, "Good luck!"  Our next unit is on volume, standard & metric measurements & converting those measurements.  They came back to me with a project that would require the students to measure the volume of given buildings (which they created on the computer).  They also worked in problems the builders were having that would require the students to use standard and metric measurements.  Wow.  That's all I can say about that.

Friday
During math the students all got to present their advertisements.  I had students who don't normally have an opportunity to shine, get up and blow the rest of the class away with a full on commercial.  I had a pair of students actually bring in strawberry shortcake.  I had yet another set of students create a webpage to go with their advertisement.  I was impressed.

It may seem like I talk a lot about math, because that is the subject I flip.  That being said, I work in an elementary school, so I also teach reading and writing (my partner teaches science/social studies).  In reading we are finishing up a study of the fantasy genre.  Friday I took the kids to the lab, gave them a rubric of what they needed to have on their fantasy projects & said, "Have fun."  As of now, I have the following projects in the works: keynotes, websites, posters, video book reviews and dioramas.  But the most exciting thing of the whole week happened when I was searching around the computer and found an application I forgot we had, called "Comic Life".  Basically, it allows you to make comics using pics you have.  I mentioned it to the class & I had a few students say they wanted to try.  In this group of students included one child who shows very little motivation in class.  He gets very little work done, and his work isn't always his personal best.  He latched on to this comic strip with a passion that I haven't seen in him all year.  He even asked if he could work through recess (his most cherished time of the day).  While our projects aren't done yet, I am really looking forward to what I find next week.

So, like I said, this week was a good week, and it's important to remember that things like this happen every day.  The important thing is to not let the bad things trump the good.

What's the real issue?

Yesterday was a day like any other day.  I went to school fully expecting some of my students would not have watched their video from the weekend.  As always, my students came into class, and got their WSQ out on their desk.  It amazes me, still, how many students look at me with wide eyed terror

There was a video last night?  

Yes.  It has been 2 days since our last video (longer than normal, but the last learning goal was particularly difficult).  We also wrote it in our planner.

We did?

<sigh>

So the same 6 students of my 30 spent the beginning of their day calling home.  We have a little sticky note next to the phone with a script of what they need to say.

"Hi Mom/Dad, I'm calling because I didn't do my homework last night.  I realize that completing my homework is essential to my success.  Please help me remember to do my homework tonight.  I'm sorry for interrupting your day with my bad choice."

This is actually a pretty normal start to the day.  Then I went to the other class to check on their WSQ's.  This is when I lost it.  6...yes, that's right, 6 total students did their work over the weekend.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

After taking some deep breaths and finding my happy place, I realized that there were 3 absent that day, and 5 who had been absent the day before, bringing our grand total up to 14 completed assignments.  That means a whopping 50% of the other 5th grade class did their work.

I don't get it.

I consider myself a fairly empathetic person.  It is easy for me to relate to my students and their situations, but this I just don't get.  How a student can just not do their work...ever.  It got me to thinking about what the real issue is.

Do we have accessibility issues in my school?  For sure.  Do we work around them? Yes!  I burn DVD's for anyone who doesn't have a computer.  This should be a non-issue.

Do my students come from unstable homes with little parental guidance once they get home.  YES!  What do I do for those students?  I've talked to them about setting up a schedule for when they get home.  We have after school tutoring that I've recommended.  I'm here before school and they know they can come in and work.  The labs are always open during lunch and 2nd recess.  And the icing on the cake...if the students actually used their math time effectively they would never have homework!  Let me repeat, if the students actually used their math time effectively they would never have homework!  The thing is, the math is not too difficult.  Every single student in my class can do this math if they tried.  But they don't.  They spend more time and energy avoiding their work than it would take them to actually complete it.

So what is the deal?  Honestly, this is one of those posts where I don't have the answers, and I'm hoping that you do.

I know that motivation is a factor, but I am having a really hard time motivating some of these kids.  They'd rather go home and play video games than do their work.  They don't see the relevance, even though I make a huge effort to help them see why math is important.

I know that organization is a factor.  I have many students who watch the videos multiple times because they lose their work.  They get frustrated, I get frustrated, but at the same time, they need to realize that they are being held accountable for the same work as everyone.

What more can I/should I do?  I do truly believe that the students need to start taking some responsibility here.  But what about when they don't?  Do they just fail?  It goes against my core beliefs to let a kid fail because they won't put in the effort.  But the amount of time and energy I put in to getting them caught up is exhausting.  And is it even fair to them.  Maybe it's better to let them fail early so they will succeed later.

This is why good teachers get burnt out.

Again, I don't have the answers...Do you?

How Collaboration Has Changed Me

Collaboration...what does that make you think of?  I've recently had a bit of a revelation about collaboration and I want to share my insight with you.  

The word has been around, but my definition of it has changed dramatically.  That being said, I'd like to take you on a little journey through my inner dialogue as the word collaboration has come up in the past.

High School - I get to collaborate on a project...sweet, that means I get to hang out with my friends to "work" on a project.  Really we'll spend about 2 1/2 hours of gossiping and 30 minutes of working.  I love collaboration.

College - I have to collaborate on a project...really, ugh.  Now I'm going to have to do all the work on my own because I don't trust my group mates to do it right.  I hate collaboration.

Graduate School - I have to collaborate on a project...thank the lord, I am so busy I am barely going to have time to do my own share of the work.  My group better know what they're doing.  I love collaboration.

First 10 years of teaching - You want me to collaborate with other teachers in my building...okay, but when?  I have lesson plans to complete and curriculum to learn (because lord knows I haven't taught the same grade level for more than 3 years in a row).  I'd love to collaborate, but I don't know what I have to offer.  I am still a rookie, here.  What if they don't like my ideas?  What if I say something stupid?  I'll collaborate, but I think I'll mostly listen.  I'm afraid of collaboration.

Last 2 years (aka - since I started my love affair with Twitter) - Collaboration...no problem.  I have developed and excellent PLN that I can go to with questions, ideas, etc. and I KNOW they can help.  Want to know how I know?  Because they are amazing, intelligent, passionate people.  Collaboration...can't live without it!

Are you ready for my revelation about collaboration?  For you to collaborate, you don't have to be in the same room with someone...heck, you don't even have to be in the same country!  The world we live in right now is full of opportunities to connect with people all over the world, and you know what?  They have incredibly insightful things to offer...who knew!?!

So I throw this out there to you all.  Get connected.  Find people with common interests, teaching methods, and educational beliefs as you.  If you are a flipped teacher, fill out the "connection forms" here and start meeting people.  Believe me, it will change you.