Numeracy vs. Literacy

Earlier this week I ran across a blog post from High Heels in High School about "When will we ever use this in real life?".  Then, I read this tweet this afternoon from Dan Meyer: 

Both really struck a chord with me. This has been my soap box this school year!

Long before this, I've been asking why it's okay for people to not be able to do math, but not okay to not be able to read? One of the points our math department presents to parents at Back-to-School Night every year, twice a year actually, is that they shouldn't say "I was never good at math" at home or to their kids.

In education, literacy and numeracy are often talked about. But numeracy always comes second, like the red-headed step-child. Yet, we expect the same results - proficiency. Data for the two is collected and compared, and math always is outperformed by ELA. The way math is treated though, this shouldn't be a surprise; us math teachers face an uphill battle. And I am sooo prepared for this battle!!

At our District, the top two goals of our Board are:

1. We want our students to demonstrate high levels of literacy in English (reading, writing, and listening & speaking).
2. We want our students to have expertise in mathematics.

Red-headed step-child!

I've heard of schools that have DEAR or SSR- so much emphasis is placed on English literacy. Reality is, students are using English every day, in each of their classes. All teachers are integrating English into their curriculum. But math is lonely - other teachers steer clear of it, even saying they don't know if or have needed it. AHHHHHH!!!  In January, I gave an Ignite Talk on this topic to math teachers in my District. Just last week, I was asking where our District's Math Center was, since we have a Literacy Center. I jokingly, well half-joking, was proposing a name change to the Math and Literacy Center. And, we also just completed our state testing. Every year, English tests the first week, math the second week. Once again, we are last. I was over testing as that second week began and it was only a schedule change that affected me. I can only imagine how the students actually testing were feeling. But it's always been this way. I don't know if math scores would be any better by going first, but it's worth a try to me! 

Alright, so I'm stepping back down off my box. Let me know if you have any solutions or suggestions!!!

Changing the Gradebook

Before our Spring term started in January, I was thinking a lot about how I can see if students are improving on concepts. The tests we administer were already assessing spiraled material. But, the way I graded, there was never a way for me to really tell if a student was improving in an earlier concept. Or rather, I didn't have a way to remember if they were!

Yes - I know what you are thinking .... Standard Based, duh! I've always agreed with the idea, but have been overwhelmed with seeing the implementation (I'm the type that really has to have it all mapped out before I execute). In my earlier years of teaching, I did Grading for Learning, but didn't feel it went too well. Anyways, back to this Fall....

Talking out my thoughts with 2 colleagues (thanks Jackie and Megan), we were able to come up with something that wouldn't be too overwhelming to implement. Our tests category in our grade book would now be broken into Chapters. Each test we gave would now be broken by chapter. So, for example, on the Chapter 4 test, there would be sections for Chapter 1-3. Each would have a new entry in that chapter in the grade book. The goal: see if there was improvement as time went on.

The quarter ended last week. I finally was able to finish up my grades, analyze effectiveness, and have the time to write this up. Thoughts:

1. When it came to conferences with students, this was great because I was easily able to tell them what area they needed to work on.
2. It was a little extra work to reorganize assessments, and record multiple scores for each assessment.
3. Students grades improved!!!!

The last reason is the best! I kept a second grade book for 1 of my classes that was my "old" way. When I finalized grades, I compared final percentages and letter grades. In my class of 36 students, I had 1 student who did worse (went from 91.1 to 89%). I'm not exactly sure why this happened. A third (12) of the students final grade improved. Of those 12 students, half of them increased by moving into the next grade (i.e. D+ to a C-), the other half increased within that grade (i.e. B- to B). I see this as successful!

What makes it worth it:
1. A student that improved from an F to a C-
2. A senior, who took 3 tries to pass Integrated Math 1, passed my Math 2 course (first half) on the first attempt! With this new way, he went from an F to a D.

Final thoughts: this wasn't perfect. It was a good step into concept mastery and encouraging to see that it helped students be more successful. As we start the next semester, I've decided to disrupt the status quo and dive even deeper into Standards Based Grading. I'm not sure how it's going to go and I'm certain I'll be driving myself crazy along the way. But I've been wanting to take this step, so now is as good as ever!

Emergency Sub Plans #MTBoS

As part of the #MTBoS #SundayFunday Weekly BNogging Challenge, the post this week is on "Emergency Sub Plans"  Note: I missed last weeks on Teacher Hacks! 😕

I probably should do better about having Emergency Sub Plans. I do have something in a green folder in my desk - clearly labeled, of course. I remember they are a class set of equations to solve - perfect for many courses. I'm not sure where the actual file is, so I can't share that right now, but I will link it next week when I get back to the office.

What I will say about the assignment is that it is boring! It's just about 30 equations of varying difficulty that students are suppose to solve. Hey, if they are for an Emergency I want them to just quickly work to keep students occupied.

What I will also say is that in 11 years of teaching, I've never had to use them. I had one time (during my second year) where I was really sick and didn't make it into work, deciding at 4am I was too ill. I remember just tying out what the students needed to get done - what was in my plan already to do. This instance, I was out for 2 days and the 3rd day happened to be a snow day. But I returned that Thursday and just used the time to follow up on some of the topics. It seemed to be ok. So why go through the trouble?

Now, with some of the access students have to technology, I feel I can easily push something out into Classroom. Students would know what they were expected to complete. I'm organized enough that I know what I have planned at least a week ahead of time, so that makes it easier. I also trust that my students would be able to complete assignments without me around!

One other reason I don't feel putting Emergency Sub Plans together is a priority is because I work with an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING group!! My department is so awesome and we will always help each other out. We plan together and have documents posted in Google Drive. If needed, I can send a text to my team and they would be more than happy to fill a substitute in on what needs to happen for that day.

Organization OCD #MTBoS

As part of the #MTBoS #SundayFunday Weekly Blogging Challenge, the post for this week is on "Everything Organization."

I am pretty organized! I actually am not as organized as I used to be before my daughter came 2 years ago, but I'm reminded often that my worse is still better than most best.

Emails: I struggle when I see people with numerous unread emails. I know they have a system that works for them, but it gives me anxiety sometimes - I can't have more than 25 emails in my box at a time. My system is: if it doesn't pertain to me, delete it and file away the email I've responded to that I need to save. What remains in my box is essentially the stuff I need to still do or respond to. This helps me to get those tasks completed so I can weed through my emails.

Papers and Files: I color code much of my stuff to help organize. ROYGBIV is my friend. I organize class periods that way and I organize course materials that way. For my course binders, I use a binder for each semester, with the courses going in order by color (Integrated Math 1 is red, Math 2 orange, Math 3 yellow, Financial green, Math Analysis blue, Department Chair is purple, and then AVID is Black). I still have some work in organizing my cabinet with all of them, but essentially I hardly ever use any of the books or information on the left side. Next to this cabinet is a huge corner cabinet - like so large I have to crawl into it to get anything in the back. In my 6 years, I still haven't figured out how to utilize it. In addition to my hard copies of materials in color-coded binders, I also organize my Google Drive Folders with the same color scheme.

Next to my computer, I have some folders that I file common student papers into. Papers to be graded, to be recorded into my gradebook (I keep a paper hard copy and then transfer scores into our online system), quiz corrections, assessments to be taken (for absent students), and then to-do folder.

Electronic Files: This is probably where I excel. I've always organized my files into folders. We've been a Google Apps district for like 6 years now. I was initially very resistant to using Drive since math doesn't work so well, but it has been getting better and catching up. Now that we have more teachers teaching a course, we use Drive to collaborate and have common files. As a Lead for our Math 1 and Math 2 courses, we organize our units with a Unit Plan. I link any documents or resources to it. It's like a one-stop shop for the team to get information, resources, and ideas from. My task this school year is to convert all of our Word files to Doc files. I'm about half way through both of those courses. With Financial Algebra, we used Drive from the start, which has been awesome and a life saver! I like to have as much as I can in electronic format since that helps to cut down on the papers I have to figure out how to file.

Classroom Space:  Several years ago I put up curtains on some side shelving. I keep some department supplies in 2 of them. The other 2 are student supplies - 1st one are whiteboards, erasers, and towels. The second set are more of the supplies - markers, glue sticks, compasses, protractors, scissors.

I have a clearly marked "IN" tray and "OUT" bins. And in between is where I keep the absent folder, Quiz Corrections Forms, and Request to Retest Forms. For absences, I place the name of the student on any work that was passed out and place it in the folder. I use to have a slip that went with it and stated specifics of what they missed, but I haven't used in over a year because the current course I'm teaching doesn't work that way - it's project based most days.

The past 5 years I've had my teaching station (doc cam) in the front corner - which was unusable space because of the angle to the board - and student desks arranged in groups of 4. This year I arranged things differently. I moved my DocCam to the back on a cart that I can stand at, then arranged the student desks into various table-top groupings (pairs, 3's and 4's). I figured it would provide students different situations to work in. The pairs are easily set-up to become a group of 4 when needed too.

I've taught AVID for a number of years, so that's why I have a lot of space decorated with Pennants. Last year I was lucky enough to have Seniors, so I started a wall for them with where they are going to college. It's a work in progress though - I have more students to put up, just haven't had the chance to work on it yet.

I'm sure I have more Organization Hacks, but for now this will have to do.

Financial Class Economy

Shortly after the 2016-2017 school year ended in June, I was continuing to reflect on our Financial Algebra course. I kept thinking what can we make better and how can we do it. I thought about how I didn't particularly enjoy how we did some of our banking unit - mainly checking (I also was over the project choice we had for them for that chapter). I decided I was going to tackle a modified class economy system for these high school juniors and seniors! So I spend all summer tackling and figuring out how and what to do. Here is what I have so far:

I had found a template online that I modified to make checks for student use. If students want to "purchase" something they may write a check. This would then give students practical practice with how to fill out a check. While my document has 16 checks, I've decided to only give students 8 of them. As one of the expenses, they may purchase additional checks (we have to buy them in the real world). Since I know we do not write checks for everything we purchase, I then decided to make a Form for electronic transactions. They can debit, transfer, or deposit funds. I figure it would be rare from them to transfer or deposit funds as these would be from another student, but I still wanted to give them that option. Students would be required to record all transactions they make on an Account Register. I was naive the first time teaching this course that this would be something easy for them - it wasn't! They just depend on the online bank to tell them what they have - ugh!!!! Getting students to keep track of this on their own will be huge.

While researching, I found Class Economy was mostly used in the elementary schools. We are not giving out jobs, but high school students are always told that school is their (unpaid) job. I decided that they would be paid minimum wage (currently $10.50 in CA) for the time that they are in class. Our class periods are typically about 90 minutes and we see the students every day (only for 1 semester though). So, they would be paid according to that, including all taxes taken out. Alice Keeler has a Send Comments Add-On Template (you can read about it here) that I was able to modify the Script so that I could have it email information like it was a Pay Stub (my Template). Once I have the students name and email in, all I will need to do is put in the hours for the pay period and I've programmed the cells to do the magic of the calculations! When it is pay day, I just need to push "Send Emails" and it should send the students the email with their pay information. I tested it a few times, but haven't officially run payroll for the class yet.

I just introduced it Friday to my students - it was a quick introduction. One class seemed pretty excited, though they were bummed when they asked if taxes would be taken out! The other class didn't seem as enthusiastic, but maybe that was because it was too close to the bell? I used this document to introduce it to them. It has links to my current expenses and fines, and student friendly language.

I'm just starting this journey, so hopefully I can update in a few months with some positive results. I also have thoughts of giving performance increases in October, followed shortly by some inflation.