I Got Observed Today, Part II

A Lesson the Day After a Test

Algebra kids had a concept quiz yesterday. I scored them last night, put them in the gradebooks, gave them back today. But if I want students to learn from the quiz, I figure they need a way to go back and review the quiz.

The method for today was to give them just the answers to the problems. They had the rest of class to work with a partner/group to discuss any problems missed. (I answered questions by turning them around, pointing them to their notes, the filing system of old notes, or a poster on the wall.) Half-way through the review time, I gave them each a post-it with a problem from the test. Yes, the problems were strategically chosen to be one they missed, even better if their partner missed it too. If students were working, I assigned a problem that I knew they were discussing. If they were slacking, that's when they got the "harder" problems.

In order to get your participation credit for the day, you needed to put your problem on the board by the end of the review time. You didn't have to explain it to the rest of the class (my students really shy away from talking). You weren't going to embarrass yourself by getting it wrong (you have the answer and you have people helping you).

It's a decent way to review. I like it better than me working all the problems on the board. It has the perk of getting students to the board (they tend to stay away from it to work, but will doodle and tag their name all over it otherwise). They were more likely to ask questions of a single peer than they are to ask questions to me in front of the class. They were also more likely to ask questions when they knew they needed to do this again and soon. I'm not knocking this method. I'll use it again.

But there must be other ways to review tests. What are they?

Falling flat

Okay. People keep saying I should share lessons. Here's one that I'd love some ideas of how to improve.

We have a 4-day week. Next week is testing. It's not really enough time to get into new material and I feel like I'm supposed to help students review before the test. I don't want to teach to the test, but given that South Dakota does not have released tests I'm not sure it's even possible.

What does make sense is to go through and talk about testing strategies. My students don't seem to have been taught them before, so I'm taking the week to go over the ideas that I learned through all the years of SAT team practice. At least that's the plan.

But today fell flat, so I'm not sure how the rest of the week will play out. I'd love advice from anyone who's not totally off on spring break.

Tried to start off with a bit of discussion about why we're doing this. How these strategies work for any multiple choice test, be it the ones next week, the ACT/SAT for college, or the ASVAB for military. Really, I think I lost them care. Testing is boring and I didn't find a way to make it fun. 

When I asked students why we take the tests the most consistent answer was, "So we can see how bad the school is." They know the school is low-achieving, but they fall back on the excuses of being on the reservation. In one typical teenage fashion, they mostly mocked my cheerleading attitude. Alas. Most of that is actually my real personality, so it won't be changed anytime soon.

I decided to start off with the general strategy of eliminating choices to improve your guesses.I put the numbers on the board to show how better guesses can raise your score, next time I'd use a graph to illustrate. 

I focused on how you could eliminate options first by working backwards, checking the answers given rather than generating your own. We've just come off of polynomials, first multiplying and then factoring, so the option of working a problem in the order you want seems sold me. Still didn't catch the students.

Most classes perked up a bit when we talked about estimating. I think they felt more comfortable with that idea. Confuses me. I've been talking about checking your work all year long, haven't mentioned estimation before today. 

Not a thrilling narrative by any means. The PDF matches, but I've submitted it to I Love Math.  I'll toss a link here when it's up. 

So yeah. There we go. My first shared lesson, admittedly rough. What do you do to improve it?

Requesting Curriculum Advice

Last Wednesday, while I was teaching Algebra II, I was informed that I would be teaching General Math starting this week. Or rather, I was asked to teach it at the same time that I was teaching Geometry. I refused to do that, but was put down for it anyway.

Things have worked out so that I do not have to teach two courses in one period, but I am up to four preps. Only one has a textbook or any curriculum that's worth using.

I am figuring out where to get resources online for the algebra and geometry courses. I've gotten in the hang of pulling material from my shelf of sample Algebra textbooks. They're not outstanding lessons. Not the most interesting notes. They're plagiarized left and right, but it was working for me.

I have no resources for this new course. The principal told me that he thought it would be "easy to teach." The curriculum coordinater directed me to edhelper, but I can't help but feel that students who have been worksheeted on the same material since elementary school are not going to learn it any better this year if I just give them worksheets.

For my diagnostic, I used California's released questions for fourth graders. (South Dakota doesn't release questions.) The students told me that they want to work on fractions, decimals, and percents. They want to learn exponents. Looking at the first part of the diagnostic, they need to learn multiplication and division first. Or alongside. Or....how do I work this?

I've requested sample textbooks from various companies, hoping that I'll find something that will help me with this latest class. (My favorite, based solely on online descriptions, is Fantasy Sports Math via my mother and Only a Game.)

Any resource recommendations from anyone out there? What do you use to help teach high schoolers who are at an elementary level?