Reflecting on yearly goals & moving forward

I've set yearly goals a number of times, but feel like this is really the first year that I went back and reread my plans and made adjustments to actually try to reach them before the end of the year. Partly, this was due to blogging about them, as well as knowing that someone was going to check in with me in October to see how I was doing. Because the online accountability didn't end up being as ongoing as I thought it would be, I want to consciously reflect on my goals and think through what I want to continue doing or change for the rest of the year.

Recap of goals for this year (full post here):

Grading/feedback

• Give back quizzes with feedback only, share the grade later.
• I've been doing this and it's going well. Keep it up! Need to give more time in class to process and correct assessments, discuss with me and others.
• Students must correct original quiz and demonstrate evidence of work/learning done in order to reassess. They may not reassess on the same day. 
• I have not been as strict as I should be on this one. I basically tell them they need to do this, but don't actually check very rigorously. I have way fewer students reassessing this year though so it's not been a lot of work to manage. 
• Teach students how to use feedback effectively. 
• Sort of doing this... in-person meetings with students have been instrumental in my giving of feedback this year. I did a few peer feedback assignments and written reflections responding to my feedback, but need to do it more. 
• Have students self-assess their practices via a portfolio.
• Haven't done this yet, but plan to at the end of the semester. Need to check in with @crstn85, who's having her students self-assess their work on the mathematical practices and provide evidence for each one. 
• Get homework and projects graded more quickly.
• In-person meetings, describe here, have been really helpful with this. I discuss students' recent work with them in person so I am staying pretty current with grading. Definitely way more current with projects, which languished on my desk reproachfully for interminable periods of time last year.

Class culture

• Continue using Visible Random Groupings and whiteboarding.
• Done and done. I merged this with a goal for strengthening student-student relationships by having each daily random group go around answering a question (such as: if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? what is your spirit animal? what has been your favorite class this year? when were you last a good friend to someone? what is your favorite movie? etc) Students often give ideas for questions - it's been a great way to get to know students and to build trust and relationships in the classroom.
• Continue my policy of having students volunteer to participate in class discussions, with the caveat that each person must participate at least once or they must start the next day's discussion. In addition, when groups report out, I can call on any member of the group.
• Yep, still doing this and still prefer this over calling on random students. Everyone has to participate at some point, but they can choose when and how, which I think is important for communicating my beliefs about classroom culture and that contributions should be about learning, not for punitive or classroom management purposes.
• Introduce talking points and exploratory talk ideas into class discussions and teach language of argumentation and mathematical discourse.
• Uh, this one I've definitely failed to implement and not sure that I have the bandwidth to add another thing into the mix right now. I'll look over the list before the start of the next semester and plan out some actual activities rather than the vague idea to do this somehow somewhere.
• Continue assigning bi-weekly reflections; include metacognitive questions as well as questions about mathematics and thinking routines/student learning. 
• I have not been assigning longer metacognitive reflections as often as I did last year, but including a few reflection questions on most daily assignments. Definitely doing more questions that ask students to restate concepts in their own words, look for connections, and explain errors or discrepancies more frequently. I haven't really addressed the issue of thinking routines and how they are impacting student learning, other than asking students to reflect on their learning for bigger projects/write-ups. Need to balance the benefits of reflection with students not feeling like they are reflecting all. the. time.

Homework

• Be more intentional about homework: assign fewer problems, spiral it in more intentional ways, and always provide answers in advance and worked solutions from students' own work after we discuss homework in class. Organize homework into Review, Reflect, and Reach. 
• I'm much, much happier with how homework is going this year. I am lagging assignments, which allows class to be more flexible and not feel like it needs to cover a certain amount in order for homework to make sense. There is also more time for students to process and make connections in class before they are asked to do independent work on the topic. I am also seeing more retention since every assignment includes review that intentionally brings in topics that are related or that I think students could use more time with. I would like to assign fewer problems as we are still sometimes spending a lot of time going over questions, but they are good problems to be discussing.
• Ask students to give themselves feedback on their homework. Continue assigning a catch-up day every 2 weeks.
• I have had students give themselves feedback once, need to do it again. I have not had any catch-up days this year because students are able to complete assignments by the original due date since the work load has been more manageable and because they are getting feedback in person. Should definitely have at least one or few times that I ask students to pick an earlier assignment and revise it though.
• I will continue having students turn in pictures of their homework digitally while keeping an organized notebook. 
• I need to put more effort/teaching into students' notetaking. I would like students to take notes and write down questions/ideas/connections. This is especially important since we don't have textbooks so notes are students' only record of what we are learning. I also want to have students write down questions, conjectures, tests, and conclusions more formally - it will be really helpful to show models of actual student work so that students have a better idea of what this looks like. I am giving students time at the end of class to write down summary statements and examples, but need to do this at a few intervals instead of just at the end and give students more tips and feedback on how to do this better. I am providing a rubric for all assignments, but it would be great to have links in the rubric to samples of student work so that students have more specific models. I also need to provide students with models of what formal write-ups look like as well as what an "exemplary" (which is our highest level in the standards based grading rubric) level for each mathematical practice looks like. 

New goals:

• Take pictures during class of work that is going on the whiteboards and post these - still need to figure out an organized way to put up this work so that students can find it easily if they need to review a specific topic and don't remember the date on which we worked on it. I currently provide a list of electronic resources for each topic we are studying - perhaps I can make a second column of links to pictures of our in-class work on that topic. I still need to think about what makes sense here - a chronological order or a topic-based order. One idea is to assign each topic to a student and put them in charge of writing a summary of the topic, including examples, and uploading this to a class online textbook.
• Keep better track of students' progress. I have been doing a lot of discussion and in-person meeting, but not a lot has been in writing or communicated more formally. I am now starting to write down a summary of our in-person meeting with specific objectives listed, such as "review binomial distribution model and reassess on it next week" and then emailing the list of feedback and to-dos to the student. I should make sure to loop in the advisor when appropriate as well.
• I need to have more regular meetings with my co-teachers. I have not been doing a great job of planning together or watching others on my team teach. I wanted to do some co-teaching and lesson study, but in the frenzy of the year, this has sort of fallen by the wayside. I'd like to recommit some time & energy to this in preparation for the second semester to figure out a regular plan for making this happen.
• I need to figure out better ways to support struggling students in my classes. I have been more focused this year on providing sufficient rigor and challenge to students who learn quickly and want to explore more topics, but haven't been addressing as much the needs of students who need more time and to sit with concepts for longer and from more perspectives in order to feel more comfortable with the material. I need to structure classwork and homework occasionally to allow for more differentiation and review/reach, as needed.

Digital workflow

In my previous post, I blogged about starting to use Google classroom with my 10th grade students this year. So far, I'm having not the easiest time with figuring out exactly how I want to use it. When you post to your classroom stream, you have the option of posting as an announcement or an assignment. Every time you post an assignment, Google classroom makes a folder with that assignment name and automatically drops work that students turn in into that folder on your Drive. However, students seem to be having a hard time using the "turn in" feature. For the assignment due today, they were supposed to make a spreadsheet of data (using a coin flipping simulator to flip coins and record the number of heads) as well as answer questions about their data. Apparently, Google classroom doesn't appreciate you trying to turn in two things for one assignment. I was told that there's an option to turn in one document and then add another, but I haven't tried this yet. Also, what to do for students who really want to answer the questions by hand?

This brings me to my second question... in the past, I have had students keep a very organized binder with sections. Not quite an Interactive Notebook, but something that could serve as a reference and be easily searchable and reflected upon. I had a great system for managing student workflow and feedback. Now that I'm using Google classroom, I'm trying to figure if I should go completely digital and have students create organized folders in Drive and scan/take pictures of their work or if I should try to maintain a hybrid system of some kind. My goal is for students to be able to compile and reflect on a portfolio of their work, as well as be able to turn in and receive back work in an organized manner. I'm a big fan of systems and right now, everyone is turning things in completely willy nilly and it's driving me crazy. I feel like I have this small window right now while the year is still in formation mode and students are eager to please to create an organized and simple system that makes sense for different types of Math work.

So please, clue me in to your wise ways. If your workflow system has a digital component, I would love to hear about it. How flexible are you? What's your take on helping students be organized? What do you do that you like or don't like? If you went all digital, how did it go? Tell me all of your things!!

Technology in the MS Classroom #msSunFun

See all the other #msSunFun submissions for this week

iPad apps (I have an iPad, my students do not):

• Doceri: I just started using this last week after reading about it on @danbowdoin's blog. So far, I've made a few video examples for students to watch as review and for a sub to show when I was away on a field trip one day. It is incredibly easy to use, which is a huge selling point for me. You hit the record button and write with a stylus or finger while commenting on what you're writing. Hit stop when you're done and upload the whole thing to YouTube. Done and done. We are slowly, but surely, moving to 1-to-1 for students, so this would be a cool app for students to use to create videos for each other.
• AirPlay: This allows me to mirror my iPad screen on my projector via an Apple TV device. I'm actually still waiting for the Apple TV to be installed in my room (any day now, IS...), but I've played around with this before asking for my own and it's awesome. You have the ability to project stuff wirelessly from anywhere in the room instead of being tethered to where the computer is plugged in. Although, I just saw that you can do this type of iPad mirroring without the Apple TV. If someone does this, let me know in the comments because I'm thinking of trying it also while I wait for that Apple TV to get installed.

Classroom Management Technology:

• Edmodo: I'm using it for the first time this year, and it's so much better than my old class webpage for providing kids with easy access to class materials and encouraging interaction outside of class. Students often post questions (sometimes, they take a picture of their work using their phone or iPad and post that too) and answer each other's questions. They have arguments about homework problems (whose answer is right??) and post interesting math questions they are wondering about. So, so cool.
• Google docs: I use these to survey students anonymously through Google Forms, get input on what music they want to listen to in class, and have them write and share reflections and conference preparation documents with me. I also use it to share documents with other teachers (for example, the other Algebra 1 teacher and I have a shared spreadsheet we use to plan out the unit), such as notes from meetings and committee reports.

Organization Technology:

• Evernote: Started using this over the summer, and it's helped me be much more organized this year. Because I have it on my phone, iPad, and laptop and all the accounts are synced, I can track cool teaching ideas from twitter or blogs, information about students (including the missing homework form idea I stole from @approx_normal - I take a picture of each one and stick that in the note for that student), textbook sign-out sheets, and notes from meetings/conferences, not to mention personal stuff, like receipts, restaurants, books/articles I want to read, and vacation planning materials.
• Hackpad: I blogged about this app earlier this year. I use it similarly to google docs, but it has the added feature that the name of the person writing shows up next to their text so it's really handy when you want to know which person wrote which part of a document.
• Google calendar: Our school recently moved to Google Apps for Education, so everyone has a school google account. We use shared google calendars to keep track of shared events (field trips, meetings, and advisory activities) and large tests and projects to help make sure that we're not over scheduling kids or putting too many assessments on one day. I also need this for my own personal organization to keep from imploding. All events in my life go here and my husband and I can see & edit each other's calendars to keep from double-booking ourselves or our kid.

My Favorite Friday - Hackpad to organize meetings & discussions

Submit yours here

This is my first time doing one of these, but I wanted to share a site that I've been using to help organize meetings and discussion groups at school. The site is hackpad.com, and it's basically a wiki (or document that is editable by multiple people), but with some nice, extra features that make it super useful for organization. To use the site, you can either create an account or use an existing Google or Facebook account. The benefit of using one of those (I prefer using a Google account) is that you will stay logged in to Hackpad for as long as you're logged in to the other account. And if there's one thing that I hate the most in the world, it's logging into accounts. 

Uhhh... my password?????

So once you're in, you can start making "pads," which are basically blank documents that you can share with other people. The awesomestestest thing about Hackpad is that once the people you're sharing them with make accounts, their name automatically appears next to whatever text they've entered. Here's a screen grab from a pad I'm using in a professional development group on young adult literature:

A few things to note:

• There are several different privacy levels, from public to those with link only, to those on a pre-approved list only. The default setting is private (only you can see it).
• Bolding an entire line of text automatically makes it an entry in a table of contents, which is super useful for organizing long pads. (See the table of contents on the right-hand side above)
• It's super easy to embed links, images, tables, and videos - the site recognizes the format and everything is embedded in a single document.
• You can create to-do lists with check-boxes.
• When changes to the pad are made, all of the people signed-up for that pad get an email with what the changes are. They can edit by going directly to the pad or by replying to the email.
• You can group pads into collections (basically, like folders - the pad above is in my "School stuff" collection).
• You can call up specific people using the @ symbol - if they have an account, their name will pop up from a drop-down menu and they will get a notification email that says they were called up in a pad (basically like tagging in Facebook or Twitter). This is super useful if you have a question or comment for a specific person and want to make sure they see it.
• People can edit at the same time and the changes are recorded in real time. There is no need to save - it is all automatic.
• You can link to other pads so one can be one initial pad and when it gets too big, you can cut chunks off and make them into individual pads that can still be navigated to from the main one.
• You can view the document as a cohesive whole or as a series of changes, ordered from most recent to least recent. This can be helpful if you just want to see what's been changed.

Yes, there are some similarities to google docs in that pads are shared and editable by many people. The main benefits that I see with Hackpad are:

• You don't need a Google account so this can be used with lots of different groups of people with varying levels of tech-savviness. People can access it using whatever means is easiest for them (Google account, Facebook account, or with an email address & password).
• The name of the writer is automatically shown next to the text they added so it's super easy to see who is saying what in a discussion so no more typing in third person, or trying to figure out who "I" is in a document.
• You can "tag" (or call up) specific people.
• Ability to view recent changes.

Some drawbacks that I've found are that if you have a lot of pads (which I do), you can get inundated with emails for updates being made to each one (to fix this, you can set a specific pad to not get notification emails) and the site does not play well with Android mobile devices. I'm hoping that they will come out with an Android app sooner rather than later, since that would make it way more convenient for me to use on the go.

I wrote a blog post for them recently specifically about how I use Hackpad in an education setting: https://hackpad.com/7sD02CpiqYk#Using-hackpad-in-education.

MS SunFun - Math Class Binders

The theme this week is Student Math Class Notebooks. Instead of notebooks, however, I like for my students to keep a 1 inch 3-ring binder. My reasons for this rather than an Interactive Notebook is that there is no cutting or gluing necessary, which cuts down on supplies needed for class as well as time to cut & glue stuff into the notebook. Instead, all handouts are hole-punched and students have blank hole-punched lined and graph paper to use. The other benefit is that the order can be changed and new pages inserted at any time. If a student is absent, they can just continue with their class work and if they later work on an assignment that happened while they were gone, they can just insert it into the right place. Homework or classwork can be turned in to me and then easily returned to the binder. Students' binders go back and forth between home and school.

The binder is organized into three sections with dividers:

1. Notes/In-class projects (basically, everything that happens in class, but isn't a quiz or test)
2. Homework/Journaling (all assignments that get taken home)
3. Quizzes/Tests, along with corrections and retakes

This year, I will be using Left Hand Page and a Right Hand Page designations for notes, as described by Megan on her blog. Students will use the RHP to write down and work out problems and take notes, and they will use the LHP to process the material, mostly through reflective journaling questions that I will ask at the end of class, as well as a general summary of the day's lesson and a list of any questions that they still have.

Another change for this year is that I will ask students to number the pages in each section and make a table of contents at the front of the In-class section. Since I give them an assignment sheet that lists all of the homework assignments for the unit, that page can be their table of contents for the homework section. I do a binder check every so often (more if the kids seem especially disorganized) where I look to see that they have the three sections organized and that they have blank lined and graph paper, as well as the required supplies for class. During the binder check, I also check in with students to see if they know what assignments, if any, they are missing, and what assignments they have not received full credit on and that they need to correct before the end of the unit. It's part of the grade for the binder check that students have a pretty accurate view of any outstanding work that they need to complete and know what concepts/topics they need to review or correct. My hope is that this helps them see the benefit of having an organized binder and puts more of the responsibility of knowing what they are supposed to do on them.

My other little tip for keeping a binder is that at the end of each unit, students clean out each section, staple them together, and put them in a file folder that I keep for each student in a crate in my classroom. This year, I may ask them to reflect on the unit and create a summary sheet of the most important concepts and skills, which they will put at the front of the packet. At the end of the year, students have a nice folder of review materials that is organized by chapter. I'm not sure yet how to effectively help them use it to review for final exams, so if you have any good ideas about that, I'd love to hear them.

(This is not from my class, but since all of my classroom stuff is still put away for the summer, it will have to do)

Homework Folders - Made 4 Math #5

I think I skipped a few weeks there, but hey, that's just how I roll. Anyways, today's Made 4 Math post is basically the only original thing that I've ever thought of for teaching. I mean, literally ever. I take the "beg, borrow, and steal" mentality of teachers everywhere to a new level, which is why I am so proud of this one idea that is my very own. It came about because my biggest difficulty in teaching (and life) is organization. Loose papers are my kryptonite. So this is my system for keeping kids' homework organized. I buy 4 sets of colored folders ($0.10 each at Office Depot), one set for each of my classes, 7 folders per set.

Each folder will hold the work of one group. I generally have between 4 and 6 groups of 4 students per class, but I buy a few extra folders in case one rips or a kid loses one (more on that later). The groups are based on the kids' seats - the desks are usually arranged in groups of 4. 

The folder is labeled with the kids' names and the class and period number. When we change seats, I just stick a new label on top of the old one and write the names of the new group on it.

The folder has two parts: "In" on the left side is where kids turn in their homework and "Out" on the right side is where I place graded homework. One of my group roles is a Materials Manager. This student's role every day is to pick up his or her group folder from the magazine stands that hold all of the folders.

He or she passes out the graded homework from the right side of the folder to each member of the group and after the group or class goes over homework questions, the Materials Manager inserts everyone's homework papers into the left side in numerical order (each kid in the group is assigned the numbers 1 through 4). My gradebook is set up so that the kids are listed in the order of their groups and their assigned numbers so entering grades is a snap, straight from the group folder. It also means that I never ever ever lose homework - it just moves from the left side of the folder to the right side. I don't have to use any class time to collect or pass out assignments, and if I want to know if a kid turned in their homework that day, I can find out very quickly. I also like that it turns over responsibility to the students.

This also allows me to easily keep track of work for kids who are absent. When I pass out any worksheets or problem sets in class, I pass out a copy for the absent kid too and the Materials Manager puts his or her name on the sheet and places it in the right side of the folder so that it's ready for the student when they return to school. 

The best part is that almost all of the other MS math teachers at my school have adopted this system so now I don't even need to take the 5 minutes I used to explain how it works or remind students to not put any papers on my desk or try to hand them to me (I literally tell students that if they hand me a piece of paper, there is about a 90% chance that this paper will never be seen again by human eyes).

One more logistic thing - I added a responsibility for the class leader (a job that rotates each week) to check at the end of class that all group folders have been returned to their container so that no one walks off with one. Before I added that, I had a group folder disappear for good about once every two years, which is still probably a better statistic than how often I lost homework before I started using this system. Hopefully, this is useful to some new teachers out there, and I'd love to hear how you handle homework organization in your class.

Whiteboards for groups & student roles - Made 4 Math Monday #2

Recently, @fnoschese linked to a blog post he wrote just about two years ago, called "The $2 Interactive Whiteboard," where he described the advantages of a large dry-erase board that students can use to work collaboratively and then easily share their findings with the class. You can buy these large whiteboards from various places on the interwebs, but I thought I would try the cheaper option explained in the blog and went to Lowe's, where a 48" by 96" piece of white tile board cost me $11.50.

They cut it for me into 6 pieces that are 24" by 32" each (for free!!), which are just about perfect for two or three students to use for a partner or group activity. The edges weren't sharp, but I put duct tape around them so that the cardboard backing wouldn't get fuzzy and disintegrate.

I'm thinking that students can just stand them up on the marker tray at the blackboard at the front of the room, but if that doesn't work, I can get all fancy and attach two metal hoops to the back of each whiteboard so that it can hang on the hooks at the top of my blackboard.

There are more whiteboarding resources at Whiteboards USA and Whiteboarding in the Classroom, as well as at Frank Noschese's blog, linked above.

The second thing that I worked on today was cleaning up classroom roles and expectations. I've had an assigned class leader for the past few years, who rotates every week, and it's been helpful both in making the class run more smoothly and in fostering students' independence (it's really nice to leave sub directions like, "1. Take attendance 2. Give all handouts to class leader and let her direct class for the rest of the period."). I've gradually moved away from group roles, which has made the class roles more meaningful as well. This year, I've decided to split up some of the jobs into two roles: a Class Leader, who sort of runs many of the starting and ending class routines, and a Materials Manager, who takes care of supplies and handouts/class organization.

Class Leader

Materials Manager

Three Templates - Made 4 Math Monday #1

A few fellow math teachers on Twitter (yay @druinok and @pamjwilson!) came up with the idea of making something for your math class, at least once per week, and sharing it on Monday and attaching the tag #made4math. I decided to put together two templates that have been bouncing around in my head for some time now. The first one is inspired by @mgolding, who has written a lot about interactive notebooks (for example, here and here). I will still have students use a binder system next year rather than interactive notebooks in order to save time and avoid cutting and gluing, but I wanted to move to a more interactive system for note-taking so I created a note-taking template that uses the "input" and "output" notions of interactive notebooks to help kids move from passive note-taking to processing and making sense of what they did in class.

Note Taking Template

The idea is that students would write down what's happening in class in the "input" (right) side, then write down reflections, comments, and questions in the "output" (left) side. I will also have them write an annotated example that either shows what they understand or what is still confusing to them from that day's lesson and to write a summary at the bottom of the last page in their own words of what they learned that day. My plan is to have them do this during the last few minutes of the class period since my experience has been that kids tend to blow these types of assignments off if they are asked to do them for homework.

The second template that I created for today was inspired by @samjshah's post on participation quizzes, where he talked about giving feedback to groups on the quality of their communication and ability to work together on a given mathematical task. The idea is that while students are working in their groups, the teacher is circulating and making notes on an overhead or SmartBoard of the things that are going on in each group, both positive and negative, as well as positive phrases or quotes that are promoting good groupwork. This gives groups instantaneous feedback and an opportunity to learn about group norms and what types of behaviors and ways of talking promote or hinder their ability to work together. I'm hoping to be able to use the template below to organize my feedback to each group and to be able to do this on my iPad while circulating around the room. I've done it before on an overhead and it can get a little hectic to both circulate and keep running to the front of the room to write down comments and observations.

Participation Quiz Template

The final template I made is inspired by stolen from @approx_normal's Homework SWHHW (See, what had happened was...) sheet, which she collects from students who don't have the homework due that day. I thought that this was a great way to keep a clear record for students who habitually neglect their homework beyond what I record in my grade book. This just seems so much more objective and will be in the students' own handwriting too, so no squirreling out of that one during a conference with parents. My optimistic plan, since I am terrible at keeping track of papers, is to take a photo of the form the student fills out in class and then upload it somewhere - possibly Evernote - where I can tag it with the student's name. Then, I can call up all of the missing homework forms for a particular student by searching. In a future world where every student has some sort of digital device in my classroom, I can just have them fill it out electronically, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So, here's my version of the form, just slightly altered from @approx_normal's document.

Missing HW Form

I would love any comments or ideas on how to improve these templates since this is just my first attempt at putting them together.