Author: Admin

Ugh, Math

Admin3 Comments

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Math. To me, it’s like a puzzle and I like puzzles. However, that is not the case for many. Most of the time, it’s dry, boring, and disconnected from everyday life – at least that’s how the publishers present it. Which is yet another reason I hate publishers – come on, put some effort into your lessons. Less snazzy pictures – which there really aren’t that many – and more snazzy lessons!

This week I introduced long division to my 5th graders – you all groaned on that one didn’t you? Yeah, not the most interesting Math concept. It’s mostly procedural and very dry. And the publishers… a list of division problems to work out. BORING! Then there are the word problems:

A candy factory produces 9,876 pounds of chocolate in 24 hours. How many pounds to they produce in 1 hour?

Even the person who loves Math, like me, is thinking, “Who cares?” I mean really unless I’m the production manager, I couldn’t care less.

Fortunately, I have been inspired by the likes of La Cucina Matematica (John Stevens and Matt Vaudry) and Andrew Stadel (Estimation 180). They make Math relevant and fun. This is what I want for my students. And coming up with examples of how division can be relevant to my students isn’t THAT hard.

So what am I doing tomorrow in Math? Working with a bag of Halloween Candy. Amazingly, I still have some hanging around the house. Now, I can’t actually bring in a whole bag – which would totally be better (maybe I’ll swing by the store and see what’s on sale); they could manipulate the pieces. But… I sort of ate an embarrassing amount of the bag. Banana Laffy Taffy is a weakness of mine. So I did the next best thing, took a picture of the Nutritional Label – which I didn’t really read based on my consumption of said contents.

IMG_3319

That means I can eat 4 pieces of my beloved Banana Laffy Taffy, and that is 1 serving (nice to know). So in a bag of 200 pieces how many are Laffy Taffy? Of that, how many servings of Laffy Taffy are there? It is also important to note that there are 2 flavors of Laffy Taffy. So you can further break it down and figure out roughly how many servings of Banana Laffy Taffy I ate. We could go on to find out how many servings of the candy are in the bag, or how many calories are in 1 Laffy Taffy. We could take the total number of pieces and split them up among all of us.

Is this the most innovative lesson ever? Not even close. Is it better than the dreaded publishers’ nonsense? Absolutely. Lessons like this could go on with items such as Hot Cheetos, chips, Taquis, and anything else the kids are into. I also get to sneak in lessons about serving size and portions.

Math Reasoning & App Smashing

AdminLeave a comment

While at Fall CUE a few weeks ago, I learned about Which One Doesn’t Belong from Nancy MInicozzi. The beauty of Which One Doesn’t Belong is that depending on your perspective any of the 4 choices is correct. This has been wildly popular with my students. They feel successful because of the low risk.

Given the above choices and Padlet, my students are required to defend their answer. Recently, one of my students began experimenting with the options on Padlet. She realized that she could embed a voice recording. The next day, she decided she didn’t like the sound of her voice, so typed her response in Voki, recorded the chosen voice, then embedded it on the Padlet. Now the rest of the class wants to learn how to do it. However, she is a bit devious. She refuses to help them because she wants them to figure it out on their own. I also suspect that she likes the fact that she is the only person who knows how to do it. I love when they try to outdo each other. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next!

Harness The Power

Admin1 Comment

Last night there were a series of hurried texts between a group of friends and myself. At first, I was going to ignore them. It was, after all, almost 10 pm – way past my bedtime! Then curiosity got the better of me, and boy am I glad it did. A friend who teaches at another site within my district was telling the rest of us that school was cancelled for today, because of bomb threats at one of the campuses. Before long, I was communicating with my site administrator who asked me to post the information on our school’s Facebook page.

How do we get our information?

When I first heard the news, guess where I went first? The district’s website? The local news station’s site? Facebook? You guessed it, Facebook. Isn’t that what most of us do?

Spreading the Word

The district was in the process of recording a message that would auto call all the parents. However, the system had already shut down for the night and the calls wouldn’t be made until morning. This is a problem.

Living in a small community such as mine, word travels fast. So by harnessing the power of social media, we were able to inform many, who in turn helped to spread the word, about the school closings. Within 16 hours, our post had been viewed by nearly 9,900 people. That’s almost the size of our town!

118 Shares! I have heard that some district administrators are not a fan of schools having a Facebook page. They feel that it puts them at risk of negative attention or criticism. While this is true, the risk is minimal. In the 3 to 4 years we’ve had ours, I can only recall 2 instances where someone was negative, and one of those the person had some misinformation (which we were able to clear up immediately).

I’m sure you would agree, this was an amazing way to harness the power of social media. On another note, the majority of our posts show students engaged in learning and having fun. If your school doesn’t have a Facebook Page, I think it’s a missed opportunity to connect with parents, students (depending on age), and your community.

Make It Memorable

Admin3 Comments

This was one of the many inspirational things I got out of David Theriault’s keynote speech at Fall CUE 2015. At one point, he asked why we take pictures during holidays and birthday parties. Simply put, because they are memorable moments (Mr. Theriault describes it in his blog). This gave me the inspiration to have my students become photographers; asking them to photograph the memorable moments in the day. Then allowing them to post their favorite to my Instagram account (@Nowatechie). We’ve created our own hashtag (#msnsclass).

I want my class, and their 5th-grade year, to be memorable. It is my hope that we do 1 thing each day they will want to remember.

Nerd Day
Minute To Win It

Presenting Genius Hour Projects

AdminLeave a comment

Genius Hour

gh

I have had my class participating in Genius Hour for the past 4 years. I love it. Admittedly, I struggle with aspects of it. One aspect that I have struggled with for a while now is the presenting part. They have no problem creating but, have some ‘issues’ listening to one another when it comes time to present. They all want to present, just not listen. Frustrating!

I Am A Genius!

And when I say ‘I’, I really mean Jon Corippo. In one of his presentations, he explained how he had students giving scores to one another during presentations – American Idol style. So this year when Genius Hour began, the same issues were occurring. Then this past week, I implemented the scoring system (albeit tweaked to better meet my needs).

Scoring

I am using a dual scoring approach. Based on our school’s Speaking & Listening Rubric (a work in progress), I have 5 small whiteboards we use as score cards. 4 score cards are in the audience and 1 is left with the presenters. The 4 audience score cards are – Volume, Eye Contact, Vocabulary, and Clarity. These circulate around the room (1 person scores per presentation per card) so that several students have the opportunity to score after a presentation. The presenter’s score card is Listening.

Did It Make A Difference?

Yes! When a score card came back with a lower score, the ‘judge’ explained what skill the presenter (or audience) needs to practice. There was definitely more ownership on both sides this week.

Success In Math

AdminLeave a comment

Did you ever have one of those days, in teaching, where you thought, “YES! This is what it’s all about”? Yeah, I had one of those moments today.

We have been talking about place value and really digging in deep in math. Today we organically began talking about exponents. I say organically because while I’ve touched on the subject before, the students really hadn’t grasped the concept. Yet today, they began making connections. And THAT was super cool! We really only focused on exponents as they relate to the base ten number system. For example 10 x 10 = 100 = 102 

This led to one student wondering if exponents “only work” with 10 or does it work with other numbers. We briefly discussed this. Then another student started making connections about the number of zeros and the exponent.

THIS is exactly what Common Core Math is about – looking deeper into the systems and the ‘why’ and discovering the connections and shortcuts. Knowledge IS power!

cc 0.0
cc 0.0