Teach 180: Stand & Talk, Some Success (Day 150)

Today I tried the "Stand and Talk" strategy that Sara Van Der Werf shared at the NCTM annual conference.  I told my students that we were going to try something that I learned at the conference and that I was hoping that they would amuse me by trying it.  (Shoutout to my students for letting me try new teaching ideas with them.)  We did the "Stand and Talk" strategy in 3 of my 4 classes.  In my two AP Stat classes, it was "da bomb" in terms of student engagement.  We had just gotten done reviewing some multiple choice questions. The timing for this strategy was perfect, as I noticed that a few kids were starting to nod off.  I had the students do a "Stand and Talk" related to the AP Free response 2015 question.  This was a perfect question to discuss - no calculations involved and a pair of boxplots for the students to compare.  Not only did I get more out of every student in 2 minutes related to this question, I noticed that students were more willing to volunteer what they had discussed with their partner.  Students that would have not shared their ideas before were more willing to share!

That "Stand and Talk" in two of my classes.  What about the third class?  In PreCalculus, we had reviewed the graphs of all six trig functions before I went to NCTM.  I started that class with a handout of all 6 trig functions.  The handout showed the graphs, their domains, ranges, etc.  For the PreCalculus "Stand and Talk",  I told student to pick two of the six functions and describe how they were alike and how they were different.  This went o.k., but there was definitely not as much energy

https://www.desicomments.com/success/success-try-and-fail-but-never-fail-to-try/

as in my AP Stat classes.  Why?  Two reasons.  First, I did not have the questions written down somewhere for the students to reference.  (Wait?  What are we supposed to do again?) Second, we did this at the beginning of class after a three days of not having classes.  I was having the students go from 0 to 60 without any sort of warm up.  Had I done our "Stand and Talk" in the middle of class, it would have probably been more successful.

The two key takeaways for me? First, it's ok to try something new.  Second, if it doesn't work, don't abandon it, but try to figure out what went awry.  Tweak it.  Try again.  Stay tuned to tomorrow's blog to see how my tweaks turn out. 

Teach 180: NCTM Conference Day 2 (Day 149)

This year at NCTM I saw an incredible amount of good teaching.  Here is what I mean by that.  Even in a large lecture hall with a hundred or more participants, participants had time to share with neighbors and interact with the presenter during the talk.  The presenters still had a "lesson plan" for their talk, but they were very responsive to their audience and used the interactions with their audience to further sculpt or mold the direction of their talk.  Audience participation and less presenter talking - something to think about as a teacher.

One of the best sessions I attended was led by Sara VanDerWerf.  If you have a chance to see her, she is a very engaging presenter.  One of Sarah’s goal is that “Every student talks out loud about math EVERY day.”  Another one of her goals is that "Students will see it before I show them.  Students will say it before I tell them."  If students don’t do this, students don’t own the understanding.  It belongs more to the teacher than the students.  Stand and Talks is the easiest way to get everyone talking about math every day.  We did a practice Stand and Talk and it was quick and engaging.  This is something plan on trying on Monday in PreCalculus. 

In Sara's talk she also said "It is ok to not tell students the question, to give them time to notice the structure."  For example, give a parabola with two x-intercepts and a y-intercept and then ask the students what questions could be asked from the visual.  We also need to start telling me our students “convince me” rather than “can you explain that” or “tell me more”.  Sara's talk was one of those talks that I wish I could watch over and over again.  I know I could pick up more tidbits of insightful and useful information each time.  

In case you are wondering more about how to do a "Stand and Talk", here is the link to the Stand and Talk blog post by Sara.

Teach 180: NCTM Conference Day 1 (Day 148)

Today I attended an ok session, a good session and a great session.  The great session was in a room with about 12-14 teachers. We had various prompts we discussed around teaching, resources, technology, etc.  I wish I could remember the prompts, because they were thought provoking and everyone could contribute based on their own experiences.  What I found most fascinating in the end was that whatever type of school or level of teaching (elementary, middle, high school) we all had the common goal of doing what was best for our students.  We recognized that teaching has changed both in terms of content and pedagogy over the past 10-20 years. But it ultimately comes down to building relationships and trust with the students in front of us.  Without that foundation, it is challenging to have students learn anything, let alone math specifically.

Another topic that cropped up in our conversations was that students constantly ask "When am I going to use this?"  The truth for many students is "After high school, you will never use this."  For example, imaginary numbers or the quadratic formula are probably not useful to 90% (just my estimate) of college graduates after college.  (My husband is a Ph.D. chemist and does not use the quadratic formula on a daily basis.)  Does lack of utility for topic X mean we don't teach topic X?  If the only reason for learning something was because it was useful, we never would have fractal based antennas in our cell phones.  It was at this moment in the discussion that I said the following:

I truly believe this.  Sure there is math content that needs to be taught, but most students won't remember it unless they go into a math or science field. What will carry students through their high school years and beyond in mathematics is the willingness to discover, try, fail, try again, fail once more, make connections and finally generalize.  The generalization will not be a fill-in-the blank scaffolded note, but it will be the result of the understanding that they have discovered and constructed for themselves.  Teaching in this way takes courage.  A willingness to let go and trust your students and yourself.  It is not easy and after 25 years of teaching, it is still a conscious decision that I have to make daily.  I don't consider myself to be an "expert" or "master" teacher.  I am like my students - a learner and I am trying to improve and become better at my craft on a daily basis.