Ten Weeks of Summer: #gradesmarter (Weeks 6 and 7)

Week 6: Last year I tried to lead a book group at my school around the book Grading Smarter Not Harder by Myron Dueck. Since all the teachers I know at my school are very busy, I decided to make it a virtual book group.  I had everything set up in Google classroom.  I had made prompts that would go live every 2 weeks and I was looking forward to having a lively discussion with my colleagues.  Did they have a no zero policy? Did they have a re-testing policy?  How did they view homework and grading of homework?  There were two colleagues that posted once or twice and after that nothing happened despite the fact that about 20 teachers had joined the Google classroom for the book.

Then at some point early this summer I noticed a few Twitter book chats by math teachers.  I tweeted that I really had wanted to discuss this book with my colleagues, but my colleagues had not been interested. And so, the twitter chat #gradesmarter was born.  Each week for the past 4 weeks, we have been discussing a chapter in this book.  Week 1 was Chapter 1: Grading (July 11th) , week 2 was Chapter 2: Homework (July 18th) and week 3 was Chapter 3: Unit Plans (slow chat over July 22 and July 23rd). This week is Chapter 4: Re-Testing (July 31) and next week (August 7th) is Chapter 5: Creativity.  I would encourage you to look up the hashtag #gradesmarter if you weren't able to join the chat to see what was discussed.

What are my takeaways so far?  First, I will not be giving a homework completion grade next year. Homework is practice.  I'll make note of who is practicing and who is not, but I won't be awarding a grade for that.  Grades should reflect the level of understanding of a student.  Giving one student an A because they got it and a C to another because they didn't get it is fine on a test or quiz, but not for homework.  Second, I hope to make my students more reflective about their own understading as they work through homework and after they get back assessments.  I have tried test corrections in the past, but it ends up being more grading for me and I am not totally convinced that the student is always doing their own corrections.  (It sometimes seems like the work of a friend/parent/tutor.) This year I will be starting a new job at Kent Place School and having the students be reflective learners is part of the culture of the school and math department.  So, I will be looking to them for advice and guidance.

Are other people getting something out of this book chat?  Here is what Kristen Fouss @fouss shared in the chat via a screenshot. One of the things I love about what she shared is that she has brief statements that are easy to implement.  For example, retests "must be completed within two weeks of tests being returned".  This is important to think about prior to the start of school and implementing a re-testing procedure or policy.  However, it is also a work in progress.  Notice the question mark at the end of 4.d.

I am so glad that I was encouraged my my math twitter friends (a.k.a. #MTBoS) to lead the book chat for Grading Smarter Not Harder on Twitter.  It has forced me to think and share and think some more. Plus @myrondueck (the author of the book) joined us during the chat!  Hopefully, what I have taken from the book and the chat will make me a "Smarter Grader" and have a positive impact on my students learning.

PostScript: Are you a new math teacher to twitter?  Here are links to some helpful resources.  They may be a little outdated, but can help you get started with your own Twitter Professional Learning Community.  Twitter Chats for Math Teachers and Math Teachers on Twitter

Ten Weeks of Summer: Prepping for the Fall (Week 5)

This week is a break between leading workshops for AP Statistics.  My workshop group at Cabrini University last week was amazing.  In addition to learning many ideas about teaching AP Statistics, the group collaborated and shared ideas related to teaching, grading, homework and classroom management.  They even formed a Google Classroom group for everyone to continue sharing after the workshop was over!

My next workshop will be in San Diego and there will be 30 people in attendance!  I typically have workshops that range from 12 - 15 participants and 30 will be challenging.  But if I always stayed in my comfort zone and never took on new challenges, I would never grow professionally.  Here is to taking on a new challenge, seeing some sights in San Diego and learning from the experience!!

In addition to prepping for my workshop for next week, I have been working on reviewing AP Calculus (AB) topics.  This will be a new course for me in the fall.  I know many of the topics in AP Calculus, because I have taught a non-AP calculus course over the past few years.  However, there are some topics that are not as familiar.  To help me prep for the course, I read the "Course and Exam Description" as found on the College Board's website.  I worked through the 20 multiple choice questions and got 3 wrong.  Two of them I was able to figure out what I did wrong, but the last one I had no idea how to approach the question.  Specifically, it is to be done with a graphing calculator.  Here is the question:

If anyone wants to steer me in the right direction with this, feel free to post in the comments.  However, I will likely be posting on the AP teacher community and will be posting to the AP Calculus Teacher facebook group, too.  Back to doing some more prep work for fall.  We are at the halfway point of summer this week!

Ten Weeks of Summer: To Teach It or Not To Teach It (Week 4)

"To teach it or not to teach it. That is the quesiton. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind..." Whoops, slipped into Shakespeare's Hamlet for a second.

I am part of an email group of math teachers and last week there was a question going around about should we teach and/or why don't we teach concepts about alternate exterior angles formed by two parallel lines and a transversal.  Some argued via email that it was important to teach that concept for future engineers.  Others explained that they did teach the concept and that they taught it through discovery.  I said that it is probably not seen in many textbooks, because interior angles have more importance, especially when considering quadrilaterals.  So, to teach it or not to teach it.  Here are two stories I shared with my email group.

Story #1: I got my master's degree at Iowa State and for one of my projects, I used a theorem about secants and tangents to circles.  It is a theorem based on similar triangles.  The professor (with a doctorate degree) questioned me on the use of the theorem.  Either he had never heard of it or he couldn't recall it.  However, he had enough understanding of geometry that when I explained why it was true, he understood.  

Story #2: Over the past 10 years as department chair, I have to speak to groups of prospective parents/students and describe what is offered in the mathematics department at my school.  Do I speak about specific theorems or concepts?  No - they assume that I am teaching the math content that is typical of a high school mathematics curriculum, and let's be honest, a list of topics would be yawn-inducing.  Instead, I say that in math class students make and test conjectures, combine concepts in new ways, form logical arguments and critique the reasoning of others (verbally and in writing), notice and describe patterns, and make connections between different ways to represent a concept.  What I have just described is something that ALL students need no matter what major or career they go into.

Of course there are big ideas that matter in the teaching of mathematics and we can't gloss over those - function, inverse, transformations, proportionality, and rate of change are just a few.  However, if we leave off some concepts, will our students be somehow lacking?  Think back to Story #1. Was the Ph.D. mathematician lacking?  Some might say yes and that he should have learned and remembered that concept.  I would argue no, because he had a firm understanding of the big ideas and the ability to reason and apply his understanding.  His ability to do this, and not recalling a specific theorem, is what makes him, and I hope my students, mathematicians.