Khan Academy & Make it Stick

The last day of our Restore 360 training

I can't believe that there is only one month of summer break left!  My Instagram feed is full of fellow teachers (outside of NYC) who are busy getting their classrooms ready for the new school year.  I am definitely not there mentally yet, but I have been keeping busy this summer.  Two weeks ago I participate in a week-long professional learning on restorative practices in grades 9 - 12 on building belonging, Restore 360, through the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, which I cannot wait to do with my advisory this year.

Last week I participated in two Algebra for All two-day electives, and am pretty sure I found my new 1st day of school activity for this year, Hashi Puzzles!  I need to flush it out a little more, but I think it will be awesome.

After two weeks of going to professional learnings, I am looking forward to sleeping in again - I mean, it is still my summer break after all.  I have also been working through the Edpuzzle Online Professional Development.  I finished Levels 1 & 2 and hope to start Coach & Flipped this week.  My principal also reached out to me this past week about helping out during our summer PD during the last week of August.  I will be leading the ice breakers during two of the days and a session on parent engagement.  The parent engagement session I am fine with, but anyone who knows me, knows I am not the biggest fan of adult ice breakers (insert eye roll here), but after thinking about it, I was able to come up with some ideas that I actually really like.  I haven't fully planned them out yet, but  hope to incorporate some of my Restore 360 practices, as well as some reflection from the MfA Summer Think a few weeks ago.     

My current summer read

In addition to Restore 360 and Algebra for All, I have also been keeping up with my summer goal of reading one math/teaching book for every two books that I read just for fun.  Today I started, Make it Stick.

The reason I decided to post just now though has to do with Khan Academy.  Since math teaching and learning goes hand-in-hand, I decided this summer to work through all the 8th grade and Algebra 1 math skills.  I have currently reached 81% mastery in 8th grade math and 24% mastery in Algebra 1 and hope to keep up with it and continue to work through Geometry, Algebra 2, Trig, etc as the school year goes on.

Just now, I was working through the Number of Solutions to Equations Challenge which basically

Khan Academy 

has to do with generalizing what you know about linear equations to determine if there are 0, 1, or infinitely many solutions to the system (I screen shot one of the questions on the right), and at first I hated the questions because I was going about actually solving them, but the more I worked through them, I realized that I didn't really need to solve them, but generalize what I know must be true for linear equations to have 0, 1, or many solutions.  Yes, this was something I already knew, but never really thought too deeply about.  Even though I understand and can make sense of linear systems of equations, working through these problems gave me the opportunity to really build on my prior knowledge and do some learning, which totally connects to what I have just started reading about in Make it Stick, that learning is "...acquiring knowledge and skills and having them readily available from memory so you can make sense of future problems and opportunities" (page 2).  Another connection I made from working though these problems just now and Make it Stick, is that it was an example of elaboration or "...the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know" (page 5).

I hope the next four weeks are just as full of relaxing, learning, and growing!

My Teacher Summer To-Do List

One of my favorite things about summer, by far, is not knowing what day of the week it is.  It truly is bliss!  But as much as I love not knowing whether it is Monday or Friday, I know that I am better when I have a to-do list to keep me organized, so here are some of the things I have done so far this summer, and some things I am working on...

Math for America Summer Think
Last week I attended my first Math for America Summer Think, which was inspiring!  The theme this year was "Identify Your Why," and we did a lot of reflection on our many "whys."  I got a lot of ideas from the Deep Dive and Splash sessions I attended:

• Why are we learning this?
• Why is independent learning empowering to students?
• Why can't you talk about 'social stuff" in math class? and
• Why do we need to listen to our students?

Being an MfA Master Teacher this past year has spoiled me from other professional learning because every time I participate in a MfA session I leave with new ideas about math and about teaching, and it inspires me to try new things in my classroom.  I am so grateful that I get to be #MfAProud!

Brilliant.org

Sadly Brilliant.org is not doing a 100 Day Challenge again this year, but I have been inspired to work on their Problems of the Week each week and I was even inspired to get a premium subscription.  I enjoy working on their math and science problems just for fun.  I really want to find a way to use this resource more in the upcoming school year.

Khan Academy & Teacher Training

I have been using Khan Academy in my classes for a few years now, and want to use it more effectively in the upcoming school year, so this summer I have decided to do my own summer math learning and work on all the 8th grade math & Algebra 1 skills, since that is what my students work on.  My goal is to finish all those skills and then slowly move my way up the math ladder, to refresh myself on higher level math, since teaching and learning goes hand in hand.  Plus this summer Khan Academy is doing online Teacher Training to get ideas on how other teachers use it in their classrooms, and I am about half way done with that and have already gotten some new ideas from it.

Learn Promethean

Unfortunately I learned about yesterday's Camp Promethean too late, (plus I had my Educating All Students exam yesterday to finally get my SBL certificate after 6 years), but I hope to check out their resources sometime before we go back to school.  Last year was my first year using a Promethean Board, but unfortunately we didn't get much training with it, and even through we figured out a lot, I know there is more we can be doing with it. 

EdPuzzle Certification

One of the resources that I knew about (and was reminded about at the Summer Think), but never really used was Edpuzzle and it turns out they have online professional development too, which I would like to check out before September.  Since getting my Google Certified Educator certificate last summer, I really want to bring in more tools and resources into my classes next year.

Jumpstart Basic

Speaking of technology, I also signed up for the JumpStart Basic technology course through The Cult of Pedagogy Classroom.  Although I am excited about this one, I am a little worried I might have signed up for too much this summer.

OSYD & Algebra for All

Next week I have Restorative Circle training for grades (6 - 12) at the OSYD Summer PD Institute and then the following week I have my Algebra for All elective on course on creating access points through the use of tasks.  Unfortunately there was a mix up with registration and I wasn't able to sign up for the second course, but at least I will get my new document cam thanks to the A4A teacher technology grant I applied for in the Spring.

Apartment Organizing, Fit Girl 28 Day Jump Start & Dave Matthews

So not everything has been work-related this summer (although from the look of this post they are) but some non-work things I have been working on this summer include hiring an amazing professional organizer to help me declutter & organize my apartment... we worked together this past week and my apartment feels brand new and I am completely inspired to keep up with it.  I also joined the Fit Girl 28 Day Jump Start Challenge to get my butt into gear physically, and my husband and I went to not 1, not 2, but 3 Dave Matthews Band shows and finally got to hear our wedding song played live, which was nice.  I also finally got to see Ocean's 8 (which I enjoyed) and have read three books so far this summer.  Oh yeah, and I figured out how to free up literally half of my MacBook Air storage, so not only is my physical space more organized, so if my digital space, which I am really happy about! 

Yep, you really gotta love being a teacher in the summer ;)

First Day Back

I had started writing another post here yesterday about my first day back, but I thought that that would be more appropriate on my personal livejournal, so I put it there.  It's basically about my first two days at my new school.  Not only did I change schools, but my school moved buildings, so the last two days have been spent unpacking boxes mostly.  Unpacking has been OK because our rooms and hallways are supposed be be painted before school officially starts next week, but as of this afternoon it still hasn't happened yet, so I can't really hang things up or set up my classroom, so it's mostly been organizing than decorating the past two days.  I'll probably go in at least one other day this week to get some more stuff done.

One of the things we talked about during yesterday's PD were our school's values, inclusion, inquiry, and responsibility, and specifically focused on inquiry-based teaching.  That talk seemed to solidify my decision to go with CMP3 as my main curriculum this school year.  I had been debating it a lot this summer (and last school year), but the truth is, I really to believe that it is the best way to learn mathematics.  I had a lot of fun when I taught it two years ago, and my scholars really became mathematicians.  It's still going to be a learning process for me, and of course no curriculum is perfect, but I am happy with my decision, because in my teacher gut (at least for right now) I know that it is the right one.  I think I'm gonna pilot using JumpRope for standards-based grading, mostly because it's free and I have some exposure using it already.

I also decided to steal a page from my 6th grade colleague last year and make my baseline assessment (IA #0) and end-of-year assessment the same.  In other words, I will test my 6th graders on 6th grade standards, and my 7th graders on 7th grade standards.  My reason for this will be to give me the pre-assessment data that I need for each unit right away, so that I can see which standards I need to focus on (based off student mastery) and what standards, if any, I can hold back on.  I'm also going to use Khan Academy again for skill practice, which will hopefully complement the inquiry-based classwork.

Well that's it for now.  I'm sure I'll have more to update as the week goes on.  Hopefully I can keep this up as the school year goes on.

PS It's been two days, and I still cannot believe that I can actually walk to work now (no more hour plus long commute each way for me)... that alone is already making this year pretty darn sweet ;)  

#YouCanLearnAnything

Yes, it's sad to slowly leave behind the freedom of Summer, but with each passing day, I am getting more and more (mostly) excited about the upcoming school year.  I had my first of three PDs today.  Today's PD with Teaching Matters was about facilitating teacher teams, which I have done at my school for the past year (PS check out this page to see a pic of me in action on the Teaching Matters website).  Tomorrow's PD will focus on the data action process, which I am hoping will give me some new tools to add to my facilitator tool box.  Speaking of data, I am almost finished reading Driven By Data, which is definitely going on my Most Influential Literature list in my Math Leadership Portfolio.  I also dusted off my copy of The First Six Weeks of School, which is another sign that Summer is ending, but on a more serious note, probably one of the books that had the most influence on my becoming a much better teacher.  I highly recommend.

Lastly today, I found this short video clip on my Facebook feed for Khan Academy (which I have used with my 7th graders in the past) and am pretty sure I found my classroom motto for the upcoming school year... #YouCanLearnAnything

Not thinking about teaching during my vacation...

I just got back from a truly relaxing vacation on Sunday, but of course my mind couldn't help but think of work once or twice, especially since so many of the teachers that I follow on Facebook and twitter are already starting up the school year once again.  Here is just a short list of work/ school/ math/ teaching/ education in general ideas that came up, in no particular order.  Hopefully I will expand on these as the school year moves on:

• I have always wanted to, but never succeeded in having my students track their own data.  I distinctly remember my 5th/6th grade math teacher making us do it and it is such a powerful tool I should be taking advantage of as a math teacher.  Not only does it give students a concrete idea of where they stand in class, but it is a great way to give them exposure and practice in a real-world, meaningful way.  So of course, I have turned to Pinterest for some ideas and here is what I am looking into: Pre/Post test data tracking, standards bar graphs, and posting class data.
  
• Building fluency with fractions, decimals, percents, and rational numbers in general.  Fractions and rational numbers are always something that scholars readily admit to not liking or being good at.  So, while walking around in Portland, Maine this past week, I thought about how could I "sneak in" fractions, decimals, percents, and rational numbers into class everyday so that they become less scary.  Now, I don't know how well this will work out, but it peeked my interest... developing understanding of the "whole" and it's relationship to the "part."  For example, if our school year is made up of 180 days, then 1 of those days can be represented as 1/180 or 0.005 repeating or 0.56%.  If our whole is a week, then after class on Wednesday, we have completed 3/7 or approximately 0.6 or 60% of the week.  Developing that whole-part relationship is essential to deep understanding of fractions, decimals, percents, and rational numbers.
  
• I love Instagram.  How can I effectively use it in my 7th grade math classroom?  Maybe creating
  
  a teacher account and posting student work?  On a similar note, I saw this image of somebody's 9th grade math classroom for #M^2 (Motivational Mondays), #TorTTu (Truth or Trick Tuesdays), #WYGW (Where You Going Wednesdays), #TBT (Throwback Thursdays) and #F^3 *Fun Fact Fridays).  I don't know how I feel about the others but I kinda like throwback Thursdays to review previous topics and fun fact Fridays for interesting math facts.  Hmm...
  
• I took a tour of the Ben and Jerry's factory in Waterbury, VT while on vacation last week and I had no idea about how they started (7th grade gym class), their product, economic, and social missions, and what goes on in their factories to make their delicious ice cream.  All I kept thinking of was how rich in math this all was!  Prior to this visit, the only way I had been able to incorporate ice cream into my curriculum is how to determine whether a scoop of ice cream in the shape of a sphere would melt and not overflow into a cylinder cone, when discussing volume of solids.  I definitely want to investigate more into this.  How awesome of a school year would it be if students could learn about the math behind economics and maybe get ice cream!
  
• I recently read this article on Khan Academy.  Now I have used it in the past, with Saturday test-prep classes, and as videos or extra practice to support lessons in class.  I think it has a lot of potential, but I don't think I've used it in a way to maximize it's usefulness.  It's definitely something I need to incorporate more, I believe.  Not even as an extra math tool, but as a way to help scholars become independent learners.  There are always going to be times in life when they come across something that they don't understand or get right away.  More often than not, that's where they stop.  In addition to teaching math, I want to get my students persevere through something when it doesn't make sense to them (Math Practice #1).  I want to get them curious to want to learn more.  Not for me.  Not for a grade.  But for themselves and the sheer satisfaction that comes from learning something.  
  
• And lastly, I came across some great quotes that I will be looking to put up in my 7th grade math classroom in a couple of weeks: "Believe in yourselves.  Dream.  Try.  Do Good." - Mr. Feeny, Boy Meets World and "No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world." - Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society.