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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