Instant Feedback for Instant Learning

Something I have always believed in is the need for every student to get some kind of feedback about their work every day. My worst case scenario would be that students come in to class and work for 45 minutes on an activity or a project and leave, never knowing if they did any of the problems right or if they could have improved their work either in organization, efficiency, etc. Providing students with feedback can be tedious, especially if that feedback is hand written notes from me on homework or an assessment. One hundred and twenty tests take a long time to grade, let alone give personal feedback on. Finding opportunities to easily and authentically build feedback into the day's lesson has become a mission of mine this year. I never, ever want a student to do 20 quadratic formula problems incorrectly before they find out they are all wrong. And now, heaven forbid, they just solidified a misconception 20 times. 

One of my favorite strategies to provide feedback quickly is matching answer partner worksheets. For this one, students pair up and choose who will be Partner A and Partner B. For each problem, the partners have the same quadratic function but are each tasked with solving it in a different way. One partner does Quadratic Formula, and the other partner factors. Obviously, they should get the same answer. 

I have done this before where each partner has a different problem entirely (like two different multi-step equations) but their answers will be the same. Students cannot move on until their partner is finished and they have agreed upon the answer. This also allows for some awesome peer collaboration to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it to make the answers match. 

I told the girls to act like they were agreeing upon the answer. This is what I got. High schoolers crack me up. I am really enjoying this age. While there are still days I miss my middle school students, I definitely feel like the opportunity to come up to the high school has forced me to grow so much! 

The thing I love most about activities like this is that in the first five minutes student knew whether or not they were on the right track. As they were working, they were provided with instant feedback about the accuracy of their answer and immediately able to go back and correct mistakes or misconceptions. 

For this specific topic, students were also able to compare which partner had the easier solving strategy and as a class we had conversations about when factoring was faster or when the quadratic formula was faster. 

Instant feedback. What do you do on a regular basis to ensure that each student gets feedback every day? What other content ideas could you see being used for an activity like this? Do students ever leave your class and have no idea whether or not they actually understood what was going on? How can you fix that? 

A Whole Lot of New

Happy New School Year!!

Okay, you're right. We are already 6 weeks in. The fact that my "new school year" blog post is happening six weeks late is pretty telling of how my school year has started. If I had to summarize my year so far in one word, it would be the word... 

New year.

New classroom. Bye bye portable life!

New content. 

and mainly... a new name! I got married this summer and am starting this school year as Mrs. Bell! I am having some what of an identity crisis, and any given moment I could be Miss Rowe or Mrs. Bell. Overall, the new name has made its debut and I am so excited to finally have a reason to go home after school. No more staying until 8 p.m. to grade. I've got a hungry husband! 

I have been loving my students so far this year, and even though my classes are HUGE (close to 40!) my students are all so excited to learn, willing to ask questions, and eager to participate. It's going to be a fantastic year and I can't wait to share it with all of you! Stay tuned for more updates on activities, classroom strategies, and learning resources and tips for ELL students! 

Factoring Trinomials Battleship

As my students are just days away from finishing their Geometry credit, I am starting to panic about whether or not they are prepared to go on to Algebra 2 next year. Usually, students taking Geometry Part 1 and Part 2 (the slow pace Geometry option), go on to take a modified senior year math class called Math Models, but I have so many students that I wholeheartedly believe can handle the Algebra 2 curriculum, especially since they are determined to head to college after graduation. To make sure they are ready, we are hitting the essential Geometry skills hard so that they can get a big review of concepts before they head off to summer break, where they will surely forget most of it anyway. Ahhh summer vacation...

Factoring trinomials is a pretty big part of the quadratic functions unit, and to review today we played Battleship using an awesome layout that I found on TpT here!

I really enjoyed this activity and the amount of thought that went into planning the perfect trinomials so that the activity went smoothly. Each partner gets a unique list of trinomials but all the factored binomials on each list are the same. WOAH! Awesome!

Students choose a trinomial to factor and share their two binomials with their partner who marks them on their sheet. Before playing, students colored in their "ships" so that when they cross out the binomials they can see whether or not their ship was hit. 

Students were super motivated to factor their trinomials to see if it would be a hit on their partner's ships. A little friendly competition goes a long way, especially in May!

I have so many ideas how I could use this activity with other contents. My first idea is with rewriting linear equations in slope intercept form. Looking forward to finding more ways to adapt this! Any ideas coming to mind for you? Let me know! 

Also, how awesome is my whiteboard table? Still so obsessed with it. 

When The Pieces Come Together

One of the biggest differences between teaching middle school and teaching high school is getting the students to talk to each other. In the 8th grade, I felt like I was constantly telling kids to "be quiet" or "pay attention" or "turn around and look at me please" or "seriously stop poking him and listen for just 5 minutes". But if I could channel all that energy and desire to be social in the right direction, class discussions and student to student communication seemed to almost happen naturally.  Students LOVED talking. And all I had to do was make sure they were talking about what I wanted them to. 

In the 11th grade, it couldn't be more opposite. I feel like I am standing in a room full of lethargic zombies some days just begging anyone to mutter a word or even think about turning toward a neighbor to engage with them. This has really forced me to get creative in my lesson planning, to make sure that I am living up to my daily goal of allowing every student an opportunity to speak every day. But if they aren't motivated to speak, or engaged in the lesson enough to WANT to contribute, they won't. Challenge accepted. 

 

I have heard about "classroom jigsaws" at just about every training I have gone to the past few years, but for some reason I have avoided trying it. It just seemed like I could never think about a topic in my curriculum that it would REALLY work for students, and not just be a way for me to check the box to say I have done one. 

Until I started reviewing how to solve quadratic equations. Oh man, they needed some extra practice and I realized that part of the confusion was how many different ways you could solve for x in a quadratic equation but still get the same answer. So, I decided to try a jigsaw. Each problem could be solved by factoring, quadratic formula, or completing the square. I wanted students to not only know how to use each solving strategy, but also be able to decide when one strategy would be better than another and under what conditions. So here was the set up:

It went INCREDIBLE. I loved listening to the students discussing in their groups how to solve each problem. Many students had been a little lost or absent and so when they got to the factoring group they quickly realized they didn't know how to factor that particular problem. But the pressure of knowing that in just 5 minutes time they would have to go back to their original group and teach their group members was enough to really motivate them to find someone else who was in the factoring group and figure it out. The room was SO LOUD. I loved it. Everyone was talking, sharing ideas, showing each other short cuts and tips, and completely engaged in what was going on. 

I loved how when they went back to their original group all 3 group members had the same answer already, so the conversation was less about "getting the right answer" and more about how to manipulate the equation and solve it using the different strategies.

The student worksheet was super easy to make. You can find my copy here. I purposefully planned different equations that would highlight different solving hurdles, so that they would having something to discuss in regards to which strategy was the "best". 

What other mathematics content can you think of that would allow for a jigsaw to actually enhance student learning and increase student communication and collaboration?

Not Everybody Likes Canned Soup

As the end of first quarter draws near, I am finally able to take a breath after what feels like 8 weeks of vigorously trying to not drown in the transition to a new high school, with new content to teach and two new teams to coach. I'll be honest, there have been times I questioned why I switched schools. It's been a tremendous amount of stress and made me question everything I thought I knew about teaching. But it's in these low moments, that I have to remind myself that we only grow and improve when we are forced outside of our comfort zone. This has literally been me at work so far this quarter. 

One of the biggest epiphanies that has happened the past 8 weeks is the realization that homemade soup is always better than canned soup. Always. In fact, I hate canned soup. 

A few years ago, our school district adopted the CPM curriculum for all classes Algebra and higher. It's not mandatory that we teach it exactly as is, but we are encouraged to follow the pacing and use the resources as needed with our professional judgement (isn't our district amazing!?). This post is in no way a bash on CPM, but rather a realization that as a teacher, I am my best self when I am teaching in a manner that works for me. I rarely used CPM in my Algebra class at the junior high, but as I worked to try to understand my new curriculum and tried to work through the sequencing and pacing of skills I have never taught, I found myself clinging to CPM for dear life. I was so worried about doing something wrong and getting behind that I forgot how to be "Miss Rowe" and instead found myself serving up canned CPM soup to the students every single day. I hated my classroom. I didn't like teaching how I was teaching. The students looked miserable when they left. And worst of all, I didn't feel like the students were actually learning. My biggest fear was actually becoming the reality of my classroom. 

Many of my students were in my class 3 years ago when they were in 8th grade, so it's been fun getting to see and teach so many familiar faces. One day last week a student walked by on his way out and said, "You teach really different now. I think I liked how you taught in 8th grade better.". I could have died. I literally wanted to just crawl under my portable and fire myself. I agreed with him. I liked it better, too. So after a weekend of soul searching and a few pep talks from some of my biggest education role models I came to the realization that... 

Canned or homemade, the kids are going to get fed. But oh my heck, isn't homemade soup just so much better? I am good at being me. I am good at teaching in a way that best highlights and caters to my unique style as an educator. And because of that, I am done with canned soup.

So what does that mean?

Students are talking. Students are moving around the room. Students are engaged and utilizing every waking minute of class time. Now, that's not to say that this can't be done with CPM. I'm sure it can. But it didn't work for me. And I am always going to advocate for every teacher to be able to make whatever changes are needed to do what is best for kids. And I am so thankful I work for a district and school that supports that same philosophy. 

We are a little crammed in our portable, but we are LOVING integrating activities like "scavenger hunts" or "problem loops" that force students to get up, collaborate, and check the answers as they go. 

Side note: Check out these awesome vocabulary visual cards here!

So here's to homemade soup! And the courage to teach in a way that works for you. You are the professional and you know what works best. And you know what's inspiring? No one can be you better than you can! 

Check out these awesome TpT Resources that we utilized this week:

Conditional Probability Two Way Tables Scavenger Hunt

Venn Diagrams Scavenger Hunt