Mission: Kasson Mantorville Middle School inspires excellence through
meaningful relationships.
Belief: Because no significant learning happens without significant relationships.
Meaningful relationships. This is huge for teachers in a middle school.
Middle schoolers are a very unique bunch of young adults. There is
an extreme range between ability, maturity and confidence with the
students we see each day. I think our Advisory program is the best
way to develop significant relationships with our students. I absolutely
love starting my days with this group each morning. The past few weeks
our counselors have been offering stress relief activities for the students.
We had a presentation on using laughter, a chance to utilize coloring
and a morning of yoga. I’m proud of the participation from the Wildfire,
especially with the yoga. In fact, our Honor Code is B+(Be positive, not B plus),
Participate and Persevere.
    The Wildfire LOVE treats. Valentine's day we made
our strawberry shortcake (Twinkies) hearts.
Finally, the group likes crafts (okay, honestly, only part of the group really
likes crafts, but they are all good about doing their part). We regularly
make cards for the local senior residence. This time we made 3-d spring
cards that they used as part of the decorations for Easter weekend.
  How is this develop meaningful relationships? When the students are
working together on projects- whether coloring, crafting, or making and
eating treats- they are talking. They are sharing stories about their families,
their friends and the activities they are involved in. We have our Tuesday
Mindset lessons which sometimes is too structured and repetitive to get
quality conversations going. I actually had a sub leave a note one time
that said my advisory lacked leadership because they wouldn’t discuss
the day’s topic. What I actually interpreted was that a sub doesn’t have
enough of a relationship with the students to get them share their ideas.
Our different activities provide times to highlight individual student strengths,
and engage in conversations that seem secondary to the activity but are
really developing relationships. Relationships between myself and the students,
but more importantly, relationships between my 20 advisees, from across the
grade bands, who have been thrown together by a computer scheduling
program and somehow, become friends over the course of the year.
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Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Advisory
Showing the Moves
This year I tried out a lesson I have seen on the MTBoS multiple times.
Here is a post on it. I have notices that my students struggle in our
geometry unit because if all of the new vocabulary. Dance, Dance, Traversal
is a good way to reinforce some of the vocabulary (vertical, corresponding,
alternate, supplementary, etc.) because the students need to move their
feet to the correct position. I would like to try and make a couple more
songs available, just so I can have a slower beat for the students to start off
with. Also, I found that labeling the angles (1,2,3,4,...) helped the students.
The dry erase markers stayed on the floor for the few days I needed them
to and I wasn’t scolded by the janitors (unlike the permanent markers I used
a while back- totally different story!).
If you click on the video-turn the volume DOWN! It got pretty loud!
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Courage
In the July/August 2015 TENNIS magazine, there is an article written by
Allen Fox, PH.D. titled “The Meaning of Courage.” The introductory quote,
“Persevering when everything is falling apart takes guts- and is the mark
of a true champion” caught my attention. Perseverance, persevering, etc.
have become the new buzz words in education. Our Advisory program
dedicates a whole month to the character trait.
The author gives an example of a high level teen choking during a match.
He blamed the choking and subsequent loss of the match on the player’s
lack of courage. Fox states that “Choking is a normal phenomenon-
everybody does it, even Roger Federer and Serena Williams. The
difference is how players recover from it.” He goes on to say, “Courageous
players accept their failures without wincing, whining or feeling sorry for
themselves. They are prepared to make rational adjustments as needed
and move on with a positive attitude. They realize that choking is part of
the game, you must accept it quickly, without drama, and keep chugging along.”
How does this apply to my classroom? I often have parents coming to
me talking about their student having “test anxiety” and struggling with math.
I’ve changed to a standards based grading system and allowed students to
retake assessments on any concept they don’t score well on. I would think
this would alleviate the “test anxiety” stress caused by taking tests. What I
see is similar to what Fox said- only instead of the “choking” we can replace
it with “failing” and how students recover from it. I see lots of wincing, whining
and feeling sorry for themselves when they have made a mistake. I don’t
see a lot of the accepting it quickly and chugging along. About 20% of the
students make the rational adjustments (work more, and reassess) and move
on with a positive attitude. How do we teach courage?
I’m interested in how others deal with teaching perseverance in the math
classroom. What strategies have worked for you?
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Visual Patterns
Another website I absolutely love is @fawnpnguyen 's Visual Patterns . I use
this site when I am teaching my 6th graders translating between graphs,
tables, sentences and equations. I have to pick and choose the patterns for
the students, sometimes giving the challenging equations to the kids who
can handle them. Following Fawn's lesson, I have the students draw a random
number out of a bucket, they write a sentence, make a table, graph and then
try and come up with an equation. Even the students who hate to draw/color
like the challenge in finding the equations with this task.
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Fraction Posters
Fraction operations are a really big part of 6th grade. Lots of my students
come into 6th grade with with experience multiplying and dividing fractions,
but they don’t necessarily understand why the algorithms work (“Why can’t I
just flip the second one?). I’m not saying they are all understanding 100%
when this activity is completed, but most of them have a better understanding
and the pictures help them to visualize what is going on when they multiply
and divide fractions. One thing I noticed with this assignment- students really
struggle with the idea of division and creating a word problem when it involves
fractions.
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Places on a Numberline
Earlier this month I was teaching a lesson on ordering numbers on a number line. I
and Civil Rights with our math class. I started by using a rope held up by students in
the front of the room and numbers on tents made from index cards. We brainstormed
ways to find the largest and smallest numbers and placed them on our rope. I was
happy to see they remembered to use terms like maximum, minimum and range. We
calculated what the midpoint would be, and then midpoints of the lower and upper
halves. Students who had numbers closest to these put their numbers on the line.
The remainder of the students then came up to the line and placed their numbers
where they thought they should be. Following this we had a really good discussion
where students made suggestions on numbers that needed to be moved. Before they
were moved, they had to justify their reasoning and the group had to agree.
 I think that when I do this lesson again, I will have the same random numbers placed
on the line and then talk about how timelines use benchmark dates. After we can
come up with benchmark dates we’ll make up new cards and place them on the line.
Modeling this might help with the actual timelines the students make. Hopefully they
won’t start at 1789 and increase by 3 year increments.
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Okay Google...
Lot’s of times I have had the meme that says something to the effect
that if a question can be answered by google, we are asking a student
to regurgitate facts and not really use higher level thinking. Of course,
when I want the meme to add to this blog post, I can’t seem to find it-
not even with the help of Google.
Last weekend was the Eagles Cancer Telethon in Rochester. As my
family was driving into town we saw the spotlight flashing through
the sky from the event. An eccentric friend of the family happens to
be the owner of the spotlight, so we had a little inside information.
It is a leftover piece of equipment from WWII. We were wondering
how the spotlight was used in the war- did it swivel around, or did
someone follow specific aircraft in the night sky? Apparently, there
was an attachment that collected sound waves that would direct the
light help the military locate the aircraft and guide the light to it.
This led the discussion to us asking which branch of the military
actually used it- the Air Force wasn’t created until after WWII. My
son, in the back seat says. “Okay Google, when was the US Air Force
established? It says 1947, prior to that the Navy and Army shared the
duties.” As our drive into town continued, with the help of “Okay,
Google” we learned lots more history about the aircraft and the role
it played during WWI and WWII.
This was just one of many such rides for our family. We often come
across something in our path that gets us to ask a question. My son,
being part of the generation who has always had technology at his
fingertips, doesn’t want to wait for an answer, he wants to know NOW.
Okay, Google.
This same kind of discussion has happened in my classroom. We will
be talking about something, a student will ask me a question and my
response is sometime. “I’m not sure, we’ll have to investigate…” and
before I have the sentence complete, one of my students has his phone
out and is googling the question. What a wealth of knowledge our
students have at their fingertips- if we teach them how to ask questions
and we allow them to use it. It has been years since I have told a
student to “look it up in the dictionary.” I think it is much better for
them to be able to google the word and find the meaning at the time
they are coming across it- building connections and attaching meaning
hopefully will promote better understanding.
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Rules that Expire
Having grown up sandwiched between two brothers, I have always had
an interest in how birth order influences adult life and careers. Katrin
Schumann, in her book The Secret Power of Middle Children, says that
middle children are flexible, team-builders, independent, social, and
think outside of the box. Some of these skills I developed because I was
in the middle. If I wanted to be more grown up I played school with
my older brother. If I wanted to just be a kid and have fun, I played
with my younger brother. When the 3 of us were together, plotting
our next adventure, I was the go-between. I could interpret what each
of my brothers was meaning and translate it to the other.
Teaching in a greater Minnesota school district, I often think the same
ideas apply to the middle school level. Our students are too old to
require they have snow pants and snow boots, but too young to not give
them recess time outside. Our students have important classes, but
they aren’t always given the same resources as the primary school
reading classes or the high school you-need-this-to graduate level
classes. Sometimes in our K-12 subject area meetings, it’s the middle
level teachers who are the go-between for the elementary and high
school teacher.
This topic hit home for me when I was reading the NCTM Mathematics
Teaching in the Middle School article, “12 Math Rules That Expire in
the Middle Grades.” The authors (Karp, Bush and Dougherty) highlight
rules and vocabulary that are sometimes taught to younger children that
end up no longer working in the middle grades. The article can be
found here.
Let me be clear, I think our elementary teachers are working hard to
teach the grade level standards. It is the innate trait of a teacher to
try and make things easier for our students; we don’t like to see them
struggle. But in making things easier by providing “tricks” to help
students remember, we are cheating them out of sense making and
reasoning- the mathematical practices described in Principles to Actions.
Discussions in my classroom often have me asking students “Why?
”Why do we add a zero when we multiply by 10? Is that always true?”
“Why do we flip the divisor when we divide fractions?” Let’s not even
go into the discussions about “Fish” and “Butterfly.”
Of the 12 rules in the NCTM article, 6 expire in 6th grade, 4 in 7th,
1 in 8th and 1 in high school. Middle school teachers walk a fine line
with these rules. We can understand where the rule makes tasks
easier for the elementary students, but we also understand the
misconceptions or over-generalizations the tricks have with the math
in the upper grades. As the authors say, “Using terminology and
notation that are accurate and precise (SMP 6) develops student
understanding that withstands the growing complexity of the secondary
grades.” It’s our job, as the middle level educators to be the
go-between and start the dialog with our math departments K-12
to encourage the reasoning and understanding with the use of
precise language in our classrooms. Let’s get rid of these rules that expire!
Additional Links on this topic:
nixthetricks.com has a free downloadable book appropriate for all math teachers
Learnzillion has a nice summary of the rules and other language to avoid here.
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A little change makes a profound difference
Annie Fetter is a math wonder I follow on twitter (@MFAnnie) who
works with the Math Forum. She is big on the idea of getting
students to Notice and Wonder. Click here for a example. It is
pretty amazing what students come up with on their own. For a
long time I have been using Mr. Stadel's Estimation 180 to begin
my math classes. Lately I have been leaving the picture up with
out the question and we've added the notice an wonder discussion.
One example was from Day 70- The lit up 2012 Rockefeller
Christmas tree. I had the usually comments: how tall, how many
strings of lights, how many lights, etc. The one that got a lot of
discussion going was "How much energy does it take to have that
tree lit up?" This started a discussion about being able to "measure"
energy and how that can even be done (which totally connected to
their Science class). I'm going to try and incorporate a little more
of this notice and wonder in my classes, and see where it takes us.
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The Factor Game
posted Nov 9, 2015, 5:09 PM by Amy Wix
After 3 days at Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center, the 6th graders needed a very engaging activity to keep them going when we returned to school. We had been working finding GCF and prime factoring numbers so the NCTM Illuminations Factor Game was a perfect activity. At first the students played against the computer, then once they understood how the game was played they were able to play against each other. I liked how the students were engaged in the game and how the grid could be adjusted to allow for more numbers/factors.
Let's Go Fly Kite
How can you not sing the song when you read the post title? My advisory
students spent a few days working on some measurement skills and sharing
their artistry in designing sled kites. Once I received the order of the kite
string (note to self, fall is not the time to be looking for kite string!) and had a
somewhat decent day we went outside to fly the kites. One thing I learned:
only one of my 21 students have ever flown a kite before. Lots of them didn't
understand the concept of letting the wind lift the kite and keep the string taut.
At least everyone had fun trying to fly their kites- with some success. One
student even had his to the end of the roll of string. We will have have a kite
flying lesson when we have a little more time- maybe all day advisory in May.
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Buckets of Fun
Here is my version of Trashketball. I made 8 copies of practice problems for
our upcoming test. I cut them apart, putting one in each of the different
colored buckets. I had my random generator put students in groups of 2 or 3
and they had to draw out a question and answer it along with showing their work.
If it was correct they go to take a shot at the basket. I used a mini basketball
because the questions were cut on pretty small pieces of paper so I didn't
think the regular version of Trashketball would work. Students were
definitely engaged, rushing around the room to draw problems, solve together
and make their basketball shots.
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Change
This summer, after attending an NCTM Affiliates conference, I read a book called
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and
Dan Heath (2010). I submitted an article to MCTM's MathBits earlier this year.
One idea in this book came up during a PLC discussion last week. The discussion
was actually about using Google Classroom vs. requiring students to write
assignments in their planners. Some people see using tools like Classroom
enabling our students. This reminded me of one of the lines in the book-
"Sometimes people problems are really environment problems." In the past
years our team has had a "point system" where students lose a point if they forget their homework or supplies, or they misbehave in class. Some supplies I use a lot of the time in my class are red pens, glue and scissors. If students forgot their supplies, it would take at least 4-5 minutes to get down to the locker bay, find their supplies and return to the classroom. Very disruptive. I looked at this as an environment problem this year. I asked the students to come prepared for class, however, I also showed them where I keep extra supplies. Now when I ask them to take out their scissors and they have forgotten theirs, they walk to the corner of the room grab a pair (and leave a shoe so that I get them back!). It's no big deal. I don't have to "take a check" form the students who aren't prepared and more time is spent in class. The question I am wondering about- am I enabling them? Am I making it too easy for them not to be responsible for their own things? I've taken what I use to view as a people problem and created an environment that eliminates the problem. Will my students go to 7th grade less prepared? Less responsible? I'm not sure. But if I have these students in my room working on the math 5 minutes more a day, I think they will be better prepared for 7th grade math. |
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