Math Notebooks

So this week's #MSSunFun post is about how we set up math notebooks with our students.  This is an exciting post just like the first day one because once again I'm going to get to "borrow" a bunch of other great ideas!

Anyhow without further ado, here is how I do my notebooks:

I use these large black binders for each students' notebook.

These binders are available because my school has done student led portfolio conferences for the past ten years and as we have moved toward more and more technology, including going 1 to 1 in both 6th and 7th grade, these binder have become obsolete for portfolios.  Therefore ,binders make great notebooks because they are free!

I have students set up their binders by following the order of our units of study.  We begin the year with whole number sense and follow that with fractions, decimals, geometry, measurement, data, probability, and algebra.  Each of these unit topics is a different divider in their binder.

Inside each divider I start the year off with a number of papers that I have already copied for the students.  The first paper is the KUD (what I want kids to know, understand, and be able to do) for that particular unit.     Here is one for whole number sense.  I also include a sheet to record notebook items (which I'll talk about later), a sheet to record exit cards, and a sheet to record how students did on their understanding of standards on quizzes.   I will admit that I need to do a better job of really showing the kids how to fill out these forms, reminding them early in the year to fill them out, and giving them more time to fill them out.

Once I have all these forms and papers in the binders, I store them here.

Students then grab them every day when they come into math class and go to their mailboxes and take out the papers that need to go into the binders such as this notebook item, returned quizzes and exit cards, and activities or homework.  I have students keep notebook items, quizzes, and exit cards for the whole year. (and in fact, I recommend to the kids that they keep the notebook items throughout middle school as they will only help as the kids do more advanced math.  I'm sure you can imagine how many kids listen to me about this though:)!   Activities and homework are cleaned out at the end of each unit.  Some of you might be wondering why I do notebook items instead of having kids take notes.  I have found over the years that middle school students don't have much of an idea on how to take notes.  By giving them basically a graphic organizer I help them get the idea of taking notes while making sure they get the information I want them to get.

So there you go, that is how I set up notebooks for my kids to use during their year of math with me.  I'm looking forward to seeing some other ideas and adapting them to fit my class!

The First Day

This is my first post in the Middle School Sunday Funday blog (#MSsunfun) that I had previously blogged about.  As I mentioned, each Sunday, a group of us Middle School teachers will be tackling a specific topic.  This week's topic is "What does the first day of school look like in your classroom?" 

I'm going to talk about the first day of "actual" class in my classroom.  The first day of school we have limited time in normal academics as we do a "student inservice" where the kids learn about the school, discuss our core values, and such.

I start the first class by getting the kids up and moving around by playing "vacation human bingo."  We spend a lot of time playing games and doing activities that involve getting up and moving around in my math class so this is a good introduction to that.  This is a "get to know you" activity where students go around and ask each other to sign their bingo board under a category that they did over the summer (such as visited three other states, etc.)  Each student can only sign another student's bingo board once so interaction with many different people is encouraged.  After a short period of playing time, we sit down and go over our boards.  This provides even more of a chance for the kids to get to know one another.  Next I go over class expectations, unit of study, my grading policy, etc.  Since we are a 1 to 1 school, I share this document containing much of that information with the kids (and their parents) before school and ask them on this first day if any of them have questions about what math will look like.  Then to wrap up I've begun using an activity I borrowed from Lisa Henry (@LMHenry9) where I give the students a bunch of numbers (32 to be exact) and sixteen things about me (such as number of siblings, number of my house, year I graduated high school, etc) and have them guess which ones go where.  As I walk around, I get a little feeling about the kids' ability to estimate and reason when they guess at what year I was born in (no, 1905 isn't correct!)  Finally I end the first day by assigning the first homework assignment.  I ask students to write about themselves in a million words or less (I borrowed this from Paul Bogush, @paulbogush).  We being school on a Wednesday so I make this assignment due the following Tuesday (thereby giving the students some time to think and actually write about themselves not just rush through.)

Overall, I like how the first day runs.  It gives the students a good idea of what math class will be like plus they get to play with numbers a bit too.  I'm looking forward to seeing some other ideas that I can "borrow" as well.

MS Sunday Funday Blog postings

Earlier this week, Julie Reulbach (@jreulbach) posted a survey looking for middle school educators who wanted to connect.  (Here is the link to her blog with the survey).  She had an amazing response to her survey with over 80 middle school math teachers responding. (link to her blog showing the results of the survey.)  Out of that came some good discussion on twitter with Julie, @4mulafun, @Borschtwithanna, myself and others.  We decided on the heels of the increasing popular #made4math Monday blogs, that we would add a new middle school math blog day.   After much discussion, we decided on Sunday to be the day to post blogs (largely because we wanted to use the name MS Sunday Funday for the blogs!)  The goal is to get as many middle school math teachers blogging and sharing ideas as possible with a common blog theme each week.  We decided to come up with a couple topics to start off with (first day activities, how you set up your math notebooks) and then we are going to go with a survey to get weekly ideas. Here is a link to the survey for new topics. The first blog post will this Sunday with the topic being "What do you do on your first day of school?" (of course, you don't have to wait until Sunday to publish your posts) Once you are done, tweet the link to Julie, @jreulbach so she can make a running list.  Please consider joining us even if you are not a math teacher.  Here is a link to the list of future topics that will be published in advance.  Julie has also provided a link to a spot on the MS Math wiki for those people who do not have a blog but would like to add a post. Looking forward to some great sharing!

A look at some summarizing techniques I've used

About a month or so ago on twitter, we were discussing summarizing techniques and I mentioned a few different ones that I have used and that students have enjoyed doing.  @Druinok said she would love to hear more about them and suggested I write a blog post about them.  So after much procrastinating and some summer vacation time, I'm finally getting around to it!

I've used a variety of summarizing techniques in the past, both written and verbal which have allowed my classes to interact with one another as well as share something that they learned or a question that they still have.  A number of these I've borrowed and adapted from Rick Wormelli who has a ton of great ideas, including many summarizing techniques.

The first summarizing technique I've used isn't really creative or anything but with my grade having gone 1 to 1 last year is something that has worked well (and something I've blogged about in the past).  I've found that kids like using Wallwisher to post a quick comment or question about a particular lesson.  I had tried this in years past but it didn't seem to be worth the time it took to log into computers, etc.  With students each having their own computers and not needing to log in, etc it has become much easier and works well.

Another technique I've used is called "Share One, Get One."  In this activity, students fold a blank sheet of paper into thirds one way and then thirds the other way (thus making a 3 x 3 grid or 9 boxes.)  Then after doing a class reading, after a class discussion, video, or activity, each student fills out the top three boxes with something that they have learned, questions they still have, or something they wonder about.  Once everyone has done that, students get up and moving around the room talking with one another.  They share one idea from their sheet with another student and have that student share one with them in one of the remaining six empty spots. (Hence the name share one, get one)  I've found that kids love this for a number of reasons.  First, they are up and about moving around.  Second, they get a chance to interact with a variety of their classmates.  I like it because kids get a chance to experience a variety of opinions and ideas from the lesson.

Another technique I use is called "Summary Ball."  In this activity, students all stand up and think about something they learned or a question they have from the day's lesson.  I get out a soft, even Nerf like ball and give it to one student to start.  That student needs to make a statement about something they learned or about something they still are wondering about and then throws the ball to another student and sits down.  The student who receives the ball needs to make a statement or asks a question and then passes the ball along.  This continues until everyone has had a chance to say something.  If someone can't think of something, they can pass and then someone will come back to them later.  Kids like this because they are active and get a chance to throw the ball around.  I like it because all the kids are in involved and it gives everyone a chance to say something.

                                           photo courtesy mag3737

A last technique I use is called "Snowball Fight."  In this activity, students write something they learned or a question they still have on a piece of scrap paper.  They then crumble the paper up and once everyone is ready start tossing the paper at each other.  We do this for a minute or two and then students need to pick up one of the pieces of papers and we go around and read them.  It should be pretty obvious why kids love this and I like it because it involves everyone (plus I get involved and get to throw paper at the kids!)

                                             photo courtesy photosteve101

These are just a few of the many techniques that I use over the course of the year.  I've found that kids enjoy these quite a bit, even asking to do these at the end of classes.

In the last two years, I have moved from a more traditional grading system of tests and homework to a standards based grading system where I grade students on various "skills" such as operations on fractions. I tend to gather their grades through quizzes (which are directly related to two or three specific skills) and projects. I'm loving how this works as it gives me a lot of information about what students are good at and what they are challenged with. At the same time, I've used almost daily exit cards in my math classroom for the past 8 years. I love these formative assessments because they allow me to get a quick "dipstick" into where my students are as a lesson progresses.

My problem (I guess not really a problem, more of a question) is how do I combine the two (standards based quizzes and exit cards)? I don't really want to start "grading" the exit cards but should I somehow include them as they do show student understanding of a particular skill. Does anyone have a thought on how I could combine the two (or if I even should combine them- maybe I should just keep using them as I do)? does anyone combine both SBAR and exit cards in their classrooms (math or otherwise?)

Any feedback would be great!

The Day in.....

Last year, I began to use a Google Presentation to send my students a quick blurb about what we would be doing each day in math and science. I did this for a number of reasons. First, I felt it was important for the students to see what we were doing and to see connections to what we had done. Second, it stopped the "What are we doing in class today?" questions that kids always ask. I love how if a kid does ask me that someone else in the class tells them to look at the "Day in..." This has also been a great way to keep parents informed on what is going on in class. I have a number of them who subscribe to the presentation. Several have told me it makes it that much easier for them to have discussions with their middle school students who normally don't say more than a few grunts. Lastly, its great for me to be able to go back and see the progression of the year through the different lessons I have done. Obviously it isn't a full on lesson plan but it gives me a good synopsis and I can go back to it to see which parts I need to tweak in the future.

As I said, I started doing this last year and it was moderately successful in all of those aspects but I didn't really follow through because the kids weren't using it as much as I'd like. This was due to the fact that middle school kids are often not a group that looks to the future even the very near future and so they wanted to check the "Day in..." right before class. Without access to computers this was difficult. This year, we are a 1 to 1 environment and the "Day in.." is working great!

There are a few tweaks I want to do. I need to include a more "student friendly" version of the standards that we are going to be touching on each day. I think there is still some disconnect from the kids understanding of why we are doing a certain thing each day. From a stylistic point, I have just added a new slide at the end of the presentation. At first this seemed easy enough to me, but now I'm realizing that we are some 120 slides in and it might be hard for kids to get to the current slide. Next year, I'm going to add the slide at the beginning so the show will go in reverse order.

Overall, I'm very happy with how it has turned out, especially with our 1 to 1 environment. The kids love using it to know what is going on and are actually upset if I miss a day for some reason! In fact, I've had a number of kids tell me that they wish they had one for their Language Arts class too (hint, hint Katie!)

Projects

For a long time now, my teaching partner and I have been known as the "project team." At times parents want their students on our team in 6th grade or don't want them on our team, solely based on the fact that we give "a lot" of projects. Some parents view this as outside the traditional, not the way they did school and can't understand why their kids would be doing "so many" projects. Other parents don't see a use in traditional testing and want their students to learn and be assessed in such skills as group work, creativity, and long term planning. Obviously because we give so many projects, we tend to side with the second camp. However, over the years, we have made some changes to the way we are doing things.
For one thing, we want the projects to be demonstrations of students work not of parent work. Therefore, we have given students more and more time during class to work on these projects. I like to be able to go around and talk with the students about the projects and how they are doing.
In addition, we have begun breaking down due dates for students. We begin the year by sharing a project and having multiple due dates throughout the project. Here is a sample project. These include things like a name for the project, a list of materials, and a rough draft. Slowly throughout the year, we start giving less and less due dates, so that eventually with the final projects of the year, students are responsible for only one due date, the date of the final project. I like this as it models for students the idea of breaking a large project into smaller parts. Many students will still wait until the last minute but if we require them to show work then they can't keep doing that. The problem I'm having is that I am still the one having to ask for each of these pieces. Students often will forget to share things with me unless I seek them out. I'm wondering what else I can do to make them value these due dates better.
Another change that we have made is the way we use rubrics. Here is a sample rubric I've used We have always given students a rubric as we begin a project. Two years ago, we went to giving a rubric that had only one column on it, what we thought would be a perfect project. Our feeling was that students should be shooting for the best project. They shouldn't go through a rubric and decide what they could do and what they couldn't do. I really like this idea. For one, I only have to figure out what the "best" is for each descriptor. I also like to show the students that the "best" is what we expect. This year, we have decided to change the rubrics a little again. We no longer have only one rubric but have split the rubric into two, one for the product itself and one for the content. I had found in the best that students would often focus on the product and the content would be an afterthought. By changing to two rubrics I'm hoping students will see the value of the content (since that is a huge part of why we are doing the project.) One major problem at this point is that many students use an "out of sight, out of mind" theory in terms of the rubric. They see it when I introduce the project and listen to me as we go over it but then they don't look at it again. Even if I have them assess themselves they don 't take it really serious and don't use the rubric as a tool to help them make a good project. What can I do about this?

Anyhow, at this point I'm happy with the constant changes we have as we go about assigning, creating, and assessing projects. I think students get a lot out of projects and it helps them understand and demonstrate their understanding of content. I'm planning on continuing my use of them and plan on refining my projects as I go.