CMC South 2013

Here's my recap on CMC South 2013... or how I developed a man-crush on Robert Kaplinsky.

Thursday night:
I drove out to Palm Springs and met up with Karim and Fawn. We found a nearby casino, math-chatted, and then landed at the roulette table where $20 lasted me for a good chunk of time. I broke even and called it a night.

Friday:
Fawn and I spent the first session reviewing our presentation in the lobby on my laptop. Poor Fawn, I think she was regretting her decision to present with me.

We reached a point where we couldn't think of anything more to review so we walked over to Robert's session at the Hilton. Lucky us, we were able to sit with John Berray, Avery Pickford, Breedeen Murray, Karim, and John Stevens.

You can read a better recap of Robert's session at Dan's blog. Robert did a fantastic job. He really did. Therefore, I guess I should explain my man-crush now, right? I think Robert has such an edge right now that the #MTBoS, math community, and those in education can all benefit from. Follow him on Twitter, use his lessons, read his blog, and get him to your school for some trainings or to observe... because he's totally willing. He has an edge because he's still in the classroom working with both students and teachers in his district. He's eager to ask questions that will make him better while at the same time will share the mistakes he's made and how's benefited from them. He delivered a stellar session that was informative, humble, resourceful, fun, engaging, honest, and necessary. Seriously, we need more Robert Kaplinskies out there working with both teachers and students. Follow him on Twitter, use his lessons, and read his blog. Lastly, if you get a chance to meet Robert and spend five minutes talking with him, you'll quickly see that he's interested in what you do and is more than willing to be in your classroom so he can observe and learn. He eagerly wants to improve his craft in education, learn from others, and find ways to be more effective at what he loves doing. Very inspiring!

Fawn and I presented after lunch. The title of our session was:

It was such a pleasure to collaborate and present with Fawn. She came up with this great math task and I look forward to presenting with her again at CMC North. She's probably dreading the thought of presenting with me again! Not to spoil anything for our CMC North session, we had attendees use snap cubes to build something that involved income and a building cost. The task required strategy, problem-solving, collaboration, and a lot of calculations. Groups were required to present their calculations, information, and reasoning on their giant whiteboards. How vague was that description? Don't worry, we'll post more after CMC North. In the meantime, here are some pictures from our session:

The man! Robert Kaplinsky!

Avery Pickford: our winner!

Some attendee quotes a la Quotes of the Week style

Thanks to all those who helped enter calculations, pass out things, clean up or kept us on track during our session.

We were able to make the last half of Jo Boaler's presentation after we cleaned up our session and headed back to the convention center. I look forward to taking her class in April 2014 and my take-aways from her session were:

• Get rid of timed tests because "Math should never be associated with speed."
• Give students more diagnostic feedback and tell them "I'm giving you this feedback because I believe in you."

Keep an eye on her site www.youcubed.org

Saturday:
I rolled in casually late to Michael Serra's Polygon Potpourri session. No need to describe the fun found here as Dan already recapped it.

CMC South wouldn't be right without attending a Brad Fulton session. He's interactive, funny, and engaging. Next time you get a chance to see him present or give a workshop, be there! His focus was on Math Talks. Fawn shared a little insight on his session here. However, she took it a giant step further and generously created a space for us at mathtalks.fawnnguyen.com to share student thinking and giving students a voice.

After lunch, Fawn and I went to Avery's session. Dan did a recap and Avery did two posts: part 1 and part 2. Check it out! Unfortunately, I had to leave early to go get my materials and set up my presentation. My take-away was working with the Locker Problem and Avery sending me this resource. I've never tried the locker problem, so it was a bunch of fun to play with. He also shared this gem which he demonstrated with snap cubes using the document camera (very cool!):

I presented last at CMC and wanted to thank those of you who were able to make it, even if I was your fourth choice after seeing Dan Meyer's sold-out arena. The title of my presentation was:

Overall, I think my session went well. I wish I could give this talk again, after a little more refinement. I could've used ten more minutes to better connect with the 8 Mathematical Practices. However, there was a lot to share, interact with, and discuss. I learned a great deal from my attendees; especially on rating the level of difficulty with estimation challenges. My attendees got a sneak peek at Days 176-180 of Estimation 180 and I hope you had as much fun as me. I look forward to sharing more with you about this session in a later post.

My CMC regrets: I wish I could've attended the sessions by Karim, Breedeen, and the dynamic duo of Matt Vaudrey and John Stevens. I've linked their names to their sessions. I look forward to CMC North. Maybe I'll see you there.

South,
927

Back to School Ignite Talk

Man, I love a good Ignite talk.
5 minutes.  15 seconds per slide.  20 slides.
Concise.  Succinct.  Compelling.

Why not do my own version of an Ignite talk at Back to School Night next year? I get 10 minutes with parents and would love to change it up a little this coming year. Trust me, after surviving last year, I think the parents deserve a better, improved, and more reassuring version of Mr. Stadel. I'll explain that last sentence in some upcoming blog posts that I'll use to debrief about the 2012-2013 school year. If you're not sure what an Ignite talk is, let me introduce you to my man, Steve Leinwand.

If you like that, check out more Ignite talks by Annie Fetter, Dan Meyer, Max Ray, and Phil Daro. These are my go-to talks when I need a math pick-me-up. Do the math, that will be a little over 20 minutes well spent, being inspired by some key people in our math community. Seriously, check out those four talks.

I'm brainstorming in this space, so feel free to share some input please. At Back to School Night, I'll start by giving a brief 30-60 second introduction of what an Ignite talk is and how they work. I'll give an Ignite talk for 5 minutes, covering any of the following things:

• Standards Based Grading (SBG)
• Noticing and Wondering
• Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
• 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice (8 MPs)
• Problem Solving
• Homework (or No Homework)
• Find my Mistake
• High School Placement Tests
• Desmos
• A healthy balance of mathematical application with procedural and conceptual understanding
• Problems of the Week (PoWs)
• Quotes of the Week (QOTW)
• 3 Act lessons
• Reassessments
• Estimation (Number Sense)
• Tangram Tuesdays
• Whiteboarding

This leaves approximately 4 minutes for parents to ask questions or something else... Have any suggestions for those last 240 seconds?

Who's with me? Does anyone else want to do a Back to School Ignite talk? There's already been some interest generated on Twitter and I started a Back to School Ignite list. Shout at me if you're in. Or is this a really foolish idea? Seth Leavitt, my new online colleague and EnCoMPASS Fellow asked if I'll post it online. I don't see why not. Maybe we can create a space for Back to School Ignite talks.

*UPDATE: Each item listed above does not correspond to its own slide. I simply listed ideas that could possibly work their way into the presentation. Some support each other. For example, when talking about the importance of problem solving, I would mention resources such as 3 Act lessons and The Math Forum's PoWs. Feel free to add to or subtract from the list.

Ignite,
930

QOTW 2nd Semester - 2013

In January, my Quotes of the Week post highlighted student comments captured during our first semester of the 2012-2013 school year. I'm here to post a few captured from the second semester. It's hard to compare them to the first half of the year, so let's not. Instead, let's just enjoy the comments, observations, or questions that students gift us with, enriching the mathematical climate of the classroom.

I experimented with Kelly O'Shea's Mistake Game in Algebra about midyear. Emma is presenting to the class about identifying linear functions, given three points. Justin (from the audience) claims that Emma’s graph is NOT linear, but says there's a slope to her three points. Without skipping a beat, Emma unleashed this response at Justin. Way to go Emma! Talking smack with math vocabulary.

Students were exploring x- and y-intercepts using Desmos.com. After graphing a few lines and writing down the ordered pairs of each intercept, the wheels started to turn inside of Lisa's head. She saw the structure and pattern of the intercepts containing zero. The follow-up:

Me: So Lisa, why are you seeing all these zeros?

Lisa: Because we're learning about intercepts today. 

Me: What are the intercepts of the lines? 

Lisa: It's where the lines hit the x or y axis. 

Me: So what's up with all the zeros? 

Lisa: If it hits the x-axis, the y value is zero. And if it hits the y-axis, the x value is zero. 

Me: Bingo! 

Mark needed to graph a straight line as part of his task. That week, we had just spent an entire class period doing a Jigsaw activity so that the students could explore the 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice. Mark is proud to be using Mathematical Practice 5, Use Appropriate Tools Strategically.

Groups were given a warm-up one day where they had to collaborate and stack the highest and strongest tower using 100 snap cubes. I determined the winners by kicking the desks they stood on to see who survived Earthquake Stadel the best. While cleaning up, Logan is noticing that he could do a better job next time. This is exactly what we can do in the math classroom: learn from our mistakes, come up with a revised problem-solving plan, model, collaborate, and persevere.

The class was doing a cocktail of mixture problems one day. They were collaborating with their groups and one group had your typical coin question. Something along the lines of:

I have $9.75 from X amount of nickels and dimes. How many of each coin do I have?

Upon solving the question on their whiteboard, Sara quickly realizes that you can’t have 1.95 of a coin. She was the first to notice it and say something to her classmates about this contradiction. The group first tried looking for their mistake and then tried solving the question again. Good job girls!

Midyear, I showed all my classes the 1st Semester QOTW slides. For the first month following these slides, Charles was trying to turn every little thing he said into a quote just so he could be up on the board. As I've mentioned before, these can't be planned or contrived. These quotes just come out naturally in the regular happenings of classroom interactions.  Students were doing some individual work one day, and Charles actually let a good one slip out. He was still working individually on the task and didn’t want his efforts spoiled by someone blurting out the correct answer. How many times have we been there, either on the receiving end or the one ruining it for others?  

This is Jenna's response to the following video:

I asked the class for their interpretation of the video or any of the drawings? Was there a drawing they could relate with? Without blinking, Jenna says, "It's like graphing stories." I totally agree. It had been awhile since we explored graphing stories, so Jenna just confirmed what a great impact that concept had on her. Very cool! 

Arielle is a former QOTW winner. Students were exploring exponent rules by finding mistakes. Michael Pershan and I have done some extensive blogging about this. Anyway, we had reached the final day or two of learning through mistakes and Arielle raised her hand and shared this gem with everyone. It's a beautiful observation in my opinion about the importance of math mistakes, learning by making conjectures, and students coming up with the rules on their own instead of me spoon-feeding them. 

Two quotes in one class period! That's a first. We were playing Race Car Math and one of the review questions asked students to factor a polynomial. Eli, a boy a few words, caught his group-mate incorrectly factoring the polynomial. I love the “Dude!” part of his quote.

Also during Race Car Math that day, Kailey was so excited to be on the board after correctly graphing a parabola, following the flowchart we put up in class. Our class flowchart is shown.

Last, but not least, Chris closed out the year with, "I think my number lied to me." In geometry, we were reviewing volume of a sphere with questions similar to Nathan Kraft’s volume of a soccer ball task. Chris set up, and used the incorrect proportion when solving. When arriving at an unreasonable answer, he realized his numbers lied to him. Way to check for reasonableness!

It's truly been a pleasure having the QOTW section carved out on my whiteboard for student quotes. As far as I'm concerned, this will be a staple in my classroom for the remainder of my career. I look forward to next year's quotes!

QOTW,
717

Quotes of the Week [QOTW]

Have your students said something that completely moved you?
Was it insightful?
Was it relative?
Was it an epiphany?
Was it a proclamation?
Ok, let's not get carried away.

I hope you know what I'm talking about. Those comments become even more powerful when students see you acknowledge them and they didn't even think you were paying attention. I'm talking about those insightful things students say while they're collaborating with their peers, discussing solutions, or completing tasks. They blurt out something that catches you off guard (in a good way). The first semester has come to a close and I'm reflecting on student quotes. Quotes of the week: QOTW.

My students have said some great stuff and I was lucky enough to start telling myself to capture it on our front whiteboard. Why are there so many opportunities to hear what they say? Because we do a lot of group work and collaboration so they're bound to say something sensational. It's not about me. It's about them. They don't think I'm listening, but I am.

There's a section now carved out on my whiteboard for student quotes. It happened out of happenstance. This wasn't planned. I didn't find this idea somewhere on the wild internet (although it'd be cool if someone started a site for student quotes). A couple of students said something toward the beginning of the year and I wrote it on the board to share with all my classes throughout the day. They went nuts. Students were quoting the quote. I snapped a picture of it to make room for the next big quote and away we went. I'd like to share some of my favorites with you as I shared them with my students today.

"There has to be an easier way!" This is the one that started it all! In response to solving a weekly PS (Lucky 7’s) given to me by Fawn Nguyen, a group of students was filling their pages with numbers as they worked through exponential rules. Shawn continued the pattern for a long time on his paper, badly wanting to figure out the nth term in the pattern, lifted his head and let out this gem. The rest is history.

"Do it really neat so no one writes any bad stuff." After getting our new whiteboards and whiteboarding for a few days, students walked the room dishing out some harsh criticism to each other and their work. After addressing this criticism with them, students realized the importance of keeping their work clean, organized, and neat. Before beginning their task, Will verbalized his desire to be neat as to motivate his group. Good idea!

"We're actually learning." Yes, girls we’re actually learning. That’s because you’re actually thinking on your own while exploring math and not being told some procedure to regurgitate back to me. This was the result of my geometry class exploring parallel and perpendicular lines in a coordinate plane. These two girls were struggling for a day or two without any intervention from me and on the third day they had their shining moment. 

"That's upsetting me!" A quote is only as good as the context that goes with it. If you look at this quote, it could be your typical math student after doing the typical math question, resulting in typical frustration. However, Elle was working with her group on my Transversals, Tape, and Stickies task where they were given limited clues and had to identify twelve angles created by three intersecting lines. The bell rang and as she was heading back to her desk, let this one rip. She wanted resolution and was upset she didn't complete her task before leaving for the day. She came in the following day and conquered it with her group! Tenacious!

"Is that the opposite of PEMDAS?" In solving equations using inverse operations, James asks if the procedure is basically the opposite of PEMDAS (order of operations). Why, yes James it is. This was an "a-ha" moment for him. I couldn’t let this one escape.

"I plugged mine in. It worked! It's ALIVE!" You know those stories where someone says, "You had to be there." This is one of those stories. Elijah was checking his answer to an algebraic equation. Sure he could've just got a number for his answer and stopped, but he didn't. This is Elijah plugging in and verifying that his answer is the only solution. His excitement that the solution worked is hard to capture with an EXPO marker, but he took on the persona of a mad scientist, a la Frankenstein. I didn't write it on the board, but his "It's ALIVE!" was followed by "MWOOHAHAHA!" I love it!

"That doesn't make any sense." Another quote that could be any math student at any time. We've all been there. We've all heard this before, but what's the story here? Sierra said this after doing her calculations for our Stacking Cups task. She received some weird number of cups to stack as tall as Mr. Stadel. She immediately points out to her group that it doesn't make any sense. I love how students might be getting numbers, but they're checking those numbers for reasonableness before applying them. Back to the drawing board she went.

"We're demanding more information." The classic case of eating your own words. This past week we were exploring both Fawn Nguyen's and Dan Meyer's infamous Graphing Stories. All my classes began asking for more information as we progressed through Dan's videos. I continually praised them for demanding more information. We were working on the MARS lesson "Interpreting Distance-Time Graphs" I stole from Fawn and the students wanted more information as they wrote a story for Tom. I repeatedly refused any help by saying, "no" or "be creative" or "use the information on the page." Sean quickly replied, "But, Mr. Stadel we're demanding more information." You got me Sean! He practically jumped out of his seat when he saw me writing his quote on the board. FUN, right?

Expect a blooper's reel when doing this. you'll have the clowns that want to force something or think they're saying something sensational. That's my George. "I like colors." I don't think so George. You can stop now.

I can't make this up. I'm not paying my students to say this stuff. It's not contrived. It's natural. It's authentic. This board reminds my students that I'm listening. The more I can capture these and write these up, I believe the safer it is for my students to take risks, share their thoughts, and explore math. It's all them, but remember every quote has a story. So keep listening!

QOTW,
909