Moving

While I do want to continue to think on this page, I am moving to a new blog, at least for the summer.  Because I am taking the Summer Technology Institute in Belfast, I needed a blog for that so for the summer anyway will be on Catwoodsummer.  Looking forward to it!

Final Reflection

While this may be the last post for this class, I hope I will continue to use this as a place for me to reflect on what I am doing and why.  When I look back over my posts, what I see is myself reflecting on what I have read, learned, experienced or thought about.  These are important for teachers, or regular people!, to reflect on so that we can improve and better utilize what we experience.  So I think what I see when I look back over my posts is the benefit of reflections.  They really help me and they will really help my students when I have them write them for their portfolios.  Thinking about our thinking helps us retain what we have learned.  During the discussion with my group today via Skype it hit me that there is a difference, in math at least, between being able to do something and understanding it.  Reflections can help me understand what I know and can do.  I want my students to understand what they have the ability to do.  If they understand it, they may better know when to apply it. 

Changing Again

Life is easy right now. I know what I am doing and how to do it in my classroom. So that means it is time for a change! We are moving to a new building and starting a new textbook series. I really liked the old one as it was constructed math and the students had to work to figure out how to solve problems. In the new one, there are many examples and way more than I will ever be able to get across to the students. So I am going to have to heavily filter what I have the students learn.

I also want to change how students are assessed. I really want to move towards digital portfolios and I want, at this point, to have them link work to standards and reflections to show how well they understand the standards. I think this will work and it will be interesting to see how the students adapt and feel about this kind of assessment. I may change my picture of what a portfolio looks like after I finish my enquiry project, but we'll see.

This isn't so much changing the curriculum itself, I don't have a clear one anyway, as it is changing how I asses, but that in itself, will change my curriculum as I teach students how to document.

Two Minds

I am still of two minds as to what we need to do with curriculum and what we should do with curriculum. It isn't our choice alone which is good because it doesn't influence us alone. But we can influence strongly, or subtly, what happens in our schools and in our classes.

Change definitely needs to occur. For the most part, even though society has changed tremendously since the 1900's, schools have not. We are, for the most part, still in the factory model of turning out students who have the knowledge to meet the standards. While some thinking is required to meet the standards, not enough thinking is required to meet the challenges our students will face when they go to look for employment. 

What do students really need to be successful in today's world? They need to be able to be flexible for one thing! Technology and how it is used are changing so rapidly that students need to be able to think, and adapt just as rapidly. And yet, we can't just focus on the technology. Many of our students spend too much time caught up in the web and not enough in the real world. We need to help them come up with a happy medium.

So, how we teach needs to change as much as what we teach. I really enjoyed reading the first and last chapters of HHJ Curriculum 21 together. I enjoyed the fact that it agreed with what I have come to believe. (Probably that was the point of the class!) We need the rigor redefined of which Tony Wagner spoke. We need the curriculum of process as process is what leads our students to thinking. And I really do want to find a poster of The 16 Habits of Mind.

 

I do believe they are all important, but some I liked better than others. I love metacognition! I still remember when I first heard the word and learned what it was. It was a child psych class at Chico State and the whole concept fascinated me. I was learning to really think and connect at the time and that word and its importance has always stuck with me. We need for our students to know what they know. In mathematics, particularly, I need to teach my students to strive for accuracy and precision. Just doing it isn't really enough. Applying past knowledge to novel situations is so vital. We learned it for a reason other than the test! Use what you learn. Taking responsible risks! To me that is daring to apply the knowledge to new situations and not being afraid to be wrong. Learn from mistakes. 

Think interdependently. I remember a Building Bridges between Schools and Businesses course I took and the businesses wanted team players then, 15 years ago, and I am sure they still do. Learn from your peers. That's what we have be doing in part in this class. And most important, in many ways, find humor. Have fun doing what you do. If I don't enjoy teaching, my students won't enjoy learning. 

Finally, our students need time to reflect. That rather ties in with everything I think. If we don't encourage, or require, reflection, how will they ever meta-cognate. (Is that a real word?) We can help them to this best I think, not so much by teaching, but by leading them to the knowledge and ways of thinking. Sounds like fun to me!

To Track or Not to Track

Tracking seems like it would be beneficial to students as they would be able to learn at their own pace. Research really doesn't find that to be true. The gains found in tracked or ability grouped students are not significant enough to be worth while as well at either end of the ability spectrum. The only real gain was seen in the high ability students who were accelerated by a grade level or so.

One of the problems that was reported was that often more qualified teachers were assigned the students with the higher abilities while the students who were more mathematically challenged were given to less qualified students. That was not beneficial to the students who struggled with math. As a result of the teacher assignments, the higher level students received instruction with more rigor while the struggling students got more skill work and less of the higher level thinking skills. “Among variables assessing teacher “quality,” the percentage of teachers with full certification and a major in the field is a more powerful predictor of student achievement than teachers’ education levels (e.g., master’s degrees).” (Hammond, L D. 1999)

Another problem was that the identification of students does not always match their real skill levels. Teachers might assume that because this student did well in class their test scores would be such that they would be placed in a higher level course. This was not always found to be true. So that means that higher ability students might not get the upper level courses while a student with comparatively lower abilities might get the placement.

The only real benefit that could happen was the improvement of the confidence of students with difficulties when the higher ability students were removed from their classes. Because they did not compare themselves to students who were not in their class, they were more confident in their abilities. On the flip side, those in the higher ability classes sometimes became less confident as they were challenged for the first time. This benefit was not see to be enough to ability group students.

What I found really interesting is this research did not agree with what I had always thought. I thought being taught at a pace that was comfortable for learning would benefit all students. What I had not taken into account was teacher assignment and the subsequent lack of rigor in lower ability classes.The final conclusion I came to after this research is that it is important to offer rigor to students of all levels as well as qualified, motivated teachers who believe in the students ability to learn. As a student, learning in a class that offered more than basic skills would also be far more motivating.

Hammond, L D. Teacher Quality and Student Achievement: A Review of State Policy Evidence

http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n1/

Kulik, J A. (1993, Spring). An analysis of the research on ability grouping. The National Research     Center on the Gifted and Talented Newsletter, p. 8-9.

Slavin, R E. (1990). Ability grouping in the middle grades: achievement effects and alternatives. Review of Educational Research, 60, 471-479.

Stiff, L V., Johnson, J L., & Akos, P. (2011). Disrupting tradition: research and practice pathways in mathematics education. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Enquiry Project

I am beginning to get excited about doing my inquiry project and I am very happy about the excitement.  Don't you find it is easier to do a project when you are interested and get excited?  I can remember doing such a project in the past and I picked, as I did here, something I thought I SHOULD find our about.  I never did get really excited and don't even remember exactly what my project was about.  Same situation basically but what is the difference?  This time I am looking into not only something I should know about but something I plan on using that will, I hope, revolutionize my assessment methods.  Do I think it will work well the first year?  Not really, because I will need to get better as doing what I need to do as well as have my students get good at what they need to do.  But I am excited about it and will pass that excitement on to my students.  I don't really want to say any more specifically about what my project is on, but it feels great to be excited about learning more.

On another note, in reference to a past post where I had my students take ownership of their learning, what a difference it has made in my test results.  I just gave a test on Thursday, same type as always, many complicated steps, and got no grade lower than a 2.  A 2 is partially meets that standards and while that may not seem great, compared to previous test where I had to give around 6 1-1.5s I am very happy with these results.  This is something that is working for me that I will continue to use.

Learning

I love the way, and this is sarcasm, I learn how to do something after I have done it.  I really enjoyed making the podcast for this week and learned so much as I was doing it.  Of course I went to school today and learned how to do everything I couldn't figure out how to do on my own.  It is probably like that for our students as well.  I remember a debriefing that one of my fellow teachers held at the end of the school year.  I was teaching science at the time and had had my students write two research papers, one right after the other.  The other teacher was not happy that I had had the students write two papers and was very surprised when one of the students said they had really liked writing the second paper because they could enjoy it now that they had learned how.  I think that is something we should remember when we teach something.  We need to let our students do something more than once.  I don't know how many times I have tried something once, only to not have it work as I anticipated.  At that point, I have two choices.  I can give up, or I can try again.  Trying again has never failed me!  The more I do anything, the better I get.  If you think about it, the old adage, "If at first you don't succeed, try try again", is an old adage for a reason!

Connections and Sustainability

Sustainability is a hot topic in society right now. And it should be. As our population grows, in the US and all over the world, we need to make sure what we do does not adversely affect sustainability. We need to connect what we do to what will happen because of what we do. Actions have consequences. I tend to connect that right now to the nuclear power emergency in Japan. Because of all the people I know in that country and my trips there over the years, I have followed the recent news very carefully. The nuclear power plants are scary. It really doesn't matter how soon they contain the problem, (yes it does really) the damage is done. Radiation is loose in the atmosphere of Japan and the world. It may not have a huge effect but maybe it will. We don't know enough about nuclear disasters other than that they are not good. We need to think of the whole and not just our part. Is the power generated worth the risks?

While reading the chapter on “Educating for a Sustainable Future”, I saw a connection to the book I am reading for another assignment, The Last Child in the Woods. At the Willow School they believe, “humans are an integral part of the natural world and that the health and sustainability of our natural systems has a profound effect on the quality of our lives.” We need to feel connected to the Earth and the world. If we don't feel like that we do today will matter in the future we won't act as responsibly. Somehow we need for our students to see that the timeline of their lives today will affect their future as well as the future of the world. Even as individuals, they matter. Is the power we use daily worth what it takes to generate it?

I am not sure exactly how to connect students but I do know that experience makes a difference. I had 14 Japaneses college students come in and shadow my 7^th graders on March 8^th. It was a very enjoyable day all round and many of them are facebook friends now. It changed on March 13^th. Japan changed on March 13^th. After that Tuesday, when my students heard the news about the devastating earthquake, it wasn't just news. They cared far more than they would have in the past. They wanted information. They wanted to know that the students they had met and their families were OK. My husband, who coordinates the Japanese program, came in to talk to them about the earthquake and its effects.

We were lucky because all the families of the student's survived. One mother was missing for almost a week but was found, alive, in an evacuee shelter. That student's home is gone, washed away by the tsunami, but her family is intact. Our school will be doing a fundraiser for the victims of that disaster. We haven't decided exactly what to do or where to send the funds that we raise, but the students have decided to do something. They are now part of the world and I hope they remain there.

Driving forces

 Once again, I have read something that changes how I do what I do. Drive was the reading in this case. I have always disliked extrinsic motivations without really knowing why. Now I have a justification for that dislike. It doesn't really work the way we expect it should. I remember offering rewards to those students who got 100s on tests and being surprised that even the offer of a homework pass was not enough to motivate the students to do well on the test. Sometimes telling them it is very difficult seems to work even better as a motivation.

The impact of autonomy on workers was what really set me off and inspired me to try letting my students become self directed learners. I wrote about that in an earlier blog. It works but I need more practice as do they. One thing that I see that is really affected by letting them run the class themselves is the engagement of the students. They are all paying attention, all the time. We have to have our students want to learn before they can learn. Autonomy and motivation are vital to that. On page 122 Carol Dweck is quoted as saying, in part, “After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they are smart.” Rethinking about this I can connect it to the curriculum audit my school just had done. Much of the talk about assessments was about formative assessments that would drive the teaching. We do need to have our students show what they have learned, not just that they CAN learn.  Formative assessments can guide what we teach next, or reteach now.

I also like the chart that showed that mastery was not an attainable goal. I like that from both the teaching and learning sides. When I think I know all I need to know to be a good teacher, I am finished being a good teacher. I remember an evaluation I had after my first year of teaching in a public school. My principal told me he was happy with my teaching. I told him that I was glad he was happy, but that I wasn't. I could see a lot of things I wanted to improve upon. We both agreed it was better he was happy and I wasn't rather than the other way around!

Drive is a book I will keep in my bookcase ( when I haven't loaned it to a friend to read) and refer to when I need to shake my teaching up a bit again. There are surprising truths in it and as a teacher, motivation for our students and for us is vital.

Hurt or Help?

 

Does an outside program help or hurt schools and students? (Everyday Math, Reading programs, etc...)

I think whether or not this works depends entirely on the teacher. I have a standard program I use as a guideline but I also work in other “bits” and focus on what I think my students really need. I know another teacher who uses the same program and doesn't use the book much at all. She generally does packets that give the students similar understandings. When I watched the PBS video for this week, Digital Media – New Learners of the 21^st Century, it spoke of the difference in our styles when, near the end, it said that there might, in the end be two kinds of schools; one for the rich and one for the poor.

I reviewed the video for this quote but am paraphrasing a bit as well. “The poor one will be a standardized, accountable system that will give you the basics that you need for a service job. In the privileged one they will learn the same facts but will use them to solve authentic problems and innovate and produce new knowledge.” Any kind of math program can be used the same way. It is all in HOW you choose to teach.

While we are discussing going back to a more traditional program from the Mathscapes we use now, it won't affect how I teach. Now that I have learned how to use the constructed type of math education, I can use that no matter what I have as a text book. I have added a bit to the unit on construction that we are doing now. We are working with scale models and our town is building a new school. I was fortunate enough to get real blue prints of the new building and we are going to use that to figure out the sizes of the rooms and compare them to what we have now. The kids are fascinated by the plans and the interest is very high. While they may not all learn the same things from this piece of the unit, they are exposed to real materials and that is much more valuable in the long run than lots of scale problems for homework, although we will do some of that as well.

I liked what Henry Jenkins said in the PBS video, “Society may be too smart for some of the jobs .” I rather hope so!

Changing

I have decided that I need to change.  This is rather interesting as my style of teaching is rather different anyway.  I love to say that I don't teach my students, and I don't.  I really try to lead them to learning, to involve them in attaching new knowledge to their old knowledge.  Last week, when I attempted to have them teach themselves, successfully in the end, I rethought what I do again. 

We are starting a new unit called From the Ground Up that involves area, perimeter and I'm including volume.  So I started by having them search the internet to find out what these words mean and how they relate.  It went very well even with my reluctant to lead themselves class.  They are finally getting the hang of it and that's when it hit me that the biggest change that needs to occur in the curriculum is what is taught. 

We need to teach our students to learn for themselves.  We don't need to teach that area is length times height; we need them to know how to find what they don't know, and how to know what they need to know.  Lots of knows here, but they don't need to know what year the War of 1812 was fought; they need to think about why it was fought.  They already turn to the internet for information on what interests them; they need to learn to look there when they don't know answers as well.  One game a substitute came up with one year was to challenge students to find the answers to Trivial Pursuit card the fastest on their laptops.  What a great way to learn to search. 

Independence

When ever I take a really effective class, it makes me think about how to be a better teacher and make my kids better learners.  So on the way to work the other day, I had a idea I thought I'd try.  It was an idea I had tried ineffectively a few years ago.  but what the heck, if at first you don't succeed, try try again.  So I did, and it worked well for 66% of my students. That was on Thursday.  The reactions from my students were interesting.  The first two classes, the 66%, kept asking, hopefully, if we could do it again.  The last class, the 34% that didn't do well, asked, "Do we have to do that again?"  I said yes to both groups and we continued on Friday.  The first two groups continued to do well and I loved seeing them work so well together.  We had a minor glitch in one class with a student feeling like she had been talked down to by a classmate but it got resolved.  The last class finally got it and were much happier.  It had taken them 45 minutes to correct their homework the day before and only 30 minutes on Friday.  One aspect I really liked was the decision about homework.  I generally don't give any on Fridays for two reasons.  One, the won't do it and two, weekends should be for relaxation, not work. But we have a test coming up, a writing prompt, and vacation.  So in order to get their review corrected, it needed to be done on Monday. They understood the time constraints and opted to have it due on Monday and work on it over the weekend.  I was so  proud of them! 

I am really enjoying seeing all the classes work together and take ownership of their learning.  I think it fits in well with what Daniel Pink is writing about in the DRIVE book.  I am not offering a carrot or a stick, and they are working harder.  When I observe the class, they are all more focused in paying attention to each other and helping.  In the class that was having the harder time, I had a student who had missed a few days and wasn't sure of what to do.  I asked him part way through the class how he was doing.  I had helped him some earlier and was checking back.  The student sitting beside him told me he was fine as she was helping him.  They will learn so much more with 2o teachers in the room as opposed to just one.  This is an idea I am really liking.

Building excitement

I am getting excited.  I move into a new building next year and it is exciting.  There will be a lot of changes and I love change.  I got really excited as I read Curriculum 21's Chapter 4.  It's all about redesigning the reinventing the school.  We are going to have to opportunity to do things differently and I think it is important not to try and make everything the same.  Instead of having the science classroom 1/4 mile away, it will be across the hall.  My whole team will be more centralized and hopefully that will make for more collaboration.  While I have seen the building under construction, I am anxious to see how all the spaces will look and work when finished.

I've really enjoyed this week on Middle Level Education as that is what I do.  Even though I already do some of what we read about, I love the revitalization I feel every time I read about what is happening in middle schools.  We lost our Team Time this year with budget cuts and we are feeling it.  It is harder to find the time to figure out how to best help our students.  On a brighter note, since I have to "do" two different study halls, it has given me the opportunity to help students learn about the laptops at the beginning of the year and explore Lego Robotics now.  It is so cool to see what the kids can do.  I have one student who has programed a robot to break dance.  He went from design to programming to design to programming.  I talked to our guidance councilor, who schedules, today as I would love to have Lego classes instead of study halls next year.  I had never worked with Legos before and had to learn the programming form one of the students.  It was so much fun!  And so I am letting my excitement for next year continue to build!

Learning never stops

As we get deeper into this course, EDC 533, I realize how much I don't know and never thought of.  There is so much to education and the curriculum.  I love how it all, should, interweave and connect together.  I can so see the usefulness and necessity of curriculum mapping, both for each year and the whole education.  Knowing where you have been and where you want to go can make such a difference.  But I think it can be really hard to get everyone on the same map. I wonder if some countries that have national curricula do better than we do because they are all on the same map. 

We all have some things that we are better at than others and having said that, it doesn't mean we can't get better at what we aren't good at.  After studying the Japanese educational system, having very qualified teachers seems really important.  Qualification costs and is our government ready to put its money where its mouth is?  Given all the cuts to education recently, I don't think so.  I do realize that money doesn't fix everything but education can fix a lot.  Here in the states we have the saying that "those who can, do: those who can't teach.  What a put down to teaching!  And not true either so why is it said? I sometimes think that our country doesn't value education as much as they should and while I don't really know why this is so, I wonder if it is because it is free.  It isn't really free but it seems like it as no one pays the school to go to public school.  It is a right and not a privilege. 
These are just some thought I am having as think about what I am learning. 

What works

 I think there are many good things going on in schools today and I know I would have had a much easier time learning in today's classroom. I was a fast learner, so often tuned the teacher out when they did too much repetition.

Clear procedures make it much easier to work with learners as they then know exactly what they should do. Good behavior makes it much easier for everyone to learn and for the teacher to teach. Harry Wong wrote a book about “ The First Days of School” and that was one of the things he advocated for doing. It may sound harsh but doesn't have to be. I work with someone who is astonished that my learners are as happy as they are with my style of teaching. I have very clear expectations and my students meet them. I am perceived as fair and that seems to really matter to the kids.

I also don't really teach. I facilitate learning by trying to only ask questions and lead my learners to what I want them to figure out. Since, in math, we always build on prior knowledge it is possible. I don't say easy because the “learners” want to be told but I want them to figure it out. When they ask me a question, I very rarely actually answer it but they do get the help they want. I ask them a variety of questions to get them to use the knowledge they already have. Sometimes just asking what they think the answer is and confirming their choice is all they need. I want them to know they have what they need they just need to trust themselves. I think that's a part of the “constructed math” type program and I really like it. I want to know why it works and I think it makes it easier for students to discover how to do things rather than just be told.

I also like to have them work together and share their brains. I think it is good for them and much easier for me than trying to address every problem in the classroom. It also gives them the social time that is so necessary for children of all ages. Children learn better and retain more, I think, when they get to talk about it. And when one of them figures it out, it makes the knowledge seem more attainable than if I just tell them.

Having watched this week's Tedtalk I also think that the enthusiasm for trying different ways of teaching adds to the students learning. We ALL have to be having fun in the classroom. If I am having a good time doing what I do then the learners will catch that enthusiasm and play along with me. Because that is what I try to do in my classroom. I want to play, have fun, and learn.

Global Citizens

To thine own self be true. Shakespeare said it in Hamlet Act 1, scene 3 according to the internet. But it hold true for each country and their curriculum I think. We can learn a lot by looking at what different countries do and then decide what we should do. But we have to do what works for us and for our teaching. I have worked in several districts and in many of them, teachers are tired of trying new ways every time something changes. We have gone through local assessments that were laboriously written, piloted, revised, standardized, and abandoned. We had the MEAs and now we have the NECAPs. It is good that we haven't given up but are we taking the time to find out if what we are doing is working? Change takes time and it seems to me we have had too many changes too fast. I think we need to slow down and see what works.

I think we need a clearer picture of what we want. Do we want good test scores? Do we want creative learners? Do we want to help produce people who will be happy successful adults in society? I think we want it all! But sometimes I wonder if we are seeing the trees for the forest.

The reading and listening has given me a lot to think about this week. I was listening to the Seminar that Linda Darling-Hammond presented and thinking it sounded very familiar then I realized it was linked to the article of her's that we read. No wonder the examples were the same! I like the idea of Assessments for learning. I like the idea of assessing as we learn, not always a paper and pencil way

We need to do what we do well and keep doing it. Zhao said that American schools are respected in other countries and I know this to be true. The University of Maine has a large number of international students. In any class, including this one, I have taken there are usually students from other countries. I have been fortunate to make friends with many of them. Our engineering school has student from other countries arriving and graduating all the time. Many come here for their doctorates. Part of that may be because it is less expensive but still they come. More and more of our high schools are selling themselves internationally. Orono and Millinocket are courting students from China. Lee Academy has a number of students from various countries. So we should continue to do what we do well and fix what we don't do well.

One of the things we don't do well is educate globally literate students. Education majors are not required, as far as I know, to take a foreign language. There is a joke that is ironic that asks what trilingual means. The reply is to speak 3 languages. Bilingual is 2. Monolingual is Americans. Having been involved with the AFS exchange program in the past I have known many students from other countries who spoke more that one or two languages. My daughter Sveta, from Belarus, now has so many I lose count. She came here with Russian, Belorussian, English, and smattering of French. She went to University in Lithuania so learned that language, then married a German, and speaks that language as well. One middle school I worked in did not even teach a language.

We do need for our students to understand other cultures. It could be done in Social Studies classes or integrated into other classes. A current event section would be good even just as a part of the school day. We do sometimes watch Channel One at school and that does a good job of talking about subjects that interest the students. You can always tell when it is really good because the room quiets as the kids listen.

As I read these articles I realized that I am more globally literate than I had realized. I was in Japan when I interviewed for the job I have now. I have hosted in my home students from too many countries to list. I think I am happiest that I have an ongoing program where students from a college in Japan shadow my students for a day. Both sets of students get a tremendous amount from that one day.

Curriculum thoughts

(a) describe a personal definition description of curriculum (at least so far) in ONE paragraph, and...
(b) a short post about chapter 2 from Curriculum 21 that was particularly intriguing.

I see the curriculum as a list of what students need to know.  It needs to connect from one year to another so the student's education is always moving forward.  It need to be interesting and not out dated.  It needs to consist of objectives as how they are taught needs to depend on the student's needs from year to year as each group is different.  And maybe it should be one long list of objectives so what is missed in one year does not continue to be missed.   I am thinking from a mathematics standpoint which makes a difference, I think, as mathematics is like a stair case that needs to be climbed.  But students who are unable to climb as quickly as others should at some point be able to take the calculator escalator. 

There was a lot in this chapter that was particularly interesting.  I like owning the book so I can go back and look at my margin notes to refresh my memory.  That is something students need to be able to do and I know it is possible to do it in school texts with post it notes.

My two high points were different and not really connected in my mind at this point.  Page 27 quotes Jay Mathews as saying,"It calls for student to learn to think and work creatively and collaboratively." That reminds me of when I took a course called "Building Bridges between Schools and Communities".  The part I really remember from the businesses we visited was they wanted and needed people who knew how to work in groups, to work collaboratively.  It also connected to the TED talk where he found that the students worked better with one computer per group so they were forced to collaborate and not work independently.  Our students are social beings and will be more motivated when they work together. I used that this week when I challenged groups of students in my math class to find all the combinations of a certain kind of problem.  I offered a prize to the group that got the most and only gave them 5 minutes.  I was shocked, and pleased,  when 2 groups got all 16 combinations.
The second bit that was really intriguing was near the end where they mentioned replacing dated assessment types with newer forms of expression.  I don't love tests.  I am really good at taking the multiple choice kind but that's because you can get rid of some answers and up the chances of guessing the correct answer.  We have lots of students who don't do well on typical tests and yet, in the classroom, they can participate and answer questions.  While I know that not all teachers might be comfortable with only formative assessments, some done informally during class, I am still not in favor of assessing our students as often as we do.  I know when my class is understanding and when they don't.  It is written all over their faces.  Other forms of expression might take less time and show more of what they know and can do.

Shoes

I think a lot. When I need to solve a problem, I don't necessarily focus on the problem but it is always cooking in the back of my brain. Curriculum and how to teach integers so my students really understand them have been perking back there all week. I watched the TED talk and have talked to co-workers. One of my fellow teachers was commenting that the students had no idea of how to connect what they read to their experiences. Those were the spices in my stew this week. 

It is a snow day today (we are adding days in June at this point) and I just got back from cross country skiing. I was skiing along a flat straight section and thinking about connecting and integers and thought of shoes. When subtracting integers, zero pairs ( a positive and a negative) are vital to the understanding but my students are still confused as to when they need them. They have experience with shoes and that they must be in pairs to be useful. I need to try it on them but I am wondering if we talk about adding left shoes and right shoes and how many left over shoes we have that might help them with the addition. With the subtraction, I could ask for left shoes or right shoes so they would have to add in some pairs of shoes to give me what I am asking for. We could even use their shoes to do the problems. 

Integers are part of my curriculum and I want my students to understand how they work so that when they take algebra they don't make so many mistakes. It hasn't really worked for me yet. I have yet to send students to 8^th grade who can still add and subtract integers when they get there. I need to teach this concept but how and when I teach them are up to me as the teacher. After watching the TED Talk, maybe what I should do is ask the students how to add and subtract using their shoes. I think I will and let you know how it came out next week. Wish me luck!

Curriculum

We have spend so much time at my school working on developing a curriculum but I don't feel like we have made enough progress. Having said that however, I have to admit that I think my students now know more when I get them and are better thinkers. I think there is more to learning than just a curriculum and WHAT you teach. I think it also matters HOW you teach but that isn't as far a I know, part of the curriculum. 

I also think there really needs to be more thought and/or action on the implementation of the curriculum. It matters that the students are exposed to material that they don't have to master at an early as well as any age. I deal with math so that is what I always think about. If younger students heard the word variable and the teacher referenced that word with out any pressure, I think it would be easier for older students to accept it. I feel the same way about basic fractions. Many of my students don't have any number sense when it come to fractions but I wonder if they had heard the words and seen how they fit together at younger ages it might be easier for them. 

We had a discussion in my math class about number sense and common sense. We agreed that it is necessary but cannot be taught. It must be experienced. I think that is what is so great about the newer math series. They give the students experiences. Is that in the curriculum or is it in the teacher or materials used? 

I guess my final thoughts are some questions. Is a curriculum an easily definable thing? Does it look the same in every school? Is the the curriculum or the implementation that matters the most?

Beginnings

Beginning a new course is always exciting for me.  I never know where I will go.  It is a bit like a journey to a new destination.  Maybe it's a foreign country or an unexplored state.  Maybe it's just a new place in this state I haven't been to.  Either way, beginnings are exciting.