Principles to Actions Book Club [phases]

Inspired by Kaneka Turner's #ShadowCon16 talk, I decided to form a Principles to Actions book club during the summer of 2016. Sorry, the club will be comprised of teachers in my district. I'm excited at how it is shaping up in the past week. I broke it into three planning phases before we actually start reading NCTM's Principles to Actions. I recommend you start your own. Here's why:

Phase 1:
I created a goal for the book club (inspired straight from Principles to Actions):

Collaborate with other TUSD teachers to strengthen our math teaching practice and improve the learning of mathematics by engaging students in mathematical thinking, reasoning, and sense making.

I reached out to a small group of (K-12) math teachers and coaches in my district to generate interest.
10 teachers replied with interest. We're ready for Phase 2.

Phase 2:
I will tap into the wisdom of these 10 teachers to help structure:

• HOW we will accomplish our goal.
• WHAT tools we will use to accomplish our goal.

I'm confident these 10 teachers will help structure how we discuss the book, how much time we spend as a book club, how we will collaborate (virtually or in person), etc. I also know these teachers will help suggest what tools we might use to help assist in the virtual collaboration. For example, Google Docs, Google Classroom, Padlet, etc. 

I asked them for input via Google Forms. Here are the questions I asked.

Once I hear back from this small group, I will move forward in structuring the PtA book club along with setting up the digital tools and spaces that make the most sense. Phase 3 is next...

Phase 3:

I plan to do a district-wide invite to the Principles to Actions book club so anyone who teaches math is invited. More importantly, I am counting on the small group of 10 teachers to reach out to other colleagues at their site and throughout the district to personally invite teachers to the Principles to Actions book club. I'm confident their reach and influence will make the collaboration more meaningful and fun for all invloved.

I've never done something like this before, but I'm excited because I am confident in the 10 teachers who have already expressed interest. I encourage you to find something mathy you can invite others to be a part in. Maybe it's a Principles to Actions book club. 

Please let me know if you have any questions or tips!

PtA,

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iPad Summit 2015

Last week, I had the extreme pleasure to co-present with my friend and colleague, JR Ginex-Orinion, who tweets at @gochemonline <---Instant follow! Our presentation was at the San Diego iPad Summit put on by EdTechTeacher.

That's a lot of links in those last two sentences, right? Here's one more: our presentation slide deck. Feel free to look through it and contact one of us if you have any questions.

Our session, Quick and Powerful Assessment Tools for the iPad, had the following goals:

• share why it's important to use assessment tools
• present four assessment tools
• give attendees a hands-on experience with each tool
• mention shortcomings and suggested uses for each app
• provide time for Q & A

With about 120 attendees and an hour, we had our work cut out for us. However, I think JR will agree that we effectively met our goals and had fun with all the attendees. My intention is to share a few highlights from the session and not recap the whole thing.

Why?

My good buddy, Robert has encouraged me to address the "why" part of a presentation and I'm really appreciative for this encouragement. As we told the attendees, it's easy for us to show you what the assessment tools are and how to use them, but let's first focus on why we should use them.

We talked about why it's important to use assessment tools because they:

• are a window (not a glass house) into student thinking
• can tell a story about your students
• should be informative (to guide your instruction) and
• should be efficient

The tools we presented were:

• Kahoot
• Socrative
• Classkick
• Pear Deck

I won't deny it. I think we saved the best for last. Pear Deck was definitely a crowd favorite. Ironically, we had to throw it in last minute because our originally planned tool, Infuse Learning, will be stopping their service in April. Pear Deck is such a great tool for capturing student thinking. I highly recommend you check it out and give it a test run in your class. 

All in all, it was a fun conference. I picked up some inspiration from Doug Kiang's keynote and Sabba Quidwai's session. More importantly, I look forward to presenting with JR again in the future sometime!

Summit,

129

Fun With A Sticky

Earlier this year, I wrote about Fun With A Dot and A Line, a Math 6 lesson I loved because it had:

• A simple question/task.
• A competition.
• Student creativity.
• Students assessing the work of each other (accountability).
• Students defining the necessary vocabulary/rules.
• Students determining the necessary tools to help solve the task. 

As my 7^th graders approached surface area, I prepared a few activities in preparation for File Cabinet. Here is one of those activities. I give you Fun With A Sticky:

Launch:

Hand each student a 3” x 3” sticky as they enter. Post the following on the board:

Explore (creativity):

A few students might do something like this.

Give the class a hint or two (if they need it):

1. This can be done with four lines.
2. Think Tic-Tac-Toe

Here's what we're going for:

If a student is still clueless, encourage them to look around and see what their classmates are doing. As the teacher, keep your eyes peeled for students who are approaching this with some creativity. Sarah and Pricila used the straightedge of their binders to draw lines. Gerardo tried folding the sticky in thirds like this.  

Student accountability:

When done, have each student write their name on the back of the sticky. Have each group of 3-4 students decide who has the best 9 squares and bring that one sticky up to the teacher. In no particular order, place them under the document camera for all students to see. Without sharing, ask each student to quietly (mentally) pick the top 2 stickies they feel have the best 9 squares. 

Vocabulary/Rules:

Ask students for input. 

Me: "Without telling me which stickies you’ve picked, how are you determining which sticky has the best 9 squares?" 

Jesus: They drew straight lines.

Carla: They are perfect squares.

Have the class define a perfect square.

Carla: Each side is the same length

I now had students take their top 2 and pick their favorite one. Somehow get your students to vote; little sheets of scratch paper, SmartBoard Responders, iPads, etc. I labeled each sticky alphabetically to avoid “this” sticky and “that” sticky. I had each student stand up. I then said, "Sit down when I say the letter of your sticky with the best 9 squares."

Necessary Tools:

They narrowed it down to about 3 stickies and gave great rules for finding the best 9 squares.

Me: What tools can I use to make it even more precise?

Student: A ruler. 

Me: Ok. What do I measure and what am I looking for on these stickies?

Here’s where you get students to discuss (or discover) how each square should have a width of 1 inch and a length of 1 inch. In other words, you’re defining a square inch with your students. Okay, there will be some "squares" that are just garbage and can be eliminated by eyeballing them. However, here's where you get to be dramatic with your students. Get them worked up. Ask them which ones you should measure. Mess with them a little and joke with them how they're unable to determine the correct "squares". Have fun with it. Either way, make sure students see the squares being measured. If I had more time, I could have redistributed the stickies and passed out rulers for the students to measure each other's "squares". You can see from this picture that the winning sticky note had a total of 3 "perfect squares."

Congratulations to my winners! They received a brand-new whiteboard marker.

Here’s the icing on the cake (and lesson design telling me something wonderful just happened):

• Itzco wanted a chance to do it again. He'd been sleepy in class all week.
• Genesis wanted a ruler if we did a second round. Let's just say her attitude toward math all week was subpar and she has difficulty being a self-starter.
• Students wanted a chance to improve and try again. Especially students who initially drew ridiculous "squares".

There it is, Fun With A Sticky. Here's that list one more time:

• A simple question/task.
• A competition.
• Student creativity.
• Students assessing the work of each other (accountability).
• Students defining the necessary vocabulary/rules.
• Students determining the necessary tools to help solve the task. 

Sticky,

846

The Broadcaster and The Artist

We have a 30-minute intervention period four days a week at my school as part of our RtI program. Monday and Tuesday are slotted for math intervention. Thursday and Friday are slotted for Language Arts intervention. The students that report to me on Friday are supposed to participate in some type of activity that helps them improve with collaboration and/or communication. Here's a quick little activity we did last week you can try with your students. It's really cool to see how the students communicate with each other.

I made these two slides in Keynote.

I took my students to the outside lunch tables to sit across from their partner. One partner (artist) had a blank sheet of paper and their partner (broadcaster) had one of the sheets pictured above.

Job Descriptions:
Broadcaster: without showing the artist the sheet of paper, use descriptive language to help them draw the picture in front of you. You can't touch the artist's paper or point where anything should be drawn.

Artist: follow the directions of the broadcaster and ask any clarifying questions.

Add or subtract any rules you'd like. When groups are finished, have them compare their drawing with the original. After they see how accurate or inaccurate they were and have a good laugh, switch roles. If they had the yellow sheet during round 1, their group now gets the blue sheet during round 2.

The fun part is having each group pick their favorite drawing and we do a little competition back in class. I display their drawings using the document camera and we share some compliments and some good laughs. Hope you give it a shot.

Some Student work:

Broadcast,
1107

Presentations & Workshops

Last month I added the Lessons page to Estimation 180 so you can quickly access lessons I've made. I will continue to add lessons as I make them and host them in that space.

This month, I'm adding a Presentations & Workshops page to the site. Since last November, I've been fortunate to work with some amazing math teachers at conferences and workshops. I've learned a lot and have truly enjoyed doing math with teachers as we share instructional strategies and lessons. My goal is to help support math teachers in strengthening their instructional tool belt for the Common Core classroom. 

I'm excited about this new chapter. Drop me a line if you're interested.

PD,
945

Collaboration: Virtual vs. Face-to-Face

First, I don't like the "vs." in the title, but decided to leave it. Don't think of it as a competition or that one form of collaboration is superior to the other. After reading this post, you can interpret the "vs." however you like.  I'm going to do my best to keep this post short even though I thought I could fill it with many links.

One thing I know is this:

My face-to-face collaboration has improved as a result of my virtual collaboration.

Monday, I met up with Fawn (@fawnpnguyen) in Los Angeles to prepare our CMC session for when we present both in November (CMC-South) and December (CMC-North).

Tuesday, I met with the other math teachers at my school to plan out our year as we transition to Common Core State Standards. I wish I could share their twitter handles and/or blog addresses, but those don't exist. Hopefully, they one day will.

Tuesday evening, I presented at Global Math Department. I was grateful to test out a Back to School Night presentation a la Ignite style with Jessica (@algebrainiac) and Amy (@zimmerdiamonds).

Wednesday (today), I have a chance to reflect.

Meeting with Fawn is always a blast. It's both fun, productive, and interlaced with our typical banter and joke-slinging at each other. We usually collaborate via email. However, we both know there are so many virtual ways to communicate and collaborate on anything math-related. We both cherish the online math community as a professional learning network and have greatly benefited from it. But in person. Let me repeat that, IN PERSON! (face-to-face), I feel so much more can be accomplished because of the immediacy and tangible elements a virtual collaboration can lack.

Meeting up with my colleagues at school on Tuesday was great too. Our 7th grade teacher and I went off on a tangent during the afternoon as we talked about the Estimating Celebrity Age activity. We had a blast as we tried to decide a winner if you made this activity an in-class competition. We came up with about four different ways by hashing things out, giving counterexamples, and coming up with strong arguments. Two math teachers totally in the thick of Mathematical Practice 3: Construct Viable Arguments and Critique the Reasoning of Others. It left me thinking that teachers need to take these 8 Math Practices to heart, not just in the classroom, not just with students, but when collaborating with other teachers, virtually or face-to-face.

Global Math Department could not have been anymore beneficial. The online math community showered us presenters with constructive feedback and suggestions, even some jokes. This virtual collaboration was exciting too. We did our presentations and people were honest about the appearance, content, delivery, layout, format, timing, etc. With such a large group of people attending, the Global Math Department has a solid format and structure to allow the presenters to say their piece and receive viable feedback from a respectful community.

Again, this is not a competition. These two types of collaboration are so important and can truly benefit each other. I can safely say that collaborating with others virtually, through this online math community, has helped me improve my face-to-face (in person) collaboration. I'm excited for the school year to start so I can utilize both, once again. Summer has been great, but I miss that face-to-face interaction.

What lies ahead?

• This year, collaborate like crazy with my school colleagues. Go beyond anything I've done in the past. 
• Invite others at my school to practice our BtSN presentations to each other ahead of time. We could help each other by providing constructive feedback.
• Continue collaborating formally/informally with all of you in this digital-virtual medium known as The Internet, and our online math community.

Collaborate,
357