The Cumulative Final Exam

Please excuse the use of quotations, and please treat all quotations as if I'm using my hands to give the quotations signal.

Scenario A: Teacher speeds through all course material and is "done teaching" for the year by May.  They spend the remaining 1.5 months "reviewing" for the final.

Scenario B: Teacher spends time on each concept, working at the student pace to ensure everybody has a good understanding of each concept, differentiating when appropriate.  By the time June rolls around, there are 2 whole chapters (when did learning take place in chapters) that were not "covered". 

Since they both teach the same course, each teacher's students will be taking the same final exam.  After all, what better way to achieve a standardized curriculum than to make the final exam the same for everybody.  What will these final exam scores look like?

The teacher from Scenario A looks like a superstar.  An expert teacher whose students excel on the final exam.  A true veteran.  The teacher from Scenario B looks like a bumbling fool, a novice who can't even "cover their entire curriculum".  This is the teacher that others look at and say "They move too slow." (not sarcasm quotes)

The students from Scenario A look like the best and brightest, and are rewarded by high scores on a final exam that counts for 20% of their final grade.  Yes, 20%!!!  90 minutes of a school year equates to 20% of a student's grade.  The students of Scenario B are punished for having a teacher who cares about everybody learning, and a teacher that is following a district model of formative assessment and differentiated instruction.  They will not have high scores on their final exam, the same final exam that Scenario A's students beasted.

How does it make sense to give the same final exam, knowing that every teacher employs a different teaching style?  Why can't we have some freedom to develop our own final evaluation of what a student knows?  Something that is not necessarily a multiple choice exam.  Here's what I'd do: My End of Year Projects

End of Year Project Topics

This is an incredibly interesting list of project ideas that my students have generated.  I thought I'd share what they're capable of when they have zero restrictions...

10-11 End of Year Project Ideas 

Some highlights if you don't feel like reading through the whole thing...

1. Mythbusters: Mac vs PC
2. Value of a Power Hitter or Contact Hitter in Fantasy Baseball
3. Developing software that is usable exclusively in an AP Stat class
4. Using a test vs. a qualitative measure to assess learning
5. Profiles of countries in a state of unrest to predict revolt (the wiki for this project)
6. Price differences between Ebay and craigslist
7. The chance of finding a 15 to 64 year old male in Luxembourg that is a noble compared to a similar-aged male in Denmark being a noble.  (easily the most unique project ever done)
8. Using Wikipedia, how long it takes for random words using the formula of always clicking the first blue, unbolded and unitalicized word, lead to the end word of Philosophy. On the theory that every word in Wikipedia will eventually lead to Philosphy. Words will be chosen via randomized dictionary words. (based on the fact that clicking the first blue, unbolded, unitalicized word of every page eventually leads to Philosophy)

With a little bit of freedom (okay, a lot of freedom) they come up with some awesome topics and they really enjoy their work in class during these couple of weeks.

How will I grade them?  By writing a list of what the student did well and what the student did not do well. 

A Farewell to Teaching

I'm writing this post to inform everyone that reads this (who knows how many) that at the end of this school year I will be making a career change.  I will be starting down the career path to becoming an actuary, which is a unique opportunity that I am extremely excited about.

I'd like to thank anyone that has taken the time to read this blog for allowing me to share some ideas about education that are unique.  I've continued to blog this year due to the amazing conversations that I've had with colleagues nation wide.  Most of you I've never met face to face, but I enjoyed having an audience to bounce some AP Stat and just general education reform ideas off of.  This is something I would not have done with anybody but my personal learning network on the internet.  Again, thank you.

Feel free to use any of my ideas in any capacity that you wish.  No need to be proprietary, as I'm all about moving education forward.  I encourage you to consult with and contribute to the class wiki that we've started this year, that will hopefully evolve into an online statistics resource for any and every statistics student that would be in need.

The Class Wiki: http://statknowledge.wikispaces.com

Will the blog continue?  Probably.  Just in a much different capacity and probably be more math nerd related than anything.  Again, to my PLN, thank you so much for contributing so much to my professional development. 

A Project per Unit: Understanding By Design in AP

Some project ideas for AP Statistics that are unit specific.  I'd begin each unit by asking these questions and having kids consider just what data they'll collect and how they'll answer these questions.  Then build all the statistics concepts around them as they come up, not as a series of "concepts".

Unit I: Displaying and Describing Data
1.  Market Research: design a product, determine the market for it, determine how much you should charge for it

• Create a coffee stand for your school building
• Pillow-pack: A backpack with a pillow built in to it

2.  Consumer Education: Choose a series of similar products and determine which one is the best for consumers

• I have a number of kids working on an end of the year project comparing all types of smartphones
• Mac vs PC?
• Tablet PC's

3.  What makes a song popular?

Unit II: Displaying and Describing Bivariate Data (probably my weakest ideas)
1.  Have them collect data that makes them think about what a correlation actually shows (not causation, only a relationship between two variables, etc)

• Caloric Intake vs Weight 
• Grams of Fat vs Grams of Protein consumed daily
• Income Level vs Achievement Level in Standardized tests (state tests, SAT's, AP, etc.)

Unit III: Collecting Data
1.  What's the best sample we can get to investigate one of these questions?  I want them to see just how poorly they collected data in Unit I and II

• What proportion of the school district has internet access?
• Revise their sampling methods from previous units

Unit IV: Probability
1.  Design a game of chance that is profitable (run them all together on a casino day complete with fake money to see how profitable it is in the short-run)

Unit V: Inference for Proportions
1.  Continue any of the data collections that were done in the beginning of the year, looking for significant differences (consumer education, market research) - introduces significance, might be boring.
2.  Is there equality that exists between schools/institutions?  What do "richer" schools have that "poorer" schools do not?  Why?
3.  Tell a joke and determine whether or not it is funny.  Possibly look at a comedian's standup routine to determine if they are funny
4.  Type I and Type II Error: Explore wrongful convictions.  Have them explore some court cases that are under contention (OJ Simpson, Mumia, etc) and some court cases that are open and shut (Bernie Madoff).

Unit VI: Inference for Means
1.  Is there an advantage to eating a raw vegan diet vs the traditional "Western" diet? Inspired by recent events as we have recently started a Raw Vegan diet (and have never felt better)
2.  Is there equality between schools/institutions?

Unit VII: Inference when Variables are Related (T-tests for Slope and Chi-Squared Tests)
1.  Should you choose one letter over another when taking a multiple choice test? (sorry for so many testing heavy examples)
2.  Do a t-test for slope on any of the bi-variate data collected in Unit II

Most of the inferential statistics can be applied to enhance the projects and work done in the beginning of the year.  See my post on Inferential Statistics Data Collection for others, and of course feel free to lend me your ideas.

Who decides what kids should learn?

Stop me if you've heard these before...
"Kids these days can't do simple math without a calculator!"
"Kids these days can't write well at all!"
"Kids these days are lazy!"

So what?  What gives you the right to tell students today what they should learn?  You've never met my students, so in my view you have zero authority to tell them what they should be learning.  On the flip side, if you've never met my students, why is it okay to tell them what they don't need? (as you begin making those budget cuts to eliminate foreign languages and the arts)

Ultimately our kids should have the freedom to learn whatever they want.  There should be no reason that every student should have to take Algebra II before they graduate high school.  If they're interested in it or would like to try mathematics, then go for it.  If they have an interest in art, why would we then tell them that they can only take one art course this semester since they have to take 6 other subjects they don't care about?

Imagine if we required every student to take a painting and drawing class every year from 7th grade to 12th grade.  Why does that sound so blasphemous, yet we can easily require them to take a math class (or two) every year from 7th grade to 12th grade?

Don't get me wrong, I see the great benefits in students taking any mathematics courses.  I'm a math teacher.  I want kids to discover their own interest in learning mathematics on their own schedule, not on some mandated timetable. 

AP Stat Lesson: Unstructured Investigation

Give kids this: Hank Aaron - Home Runs by Pitcher

Let all hell break loose.

I've become quite a fan of "unstructured time" as of late, and I think this is perfect for an AP Statistics class.  I can see my baseball fans in class leaping at this opportunity to explore some baseball stats.  Whatever they wish to investigate, they are free to do so.  For the non-baseball fans, it may be just an opportunity to learn something about baseball.  I owe them some data on what they're interested in.  I look forward to hearing what a student that knows very little about baseball has to say.

Possible investigations:
1.  Comparison of Barry Bonds(or any other great home run hitter) to Hank Aaron. 
2.  Are pitchers today better (as a whole) than the ones Hank Aaron faced? (this comes from listening to Colin Cowherd say that Babe Ruth hit his home runs against guys who drove a milk truck in the off-season)
3.  Just how biased is this website?

Let them come up with how they're going to do any of the above. 

You Say It Best When You Say Nothing At All (about Hypothesis Testing)

I really like sharing things that work really well.  I don't know if it's a good idea on it's own, but this worked great considering we've done a lot of remediation (for students that needed it) and a lot of projects that delve deeper into statistics.  They are working with basics of statistics all the time, so tying it together into making statistical inferences is fairly easy when they have a good foundation.  I'd also like to think it has something to do with the way we've interacted with hypothesis tests in class.

Thumbtacks - Introduction
It begins with this form (Inference for Proportions) and handing out one thumbtack.  In their own brain, students decide what they think it is and what it would take to convince them it was wrong.  Then they toss the tack to be able to compare their observations to a model they've developed.  Sounds a lot like your entire hypothesis testing/inferential statistics unit.

The NCAA Basketball Tournament - A Basic Example
Kids then made predictions for the NCAA tournament and we tested just how good they were at doing so by comparing their proportion of correct first round picks to randomly guessing (p = 0.5).  A big question that came up was "Are we just doing this for the first round?" and in true teacher fashion I said, "Yes.  Now how come we're only doing it for the first round?"  Cue a killer discussion about large enough sample sizes and the Success/Failure condition.

Back to Thumbtacks - Put it into practice
Fire up the laptops and open up what the rest of your classmates thought (What They Thought).  Immediately they began to think "Why did this kid think they were incorrect when they got a lower proportion that what they thought they needed to be incorrect?"...a not so formalized way to think about a standard of proof and a low enough p-value to reject the null hypothesis.  This was one of those points in class where I said nothing and let their brains piece together what they were looking at.  I clarified what we were looking at, asked them to pick case that they thought was theirs and test the original hypothesis.

Conclusions
On the board, write your p-value and whether or not you rejected your original hypothesis.  As a class we'll have a look at everyone's p-values and decisions, then decide who has correctly rejected/not rejected.  They all argue about what p-value is considered "low enough" that you have to reject.  One of those moments where again, I say nothing and they develop an understanding of alpha-levels.  Not so formal...yet.

Projects/Practice

Pick another one of those contexts from the Inference for Proportions form and investigate it.  I think I'm going to add some more situations/contexts.  I'm also not sure that they ever need to fill out that form more than once...

What's Left to Do?
Sit back, relax, and let the 5's on the AP exam roll in.  Dress it up.  Put all the formal AP Exam terms/vocab/stuff to what they've already understood.  Then....
1.  So what really is the true proportion (Confidence Intervals)
2.  Is what we got really that different? (two proportions)
3.  Repeat procedure for sample means instead of proportions

Feel free to go to our class wiki for any supplemental exercises/materials.

Homework? More like "1st Period"-work

At our school, the typical student will take 7 courses for the entire year.  If that student has AP Stat with Mr. C on their schedule, this means that a student has 6 classes in which they will have homework.  6 other classes with one hour of homework assigned each night means approximately 6 hours of homework.

Some careful accounting as to how those 6 hours that could be spent working on homework are actually spent.
Hour 1: Facebook
Hour 2: Call of Duty
Hour 3: Facebook
Hour 4: Facebook
Hour 5: Facebook
Hour 6: Being a 17 year old....and throw in a little Facebook

I don't think that I"m very far off for the general population of high school students.  Knowing that this is the truth, just why do we assign homework again?

Where do those hours get made up?  During the 6 hours they are in school, simply because that is how  you earn the points for homework completion.  Do it in AP Stat, show it in Pre-Calc, consume points, repeat tomorrow morning in AP Stat.  And it's Trigonometry Worksheets.  Is my AP Stat class really less exciting than trig worksheets?  Not a chance, but the homework "points" are more exciting as they appease the grade monger in all of us.

I'm all for allowing my students to make a choice about what they will be working on in class, as long as that choice involves learning.  Consistently in my 1st period class (and each other class that I teach), the choice is made to fill in some unknown quantities for some triangles that nobody cares about (not even the teacher that assigned the homework) Why are you assigning homework if it's getting done in AP Stat?  Can't they do that work in your class?

I don't assign homework.  I don't plan on ever assigning homework again.  I plan on assigning worthwhile assignments that students can make the choice to complete at home if they want to make it even more awesome.  I plan on doing things that are valuable in class so that students do not need to work at home.

Imagine if your job gave you a minimal amount of time each day to complete everything for the next day for your 6 different classes and your boss told you, "Just do the rest of it at home."  Oh, wait.....

Well, anyway, back to my 46 minute planning period :)

A Crazy Idea for Professional Development

We are required to do 14 hours of documented professional development.  I'm sure that this hour requirement is similar at most school districts.  I could do 14 hours of professional development standing on my head.  My estimation is that I spend 5 hours a week reading the professional writings of my colleagues, and another 5 on Twitter engaging my colleagues in professional discourse.  Not to mention the discussions I have with colleagues that I actually work in the same building with. 

When will professional development be more than just an accumulation of hours?  It is a necessity in our classroom to differentiate instruction so that we nurture the interests of our students and provide them with a customized learning experience.  The extent of differentiation that goes into our professional development is the variety of 2-hour workshops in the district catalog to pick from (as long as you pick 7). 

Everybody choosing from the same pool of workshops leads us to a situation in which we have a large number of people with an average skill level.  What better way to generate organizational inefficiency than not nurturing experts? 

So my proposal for professional development: A Portfolio.  A teacher and a principal can have a discussion that begins with "Show me what you've done to become a better educator."  What follows is a look at the portfolio, talk about what's been learned, talk about interest level, what was good, what wasn't so good.  The principal can provide some feedback and suggestions as to where to go next.  Maybe this conversation is a little bit better than putting a check mark next to the teacher that has successfully completed the 14 hours?


A district would still offer the same catalog, but employees would not be limited to taking just those courses.  You can expand your offerings as need be, when you find there are a number of educators looking for something that just isn't offered.  The district catalog becomes customized for the individuals that need it, not the other way around. 



I'm not even going to mention how happy this proposal would make the educational outsider that thinks teachers have no incentive to improve when they get tenure.  Okay, I mentioned it.

Challenges of Project Based Learning (PBL) in AP Stat

Doing project based learning (PBL) in AP Stat this year has been a challenge. Ultimately, the best part about it is the learning experiences and opportunities it provides students. Every time a project is completed I think of 300 things that could be changed to make it, excuse me for using the phrase "100% better" (kind of an inside joke).  Below I've listed my major concerns about these projects, and the solutions I'm considering.  Your input on any of these is greatly appreciated.

Concerns and Solutions

1. The project was not rigorous enough. It covered too many skills too broadly, or too few skills in unnecessary depth.

     I want to make sure I create a sample project for each project to see just how in depth the projects go. I'm guilty of doing a bare-bones project example (okay, sometimes not even one at all).  There, I said it, I don't always do the project I assign.  The reason for this is to learn alongside of my students.

2. Some kids put a lot of work into a project that just doesn't really address much content, does so incorrectly, or doesn't really get into depth.

     Do it over. It's worth the learning experience of starting from scratch and completing the project again. 

3. What are they actually learning and can they replicate it

     Most of the time a project will involve them learning a new piece of technology as well as learning an AP Stat concept in greater detail.  I'm not sure these projects translate very well to getting an answer correct on the AP exam. Honestly, I want my projects to be far removed from getting right answers on an AP exam.

The Stat Project Process

1. Skills Organization - lay out the content related skills you will be addressing in your project

     Example: conditions for using the binomial/geometric probability distributions, calculating probability for each distribution, determining expected value and standard deviation for a probability distribution

2. Place context on each skill - group brainstorming to see what context fits each skill the best

     Example: highlight the difference between the two probability distributions by filming students walking downthehallway until we observe one of them wearing earbuds (geometric). Compare with a binomial distribution, showing 10 kids walking down the hall, 5 of which are wearing earbuds. 

 

3. Storyboard/Product: what multimedia can we put together, how does it flow, how does everything fit together?  

     Here's where students choose a tool that meets their project's needs.  

4. Edits - does anything need to be rethought or redone as something better?  

     High school students seem to miss this step in almost everything they do, once the "be done" mentality takes over. Sometimes the "do it over" option is the best learning experience.  I've found I've spent more time suggesting they edit and critique their own work and each others' work, and it's made a world of difference in overall quality of product and understanding of statistics.  

Since I don't believe in giving deadlines for learning, when a student asks when their projects are due, I tell them that they may turn them in whenever this process is completed.  With most projects I honestly don't think this process is ever completed.

No Decorations in my Classroom

I don't decorate my classroom. I've referred to it as "hospital" sterile when asked what my room looks like.  The only decorations I'd like to have in my room are signs that say: "LEARN FROM THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU".  My philosophy on this is that it shouldn't matter what's on the walls, let's start caring about what's happening inside the walls.  If it's really cool, then kids will start hanging stuff on the walls and decorating the room the way they want to.

A  few years back, I had a student that would draw pictures to hang on the wall, half of them were about AP Stat. All of them were entertaining. The ones that were about stat were amazingly good depictions of AP Stat topics.  Stay tuned for me to scan these images in and post the best of them.

I think we're in trouble if we concern ourselves too much with what the content looks like, rather imthan what the content actually is. Make that double if we use technology to change only what the content looks like.  When I choose a technology tool, I want tools that make students think deeper first, and ooh and ahh later.  This is probably why I choose Wikispaces, Google Docs, then Microsoft Excel every single time.

I recently responded to a tweet from @nwhyluckysgirl regarding using emoticons when commenting on student work electronically.  

@nwhyluckysgirl: "when commenting on student work electronically, do you use emoticons?" 

@jasonchri: "the occasional emoticon, not too often.  The comment usually is seen only for the emoticon"

My fellow tech integrator and I often debate look and feel, mostly on the look and feel of our district's technology wiki, NP Tech Tools. I keep my class wiki as the default background and format, and I honestly don't care to spend time choosing the right template/background/picture. The content of my class wiki should be the focus, and for that matter I would hope that's what's interesting about it. If you're reading this blog,  you'll see that I take a similar approach to blog layout (and have not yet switched to word press).  How are  you going to see the content if there's a thousand other things to look at on the page? 

I was inspired to write this after reading a brilliant post(Coloring Books or Canvasses? from Spencer's Scratch Pad about technology that makes students think deeply about a subject. Use tech to make students think more, not think about something else, not comment on how weird or cool something looks.  

Making the choice of what tech tool you want to use needs to be content driven.  I wind up picking one of the same three tools (Wikis, Google Docs, Microsoft Excel), since experience has shown these tools can stimulate conversation and let students think the way that they want to.

Some of my tricks...

1.  An Excel spreadsheet that is completely protected, so that they can only manipulate and change certain values to notice some patterns.  They'll need to think their way through certain processes too, not simply plug-in numbers and tell Excel to perform a calculation. 

2.  A massively shared Google document to write about the difference between two(or more) topics.  I'm trying this to get an entire class to discuss the difference between binomial and geometric distributions. 

3.  Class wiki- set of skills completely blank, so determine just how to organize lessons and what we've thought about

I'm branching out...

Forever I've wanted to use more and more multimedia ideas in my class.  Not just make a music video (a lot of times kids spend a ton of time on creating a video, and frequently miss the boat on content).  I want students to show me everything they know about probability, but do so in a very short video (30 sec - 1 min).

I'm going to suggest Animoto, but I really want to allow them to pick any tool that they should find, as long as it communicates everything they know about probability.  I also want to have them use pictures that they've taken, just to get them thinking a little bit more.  

I want to come up with the best web tools/tech tools for education, and I think this is how I want to start. Which tools make students think more, and think deeper? Which ones accomplish the same thing as a "solve for x" worksheet?  Do certain tools get misused?  Are there some tools that are all bark and no bite?

Know What's Wrong With Kids These Days...

Absolutely nothing. 

A 16 year old will never rarely act like a 30 year old.  Especially when surrounded with 1000 other 16 year-olds.  

They're teenagers, so why do we expect that they'd be studious individuals that devote 4 hours per night to studying for our tests (I've stopped giving tests to eliminate this ridiculous expectation). Did any if us actually spend hours upon hours of studying?  In high school? In college even?  Also, does anyone actually sit and show students how to study/prepare for one of our tests?  Then why do we expect them to be studying experts? 

 

When a student gets a 40 percent on a test, the first conclusion is that they didn't study hard enough.  The second conclusion is that they haven't been working hard enough.  These are easy conclusions to make, and maybe that's why we jump to them so quickly. Blaming the student for acting like a teenager is much easier than being responsible for making that student better.

It's hard to say that a student hasn't learned the material completely and they may need to spend some more time learning it.  So many would think that when we say this, it implies that we have "failed" as teachers.  You know, 'cause it's easy to provide instruction that leads to 100 percent mastery for all of the unique learners in our room .  We have to expect that not everyone is going to learn things the same way in the same amount of time.  This teaching game would be way too easy if there was a fail-safe method to get all students to the exact same level of mastery of a skill, in the exact same amount of time.  When we think we've failed or are failing, that's when we tend to blame others.

Bottom line: blaming is easy, much easier than accepting a portion of the responsibility for something. When we blame kids for the problems in our classroom, we're taking the easy way out. When we blame teachers for the problems in our classroom, we're taking the easy way out. When we blame parents for the problems in our classroom, we take the easy way out. When we blame politicians for the problems in our classroom, we're taking the easy way out.  When we blame administrators for the problems in our classroom, we're taking the easy way out.  When we blame lack of funding for the problems in our classroom, we're taking the easy way out.  When we blame unions for the problems in our classroom, we're taking the easy way out.  Throwing each other under the bus only results in having all the people we need help from being under a bus, and leaves us standing alone on the sidelines.

The calls for accountability really need to stop, so we can start acknowledging that we all share the responsibility for students learning. Real reform will occur once we start thinking about how students learn, and agreeing to collectively share responsibility for educating our students.  Pseudo-reform is going on when we start playing the blame game.  

My Test with No Right Answers

At the slightly more than halfway point in the year, I decided to give my students an assessment on skills we would have learned previously this year.  In an AP Stat class, this type of exercise is meant to take the place of the 2 weeks of "review" that most educators wind up with at the end of the year before the AP Exam.

Here's the test: AP Statistics Mid-Year Assessment .  Using this link (and excusing the poor formatting that comes with inserting images into Google docs) they are to create a Google Doc and share it with me that is essentially their stream of consciousness  statistical reasoning.  They were permitted to use the class wiki, their Stat textbook (BVD - Stats: Modeling the World), and any other online resources available to them.  Big thanks to David Wees (@davidwees) for the data, graph, and the article!

They were not permitted to use each other as a resource, as this was an assessment to see what they know as individuals.  This makes me uncomfortable, since it doesn't necessary follow the cooperative model I've we've built the classroom on.  Next time I give an assessment, I'll allow them to use each other as a resource as well, but the task needs to be uber-authentic.  Suggestions?
I'll share a conversation I had with a student about this, since it made my day.

"Mr. C, can we use each other as a resource?" - Student
"I'd prefer not, since I want to see what you know." - Me
"But in 'real life' we'd be allowed to use each other." - Student
"Arrggghhh, why must you make that argument?" - Me
"Because you taught me to." - Student

First thing a Stat teacher, or anyone familiar with Statistics will notice is that for most of the questions there's not really one "right" answer.  The purpose behind this is to allow kids to think and write what they know, in regard to the skills being assessed.  I'm loving the thought that has gone into each response.  It feels like I've really touched on something here, something that does a little bit better than the strategy of "write everything you know about the topic" for the poor test taker/assessment do-er.

So what resource did kids use the most?  At quick glance, my class wiki comes in first, with the Stat textbook coming in second.  I'm hoping this spurs more content creation on the class wiki, so that it can develop into the ultimate online stat textbook.  Yes, I am still living that dream.

"AP Kids" are not the only ones who need quality learning experiences

After hitting the Google Reader hard while at Subway the other day (probably should've been eating lunch and relaxing instead of working) I was inspired by @InnovativeEdu's post on asking kids to design their own learning. Having just switched to the project-based learning format for my classroom, I love to share what my students are doing at these professional development sessions we conduct.

The question that always comes up is "Yeah, but what level do you teach?"  When my response is AP Statistics, it's immediately dismissed since "they are AP kids."  So what if I said, "I had this great lesson where I stood and lectured for 46 minutes with zero audience participation!"  I can almost guarantee to have the same response, "Well, your lecture worked so well because they're AP kids, no way that would work with my 4.0's!"

As an educator in a professional development workshop, why not spend that time to think of ways to reach the kids that are not "AP kids".  It seems like that would be a better use of time than to confirm your suspicions that there just isn't anything that works to educate those that are not taking Advanced Placement courses.

The students in 4.0 classes are the ones that have been most vocal about being not interested in what you have to say.  They are students that are completely unwilling/unmotivated to work unless it interests them.  Know what is especially uninteresting...x's, y's, and slopes of lines.  But these lower level courses cover basic equation solving and "find the slope" the exact same way, over and over again from the time the student is in 9th grade until 12th grade.

Great lessons, quality education, and interesting projects shouldn't be reserved for the best and brightest students.  The 4.0 students don't need more lectures and more basic junk that they don't care about.  They need to be interested, first and foremost.  They don't need more discipline or a rigid classroom structure.  They've told you 100 times that they hate that environment, so stop imposing it on them.

When I see my "AP kids" work on a project that they're excited about (sampling teachers in the school to see if they have tattoos, experiment on whether or not people can walk and text, see how often radio stations repeat certain songs) they aren't excited about it because they're "AP kids".  They aren't excited about it because I threatened them with detention if they showed a lack of enthusiasm.  They're excited about it because they had the choice in what they wanted to do.  They're students, there is no way they are so drastically different than their peers that just so happened to not do well in one math class so they were forced to slide down the ladder and be stuck in "4.0 world".

Oh, and they learn way more from me doing their own projects than they ever could from answering some multiple choice and some free response questions for me.

Reading through state standards(PA), going "mental"

I am spending my snow day planning for a presentation on technology integrated K-6 math instruction.  The focus of my session is on generating student inquiry and keeping technology completely transparent.  I am keeping this presentation aligned to state standards and vision, and doing so makes me very uncomfortable.  These standards/essential questions/competencies seem to all center around being able to generate a correct answer for a test.  This elementary math curriculum framework can be found at the Pennsylvania Standards Aligned System Website.  Here's a few phrases I don't particularly care for:

Taken from the 2nd Grade Mathematics list of Big Ideas and Essential Questions:
1.  "How do we know when it is appropriate to estimate or when it is appropriate to use mental math for an exact answer?"
The person that included the phrase "mental math" is clueless in the area of mathematics.  Estimation and approximation are (in my view) much more "mental" than development of an "exact" answer, yet they are projected here as completely non-cerebral tasks.

2.  "Develop extended understanding of multiple models, and properties of addition and subtraction, leading to fluency with efficient, accurate and generalizable methods to add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers and develop quick recall of addition and related subtraction facts. Select and apply appropriate methods to estimate sums and differences or to calculate them mentally."
Again, here they reference calculation as being done "mentally" and estimation as something that's done as an alternative to thinking.  I also don't like the use of the words "efficient" and "quick recall" as they imply that the student that adds two numbers in 10 seconds is somehow better than a student that adds two numbers in 10 minutes.

As we move towards common core standards and the like, is this the language that is to be used?  If so, mathematics instruction will never be more than an instruction of process.  A focus on efficiency over a focus on an understanding of mathematics keeps us at this procedural level.  Maintaining that estimation is done non-mentally, now we're completely missing the boat.  Right answers are not the most important part of learning mathematics.  Isn't it time we start asking our students to experiment and create in their math classes, instead of simply generate the same right answer that 25 other classmates generated?

Reassessment Fridays (SBG): A Love Story

“Every student did their own thing in class today.”
How often is that the summary of a mathematics class?  How about an art class? 


Today was the standard reassessment day for my AP Stat classes.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to let students reassess when I started Standards Based Grading.  I’ve come up with using every Friday as a reassessment day.



I let students pick 2 skills to reassess on.  They pick them Wednesday, I create reassessments Thursday, they take them on Friday.  The reassessors are given a mail merged document that is their assignment for that day’s reassessment.  Should they choose not to formally reassess in class, they always have the option to do a project on their own to show their mastery of any of the skills they have learned.  This has been a system that works for the students that want to reassess, but it works even better for those not reassessing.


Today about a third of each class was reassessing.  So what do the other students in class do?  They play.  They learn.  They collaborate:

1. One student began conducting simulations to simulate random clicks in Minesweeper.  Two others quickly became interested and a Minesweeper collaborative was born.
2. About 10 different students were editing 10 different pages of the class wiki to make it an online textbook.  
3. They were gathering data for different projects they hope to complete later in the year
1. a project where they wish to determine the proportion of teachers at school that have tattoos
2. simulating hands for various different card games
3. the true proportion of dives by a diver that are “ripped”

I look forward to my “Reassessment Fridays” because of the classroom vibe.  I’ll provide a few ideas for what can be worked on, then they get started doing things that they want to do.  Today’s ideas: Conduct a simulation, finish an old project, start a new project, edit the class wiki, create models of data collected this week.  I’m immediately working on making this the classroom activity for every day, not just Friday.  


My favorite part about it is that I am providing them time to be as smart as they want to be in class.  I’m not tricking them into learning with some gimmick.  I’m not having them finish a worksheet for points.  I’m not asking 26 of them to answer the same question.

Ideas from November 10 Interaction with Elementary School Teachers

Had an excellent meeting on Wednesday 11/10 with more elementary school teachers.  I love working with these people on technology integration.  I think it’s because they are so tech-starved and under-equipped that they NEED technology.  What happens in my class when there’s a great need?  The students turn into sponges.  They start every conversation with, “I need some ideas” and not, “Can you show me how to put a link on my Schoolwires page?”(last Schoolwires bash I promise*).  We have moved our elementary teachers forward in technology integration more in the past 2 months than high school teachers have budged in 3 years.  I’m extremely proud of us and those elementary school teachers for the work we’ve put in.

So the ideas that have fallen out of Wednesday’s meetings...
1.  Comic Life - kids create comic books and use photographs of themselves to build their own digital story.  Without futzing around in movie maker, iMovie, or some other Web 2.0 tool that is blocked.  I rarely see a need to purchase software (save Fathom) but can see potential here. 

2.  Google Earth - I want to find pre-created maps for every possible subject area that uses Google Earth.  Then we’ll compile them all into one location, let students/teachers use them once, then never let them use them again.  You want them?  Make them!  What better way to learn ancient history than to create a map about what you think is important.  Not just a concept map...a real one!

3.  Grade Level Sharing - A common place (wiki) for every grade level to share ideas, links, resources, etc.  I'm thinking that when something good comes up (blogging a Heritage project, podcasts/movies of students reading, games created in SMART notebook) we can add it to the appropriate grade level.  Now, if we could just get people to actually go to the Tech Tools Wiki...wait, not yet, I need to have the Diigo feeds show links more recent than August.

4.  Networked Learning - There's no reason to isolate students, be it individually or by classrooms.  Every kid in Grade 6 should share learning experiences with every other kid.  To a further extent, it should be shared to all other grades above and below.  More to come on this subject as I explore and completely ramp up this idea in the future...like an online AP Stat textbook being created from my Class Wiki.  If every Stat student had a hand in organizing, adding, and filtering information found on an endless homepage we could make a sweet textbook.

Smartboards are something that comes up frequently in my elementary school interactions.  Every teacher wants one,  no teacher needs one.  Your students need it, so let them use it.

*This week

First Day of School Lesson Plan

So here's my contribution to the slew of first day of school posts in the edu-blogging world.

I want to start my year by creating a climate of collaboration, friendliness, INFORMALITY(in school? you're crazy!).  From day one, I want my students to begin to take ownership of the class.  There is more than one person to learn from in the room, in fact, there's 30...and millions of others easily reached online, but that's for another day.

Something I will definitely do differently this year is not go over the grading policy immediately.  My main reason for this is that I want to set a tone of a collaborative environment, not that of a teacher saying, "This is the way it's going to be, there's the door if you don't like it."  Why would we want to start a year believing a class is difficult, instead of developing that conclusion on our own?

So, yes, you will have homework an assignment given the first day of class.  It's not going to be Read pgs 1-100 and do ALL odd exercises once you've completed your outline.  Your homework assignment will be to read my grading policy (Standards-Based all the way!) and be prepared to discuss it with your group members and with me.  If you're not going to read it or formulate ideas, how (more importantly, why) should we allow you to contribute to the class discussion?

So, what will we do the first day?  Probably get to know each other.  Once we're all comfortable with a learning community instead of a classroom, then we'll start with the content.  AP exam in May you say?  If you're not worried than I'm not.

Money Trees - An Attempt at Reform

My goal is to "reform" the trees in the back of my house to become money trees. They are currently not growing money, but I would like them to start doing so in the near future. I have outlined two proposals and would appreciate some commentary as to the appropriateness of each proposal.

Proposal 1
I will begin by mandating that the trees produce money. Branches that are not growing money must be removed, since they are not meeting what is mandated. Each day I will step outside, and any branch without as much as a $1 bill on it would be pruned and discarded. The trees should eventually "reform" and provide the money that I have been requiring of them.  If they have not "reformed", they will be cut down so that another tree can have the opportunity to form into a money tree.

Proposal 2
I will research the task of growing money on trees. I will see if in fact trees can be changed to grow $1 bills, and follow all necessary steps to make sure I am "reforming" my trees into money trees. If it calls for planting coins/dollars at the base of each tree, then I will do that. If it calls for water every day and moderate sunlight, that is what they will receive. If in fact the trees do not produce money after this, an evaluation will need to occur. Do I continue my "reform" efforts? Do I seek an alternative method of "reform"? Shall I work on a new and innovative approach towards creating money trees? Do I cut down the trees at the end that are not money trees, or should I allow them to continue existence and let them serve a different purpose?

Which one of these proposals is the appropriate way at achieving the impossible task of creating money trees?  Are there alternatives to these approaches?