This post is a quick shout out to Jared Peters, who recently landed his first teaching job. Mr. Peters completed his student teaching requirement with us last spring and will be a great addition to our profession. Best of luck, Jared!
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Growth Mindset & the Smarter Balanced Assessment
I was first exposed to Carol Dweck's research on fixed and growth mindsets a few years ago when I was completing some of my graduate coursework. For those of you who haven't heard about mindsets, you can find a lot of resources online (here and here to name a few).
Dweck's colleague, Jo Boaler, has completed some further research on mindsets and the implications in the classroom. If you're really interested in learning about mindsets in a mathematics classroom, I would recommend taking Stanford's free online class (sign up here).
In Dweck's Self-Theories book, she discusses the reaction of students with a helpless mindset (fixed mindset) when they experience failure. In short, when a student with a fixed mindset experiences failure they begin to fall into a helpless state of mind. They quickly lose confidence in their abilities and lose perspective on the successes they had achieved in the past. Moreover, many students who had fallen into the helpless mindset "abandoned or became incapable of deploying the effective strategies in their repertoire." (pg. 9)
After hearing that research, I grew concerned about students who have a fixed mindset and their ability to successfully complete the Smarter Balanced assessment. The Smarter Balanced Assessment is a computer adaptive test. Students are given grade-level questions for the first two-thirds of the test. Then the computer software selects remaining one-third of the questions based on the student responses up to that point. If a student is answering questions correctly, then the software can select questions from a higher grade level. Conversely, if a student is answering questions incorrectly, then the software can select questions from a lower grade level.
Theoretically, this type of testing system makes sense. It's designed to find the "boundary" of each students' achievement level. My concern lies with the students with fixed mindsets. For those students, the "boundary" is like an electric fence. The test is designed for students to eventually touch the fence. Once a student with a fixed mindset does touch it, the electrical current sends shocks throughout their body. They lose ability to focus on the problems and are more focused on how much the fence shocked them.
Dweck summarizes her research by saying "...the helpless response is a reaction to failure that carries negative implications for the self and that impairs students' ability to use their minds effectively." I fear the computer adaptive test could indirectly lead to major negative consequences for students with a fixed mindset.
What can we (teachers) do to help?
I think the best way to help combat this potential problem is to teach students about fixed and growth mindsets. I am planning to introduce these ideas during the first week of school in all of my classes. More to come as to what that will look like...
Dweck, Carol S. Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology, 1999. Print.
Dweck's colleague, Jo Boaler, has completed some further research on mindsets and the implications in the classroom. If you're really interested in learning about mindsets in a mathematics classroom, I would recommend taking Stanford's free online class (sign up here).
In Dweck's Self-Theories book, she discusses the reaction of students with a helpless mindset (fixed mindset) when they experience failure. In short, when a student with a fixed mindset experiences failure they begin to fall into a helpless state of mind. They quickly lose confidence in their abilities and lose perspective on the successes they had achieved in the past. Moreover, many students who had fallen into the helpless mindset "abandoned or became incapable of deploying the effective strategies in their repertoire." (pg. 9)
After hearing that research, I grew concerned about students who have a fixed mindset and their ability to successfully complete the Smarter Balanced assessment. The Smarter Balanced Assessment is a computer adaptive test. Students are given grade-level questions for the first two-thirds of the test. Then the computer software selects remaining one-third of the questions based on the student responses up to that point. If a student is answering questions correctly, then the software can select questions from a higher grade level. Conversely, if a student is answering questions incorrectly, then the software can select questions from a lower grade level.
Theoretically, this type of testing system makes sense. It's designed to find the "boundary" of each students' achievement level. My concern lies with the students with fixed mindsets. For those students, the "boundary" is like an electric fence. The test is designed for students to eventually touch the fence. Once a student with a fixed mindset does touch it, the electrical current sends shocks throughout their body. They lose ability to focus on the problems and are more focused on how much the fence shocked them.
Dweck summarizes her research by saying "...the helpless response is a reaction to failure that carries negative implications for the self and that impairs students' ability to use their minds effectively." I fear the computer adaptive test could indirectly lead to major negative consequences for students with a fixed mindset.
What can we (teachers) do to help?
I think the best way to help combat this potential problem is to teach students about fixed and growth mindsets. I am planning to introduce these ideas during the first week of school in all of my classes. More to come as to what that will look like...
Dweck, Carol S. Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology, 1999. Print.
Monday, April 20, 2015
It worked!
As you can see from my previous post, the email directly to blog post worked! I’m very excited about this feature in blogger.
The way that Ramsey is implementing this in his classroom is he is having his students write blog posts (as reflections) at the end of each lesson / learning activity. He has them write emails that post directly to their blogs. Blog postings are typically part of their homework and students are expected to describe the learning activity and summarize what they’ve learned. Students are also encouraged to ask questions about things they aren’t fully understanding.
I love this feature because it will allow students to use whatever they are comfortable emailing with to create their blog posts.
TIE Conference 2015
I am currently at the TIE Conference and learning some great new ideas. One thing I just found out about was the ability to post to my blog by simply writing an email. (Thanks to the Monday AM Keynote Ramsey Musallam!)
I believe I set this up correctly and am testing this newly discovered featured out. I guess if you’re reading this, it worked!
Saturday, April 18, 2015
How tall is the light pole?
In early March, Mother Nature was very cooperative with our lesson plans and we had a couple of 60 degree days. We were in the middle of our similarity unit and wanted to get our geometry students outside for an activity. My co-teacher and I had both done activities involving indirect measurement before in our previous schools, but we had both used clinometers and right triangle trigonometry as the vehicle.
This year, we decided to use mirrors and model our activity similar to the one shown here.
We modeled our lesson after Mr. Chuck Pack's lesson (from The Teaching Channel). He does a much better job of explaining the activity on video than I could in writing.
The students loved getting outside and the day was a success. Most importantly, students demonstrated strong understanding of the concept of indirect measurement and experienced it firsthand.
The one thing I really loved about Mr. Pack's activity that I had never thought of doing was collecting the data and tie in some data analysis / statistics into the day. It's inevitable that at least one group make some major errors in their measurements or calculations. Outliers and the effect an outlier has on the mean is begging to be discussed. TI-Nspire does a very nice job of displaying the data from our three classes in the scatterplot. Great idea, Mr. Pack!
This year, we decided to use mirrors and model our activity similar to the one shown here.
 |
We modeled our lesson after Mr. Chuck Pack's lesson (from The Teaching Channel). He does a much better job of explaining the activity on video than I could in writing.
The students loved getting outside and the day was a success. Most importantly, students demonstrated strong understanding of the concept of indirect measurement and experienced it firsthand.
 |
| 3.11.15 - Brookings HS |
 |
| The indirect measurement activity using mirrors worked very well. |
The one thing I really loved about Mr. Pack's activity that I had never thought of doing was collecting the data and tie in some data analysis / statistics into the day. It's inevitable that at least one group make some major errors in their measurements or calculations. Outliers and the effect an outlier has on the mean is begging to be discussed. TI-Nspire does a very nice job of displaying the data from our three classes in the scatterplot. Great idea, Mr. Pack!
Next year, we're planning to improve our activity in two ways.
1) We used meter sticks and yard sticks to measure our distances along the ground. Next year, we will hopefully have 100-ft tape measures. It will be interesting to see if our data has less variation.
2) We are planning to use clinometers as well next year after our trigonometry unit. We can then potentially use our mirror data and compare it to the clinometer data.
If anyone has ideas of some statistical analysis type activities we can do to extend the lesson next year, please reply below. I am especially interested in stats connections to the CCSS.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
4-State Math Collaboration - Round 2
I recently returned from beautiful Phoenix, AZ and round 2 of the 4-state math leadership collaboration event. It was again great to discuss and plan potential action strategies for helping implement the Common Core standards into 6-12 math classrooms across the region.
A couple of highlights from the meeting...
1. Growth mindset vs. fixed mindset is something worth looking into if you haven't heard or seen the research yet. (Keywords: Carol Dweck, Mindset) This brain research can be applied to many areas of life. The 4-state event facilitators had us analyze our mindset through the lens of a math leader. I knew right away that I had a fixed mindset when it comes to me being a leader. As a matter of fact, I blogged about it after the first leadership event in Rapid City this past fall. I placed teachers into four categories and went on to say that I have no time for teachers that want to be left alone. I had a very fixed mindset about being able to lead those particular teachers.
I want to expose my students to the concept of fixed vs. growth mindset in the fall. I think it might be a great first week activity.
2. The state of SD (and IA, ND, and MT) are closer to having a plan in place to help grade 6-12 math teachers have more support and resources as we implement the CCSS-M. We have one more meeting in June that will finalize some of those plans.
3. There are a wealth of resources available online that math teachers need to be made aware of. I thought I knew about most of the Common Core resources and it turns out I was mistaken. Once again, math teachers need one centralized location that provides details on the best resources available.
4. The weather in Phoenix is beautiful in March.
I left the event feeling very empowered and ready to help initiate change. Great professional development is very refreshing and motivating. I'm excited for the final event in June.
A couple of highlights from the meeting...
1. Growth mindset vs. fixed mindset is something worth looking into if you haven't heard or seen the research yet. (Keywords: Carol Dweck, Mindset) This brain research can be applied to many areas of life. The 4-state event facilitators had us analyze our mindset through the lens of a math leader. I knew right away that I had a fixed mindset when it comes to me being a leader. As a matter of fact, I blogged about it after the first leadership event in Rapid City this past fall. I placed teachers into four categories and went on to say that I have no time for teachers that want to be left alone. I had a very fixed mindset about being able to lead those particular teachers.
I want to expose my students to the concept of fixed vs. growth mindset in the fall. I think it might be a great first week activity.
2. The state of SD (and IA, ND, and MT) are closer to having a plan in place to help grade 6-12 math teachers have more support and resources as we implement the CCSS-M. We have one more meeting in June that will finalize some of those plans.
3. There are a wealth of resources available online that math teachers need to be made aware of. I thought I knew about most of the Common Core resources and it turns out I was mistaken. Once again, math teachers need one centralized location that provides details on the best resources available.
4. The weather in Phoenix is beautiful in March.
I left the event feeling very empowered and ready to help initiate change. Great professional development is very refreshing and motivating. I'm excited for the final event in June.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Golden Ratio & Apple Cores
@BHSGeomety students recently studied the Golden Ratio and Golden Rectangles with a number of different activities. For example, in one activity students found lengths on different measurements on their face and bodies and calculated to see if any of their ratios were "golden".
The activity I want to share about goes a little something like this...
1. Give each student (or group of students) an apple. Have the student cut the apple horizontally so that the cross section is a circle and it exposes the core.
2. As you can see, the inside of the core has a pentagram shape. This is one of many instances of the golden ratio found in the natural world. We had students take a picture of their apple cores and import them into Geometer's Sketchpad. Our document camera was extremely efficient at doing this.
3. Using a regular pentagon custom tool in GSP, students constructed the pentagon around their apple core.
4. Students then compared each other's apple core to see which had the most "golden" core.
This is a fun 10-minute activity that integrates technology and is very hands-on and student centered. Students were interested to see what each other's cores looked like. We actually used four different types of apples in our experiment. No one type of apple seemed to be any more or less golden than the others.
Here are a few more examples:
The activity I want to share about goes a little something like this...
1. Give each student (or group of students) an apple. Have the student cut the apple horizontally so that the cross section is a circle and it exposes the core.
2. As you can see, the inside of the core has a pentagram shape. This is one of many instances of the golden ratio found in the natural world. We had students take a picture of their apple cores and import them into Geometer's Sketchpad. Our document camera was extremely efficient at doing this.
3. Using a regular pentagon custom tool in GSP, students constructed the pentagon around their apple core.
4. Students then compared each other's apple core to see which had the most "golden" core.
This is a fun 10-minute activity that integrates technology and is very hands-on and student centered. Students were interested to see what each other's cores looked like. We actually used four different types of apples in our experiment. No one type of apple seemed to be any more or less golden than the others.
Here are a few more examples:
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