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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Reflection brings about change

Last week I spent some time reflecting on how the year has been going, and some of the data I've gotten.  This week I want to talk about some changes I'd like to make.

I've been struggling with a couple things in my classroom, & I think it'll be easiest to just list them out here:

  • Students who aren't meeting with me during a discussion have a tendency to not work very efficiently (that's a nice way of saying they tend to mess around).
  • Students are finishing up their "practice problems" before I get a chance to see how they did.  I'm finding that most of the students who get some wrong (as shown on the quizzes) had just marked their practice problems wrong & then tried the quiz.  They missed that important step where they had to actually seek out why they got the answers wrong.
  • While I love meeting with students and talking math with them, I wish I had more time to help them with their application problems.
  • Once students finish up their practice problems, and they quiz on the assigned lesson, I don't feel like I have something really good for them to work on.  They have a few choices, but the only one I really like is student made videos.
So what am I going to do about it?  I'll take these one at a time & work through them...as always, I would love to hear any recommendations you have.

Students who aren't meeting with me during a discussion have a tendency to not work very efficiently (that's a nice way of saying they tend to mess around).

I have literature circles in my reading class that requires each student to have a "job" in their group.  I would like to start putting students into groups that I assign (until they get a little bit better at choosing their own groups), and assigning them jobs.  I think I'll open up the discussion of jobs to the class & see what type of jobs they come up with.  I'm thinking groups will have 3-4 students in them.  

You know what, I might just share this whole problem with the class & see what they come up with.  I can always recommend the assigned groups idea if no else comes up with it.

Students are finishing up their "practice problems" before I get a chance to see how they did.  I'm finding that most of the students who get some wrong (as shown on the quizzes) had just marked their practice problems wrong & then tried the quiz.  They missed that important step where they had to actually seek out why they got the answers wrong.

I think that if I end up putting the students into groups, this might help alleviate this issue.  On the flip side, it might breed another issue (students just copying their group's papers).  Perhaps a contract of some sort might help.  Something along the lines of "I swear to help everyone in my group understand the questions and answers."  In my dream world, I would love it if everyone in the group took it upon themselves to make sure that everyone understood the math.  Since the students have to pass one quiz to move on to another, maybe the group can't move on until everyone understands.  I think that could go 1 of 2 ways: First, students hate it because they can't move ahead when they know what they're doing.  Second, students become great collaborators & see the value in helping others.

While I love meeting with students and talking math with them, I wish I had more time to help them with their application problems.

Perhaps taking a step back from the discussions & letting the students lead them would help here...but I do find that I can easily help troubleshoot issues before they become issues when I'm there for discussions.  To be continued, I guess, I'd love some feedback on this.

Once students finish up their practice problems, and they quiz on the assigned lesson, I don't feel like I have something really good for them to work on.  They have a few choices, but the only one I really like is student made videos.

As of now, here are the options when my students finish their work...
  • start the next lesson - this works out really well for students who hate having homework, or for students who don't have access at home
  • play some on-line math games - my honest opinion on this is, meh (imagine with a shoulder shrug)...it does allow students to get some additional practice, but it's usually practice on what they already know
  • create videos using Educreations - I actually really like this one, but I need to do a better job teaching students what must be included in their videos...some get a little sidetracked trying to make them funny & entertaining, and lose the math along the way
I need/want more meaningful activities that are going to make the kids WANT to finish early.  Say what?!? Yup, I want the kids to want to finish early because the extra activities are THAT awesome.  An idea I have now become just a tiny bit obsessed with is Video Story Problems.  I haven't done anything with Video Story Problems yet, and I really really really want to try.  Has anyone out there tried these with their class?  If so, please let me know how it went, what you did, etc.  I found a really informative video by Ben Rimes that explains Video Story Problems better than I could...check it out if you're interested.



1 comment:

  1. Great reflection here, Delia! I especially enjoy the way you come back to "just tossing it out to the students" to see if they can help solve this issue with you. I think it really helps set the tone as both you and the learners as being equal partners in the problem (which you are), and moves away from the inequity of how those problems usually get solved (by just the teacher).

    My friend teaches high school biology and he is always leary of group work, or student produced videos. He fears they may just "copy", but I've found that's a persistent reality. No matter how much we try to contrive an activity for them to completely, they can always just cheat; so you have to be prepared with some type of follow up or reflection based on questions they themselves have created earlier. Hopefully, they won't be able to simply submit group work or "stolen" work as their own because it won't apply to any of their issues or questions they setup initially.

    As for video story problems, there are a TON of examples on the Vimeo Channel (https://vimeo.com/channels/videostoryproblems). You could probably get students fired up to tackle a wide range of problems; they could create a video story problem from actual events in the real world, they could create a "how to" video that serves as a form of peer tutoring or narrative assessment, or they could even create some open ended video story problems that might challenge other students to create a video in an attempt to answer or explain the first. Regardless of what you choose to do, it sounds like you've got a great system for checking in on yourself and the students in your classroom. I look forward to seeing what comes out of all this reflection :)

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