And here are my end of the year finals.


Algebra 1
Review
Cheat Sheet
Applied Algebra 1 Final
Algebra 1 Final

Geometry
Polygon Cheat Sheet

Applied Geometry Practice Problems
Applied Geometry Cheat Sheet
Applied Geometry Final
Geometry Review
Geometry Cheat Sheet
Geometry Final

Cheat sheets and reviews pretty much serve one and the same purpose.
My finals are not cumulative and covered only the second semester.

The one with all the Geometry.

I don't know if I actually hate geometry or if I just intensely love Algebra but the end of the year in Geo is just a blur to me. So without further ado, here are the links sans comments.

Parts of a Circle, Quiz
Properties of Tangents, Worksheet
Arcs and Chords
Arcs and Central Angles
Inscribed Angles, Worksheet
Equation of a Circle
Properties of Chords
Circles Jeopardy Review
Circles Quiz

The following will be how I ended the year in applied geometry.


Disappointing.

Surface Area Quiz
Surface Area Pyramid, Quiz
Surface Area Cone, Quiz
Volume
Volume Cone Cylinder Quiz
Volume Pyramid Cone, Quiz
Spheres, Quiz

So obviously I got kind of behind on posting my weekly recaps. I'll do my best to remember but it's basically going to be a bunch of links.

I mentioned last time a surface area lesson gone wrong. Here is the retake.

Scientific notation went not as well as I had hoped, especially when it came to multiplication and division rules. In division when you are supposed to subtract the exponents on the base 10, they also wanted to subtract the whole numbers in the numerator and denominator instead of dividing. While multiplying, they remembered to multiply the exponents but forgot to take the whole number to the power. Those pesky whole numbers...

Here is a sheet I created for review and here's the quiz.

Ok, I'm getting overwhelmed and there is no need for me to get panicky about my OWN blogging! So I will just make the rest of this post my algebra links for the rest of the year.

Polys
Polys Notes
Adding and Subtracting Polynomials, Notes
Monomial Polynomial Review Sheet, PPT
Monomial Polynomial Quiz Students had a terrible time labeling the type of polynomials.
Multiplying Monomials and Polynomials, Notes

I taught Box Method instead of FOIL and it worked much better. A couple students preferred FOIL but for the most part, Box Method was simple to understand. Now adding like terms was what tripped them up.

Box Method

I created this box method worksheet and I just loved it. The kids loved multiplying the 5 x 7 polynomials. it could be considered busywork but they loved seeing the patterns that emerged in the exponents and I think doing this one big problem really reinforced the box method itself. They still struggled with adding like terms to get the final answer though. Why is that???

Special Binomial Products, Notes I literally made them use the special formulas even though they begged to use the box method. I don't if it was a mistake to force them to use it or if I should have let them find the patten on their own using box method. But considering they can't add like terms, I don't think they would have ever found any pattern at all. The pitfall here is that they wanted to use a^2 - b^2 for everything.

Polynomial Memory Review Game My lower level class really liked this game.

Finally, the multiplying polynomials quiz.

P.S. I love polys and factoring!

I intro'd factoring with this diamond math puzzle. I made everyone work silently until they figured out the pattern and finished the sheet. A lot of students really struggled when I made them think for more than 30 seconds without giving them answers. I gave no hints, just told them yes or no. A few people literally took the whole hour so I finally gave them the hint along the lines of, what can you do to these two numbers that give you the top and bottom answers. From there, it was easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Started with this GCF lesson (notes)- they loved it. Why? It was easy  and they already knew how to do it. I always believe that I can break anything down to where it is easily understandable. But can I?

Factoring, Notes

Factoring by Grouping, Notes  I've actually never heard of this method but it was mentioned in 2 of my 3 Algebra textbooks so I went ahead and taught it.

Factoring Negatives, Notes

I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS WORKSHEET. Seriously, I would make out with it. It's not even mine. Someone else thought it up and I would make out with them too. I used it all throughout our factoring unit and we worked on sections of it at time during class, at the beginning, at the end. And I even used activities that I talked about in this post to do it. How bout them apples

Factoring Quiz

The end. Algebra style

Now that I've caught up on blogging, I kinda like actually doing it again.

I taught the easy part of scientific notation today, and the hard part (notes) is up tomorrow. Luckily, they have done this before and we just finished our unit on exponent rules, so hopefully we can wrap this up neatly. I like the lessons I've made but it's very much direct instruction and no inquiry, which I am so. so. tired of.

In geometry, this is my surface area lesson which went over like a lead balloon. I hate that class. Hate. It.

My other geometry class just finished sin, cos, and tan, and bombed the quiz. Three people got an A and the rest were below passing. They had 10 minutes to do 10 multiple choice questions and then the rest of the time to work in partners on 9 problems. I even allowed them to come in throughout the day to finish or correct. And they got to use notes. The three that came back are the three that got A's. So today I went through every single problem and worked every step out. I told them they could correct their quiz and use it tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm giving a totally different quiz to anyone who wants to make it up. The condition is, it can't be made up during class. They have to come in on their own time. I feel like they need to be responsible for learning and getting a better grade. But what worries me is if they all fail again, then I can't just move on with them not understanding. Can I?

Ugh.

Apparently I just hate geometry. Algebra just comes so much more naturally to me. I have two different geometry classes and I've branched off and went two different ways with them. I think this may be causing more work for me but oh well. One class, I've been going by the book and following the order of topics. In the other class I jumped ahead two chapters to start using sine, cosine, and tangent in order to prepare for our state testing on April 28-29. We keep being pressured to prepare the students for state testing but no one is telling me how.

I don't think anything frustrates me more than to be told to do something and not told how. I can't work with nothing here. The only suggestion I've been given is to use ACT questions on my warm up. Which okay, I can do, but the point of the warm up is to review what we did yesterday and lead into what we're doing today. Finding ACT questions to fit that purpose is hard as heck. I use this site which gives an ACT question of the day, but of course that doesn't align with anything I'm doing. I went to a conference on ACT test-taking strategies and I've introduced a few of them in class but...that doesn't seem like enough. My teacher bestie teaches English and she gives her students short timed quizzes so they can get used to working under a time limit. I've tried that. Once. But I'm just not feeling prepared enough to prepare them. In my opinion, they need more content which is why I've skipped ahead to the back of the book to get more of the content covered by the ACT. That's my big nod to ACT prep.

Anyway, I don't know a good way to talk about my separate geometry classes except for separately. In one class, my students literally do not care at all about class or school, period. They don't do homework and copy as much as possible. I have totally failed this class. But, I digress. The way we do class now is that I lecture all period for one day and they take notes and then turn in their notes for a grade. By notes, I mean I print out Powerpoints as handouts and they fill in the blanks and work out practice problems on those. That is how I do notes in all of my classes. I grade the notes and then give them back the next day when they are quizzed and are allowed to use their notes. So lecture, quiz, lecture, quiz. This doesn't really work either. Only a few actually understand their own notes and the rest just blindly write down whatever I write with no sense of where the numbers came from or what to do with them. But I don't know what else to do and so this is where I'm at.

These Powerpoints were mostly copied and pasted directly from the textbook, so they aren't anything magnifical but I want to share everything I can to help as many people as possible. I am definitely a lesson-stealer. I steal everything I can get my mouse on for the classroom. There's really not a lot to discuss, so I will just link it up.

Convex and Concave Polygons, HW Quiz
Angles in Polygons
Area of Squares and Rectangles, HW Quiz
Area of Triangles
Area of Parallelograms/Rhombus, Notes, HW Quiz
Area of Trapezoids
Area and Circumference of Circles, Notes
Area and Circumference Part 2, HW Quiz
Polyhedra, Notes, Quiz

My other geometry class is the one where we have skipped ahead. We started with simplifying square roots which came with mixed reviews. I thought this was something easy to start with but they struggled a little with it. I think part of it comes from the fact that I let them off too easy one too many days and now they think the year is over and they should not have to do any work. But we press on. Next up was special triangles 45-45-90 and the cheat sheet I printed on colored card stock paper and allowed them to use on quizzes. Did the same for 30-60-90. Cheat. After begging for help on Twitter, Kate, directed me to her blog post on introducing right triangle trig. I stole this from her and modified a tiny bit. I gave them this and literally had them draw nested triangles directly on the protractor, using the black line on bottom as there bottom of the triangle. They had a LOT of trouble with measuring and writing the measurements in the right ratio.  I put the answers in the chart so I would remember, so make sure you delete those if you use this. It took two class periods to accomplish this and they didn't come up with exact measurements, but they did realize they had the same answers as other classmates with the same angle. This Powerpoint demonstrates it pretty well I think.

From there we transitioned from bottom, vertical, hypotenuse to opposite, adjacent, hypotenuse and introduced sine and cosine. We practiced on this and I just lightly hit on tangent. I didn't even have a powerpoint, we just discussed if we had already used sine and cosine, the only other ratio left for tangent would have to be opposite over adjacent. From there we went to the inverse trig functions. Here's a worksheet. Then I totally stole this review golf game from ilovemath.org and edited a bit for my people. Last but not least, the assessment.. I first gave them a 10 question standardized quiz that they have 10 minutes to work on. Then they worked in a team to complete this quiz. I had quite a few students who did not finish and had to come in later to finish on their own. I even let them use notes and cheat sheets. I may have sucked it up but oh well now!

I know this is the linkiest post ever but I had to catch up and this is just how I roll.

Feel free to steal any and all of this, edit, ask questions, etc.

Somehow my timing got off in my weekly recaps so I'm just going to lump things together and hope it makes sense. It didn't really take me three weeks to do exponent rules but I've been lazy in my blogging and at least this gives me a general timeline to go by next year.

In my last post, I mentioned my exciting introduction to exponents. My 8th grade algebra class absolutely loved the activity and wanted me to hide post-it notes for the next week or so. My freshman algebra class thought it was stupid but went along with me. From there though, they really struggled with the concepts. I went to fast and when it came to applying the rules, they were lost. Figuring out the rule wasn't too bad but using them, especially more than one a time, was a disaster. So after uselessly practicing and practicing, I had to take a step back, break it down into separate lessons and separate days and take things one step at a time.

Now that I say that, I realize I never formally taught the division rule, but it was sprinkled throughout. Here is negative exponents rule and notes, multiplication properties, graphic organizer, and mini mini quiz. I also went here for homework worksheets and here for tons of review games.

After reading Riley Lark's post about team testing (literally like the day after I read it) I was intrigued and wanted to try it. So what had happened was....this was my original exponent quiz.  And consequently...I forgot to finish it. So I'm printing it out -.01 minutes before I'm actually giving the quiz when I panic at the sight of this backless monstrosity. Quick as lightning, I google exponent quiz and abracadabra- an experiment is born. I made this and passed it off as a team quiz. And apparently it was super easy because they asked if they could do every single problem for extra credit. I took a minute to think about this and decided that if they wanted to do extra work in order to completely convince me that they know what they are doing...I'm okay with that.

I like teaching graphing systems of linear inequalities.

I don't really know what it is except maybe I like the coloring. Anyway, here is my intro to graphing a linear inequality, which I am really proud of by the way. It's nothing exciting but it worked well and looks good, which is an excellent combination. Here's the link to the homework I assigned from a website I really like and use a lot.

From there, we moved to graphing systems of inequalities (here is the notes without the shading and whatnot). I stole these Powerpoints and modified them and I ABSO-FREAKIN-LUTELY love them. Whoever made them did an excellent job and made my life so much easier! Next time, I will use this idea for my intro to graphing a linear inequality. I was worried about this unit because I'm still not sure they grasp graphing lines (which is terrible, I know) but I think this actually helped them. Because graphing wasn't the main focus, it was a step they had to take to get to the finish line, so they didn't really notice it and did it by accident. Which is a great way to re-enforce those skills.

And because my kids needed those skills re-enforced, here is part 2 and part 2 notes. And homework again.

And the mini quiz.

I started systems of equations with graphing because it's the hardest, most useless, and the one I wanted to teach least. I did a bad job on it and they didn't really even understand the concept of 0 or infinite solutions. And when they tried graphing on their own, it went horribly. They suck at graphing. Everyone always got different answers. Here are two of the worksheets I used.

From there we went on to solving systems by substitution. I think this is the easiest method but the students struggled with it more than I expected. They were fine is y = 5 or x = -3 but when it got to y = x + 2 they panicked and made it harder than necessary. And oh lord when we got to x - y = 6 they were clueless. I always had to remind them to get x or y alone. They could do it when they heard that, but they always stared cluelessly when they first saw the problem.

From there, we went to elimination (I stole this ppt). They liked this much better and tried to use it on every problem by default. I don't think we ever got to the point where they could look at a problem and pick which method would work best. Here is a trashketball review game that I stole and modified and here is a quiz.

We're finishing up our unit on linear equations and ended it with scatter plots and the line of best fit. For some reason, I enjoyed this topic and we did several interesting activities involving them.I did this age of famous people activity suggested on Twitter by @Fouss but I redid it myself which I tend to always do. It worked pretty well and each student had different types of correlation which was helpful. We also did this spaghetti linear lab which I stole from http://www.ilovemath.org. It was interesting and I really liked it, but you need tons of pennies! One piece of spaghetti will hold up to 50-60 pennies and the experiment tests out 5 pieces of spaghetti. I liked this lab but the rate of change definitely was not constant. Some students' data caused the slope to be 0 which created some interesting results.

We then did my modified version of Dan Meyer's hot vs. crazy. Dan was brave enough to use himself but I don't date and most of my students know me personally enough that I just didn't even go there. So I had them pick people to judge for themselves. I could say that I was trying to promote ownership of the data but I was really just trying to promote them out of my business.

We wrapped it up with this powerpoint on correlation vs. causation which I owe all to @smallesttwine.She gave me some great, random ideas to use for examples. Some of my classes had a hard time deciding how to make up a scatter plot without any data. By the end, we were discussing more than graphing, but that was okay with me, and naturally lent itself to this worksheet I stole from a Google search but can no longer find the original link to. I thought about giving a quiz but decided I had already assessed the heck out of scatter plots.

Up this week we'll be starting solving systems of equations. Any ideas?

In the geometry world, I was lucky enough to find a great wiki from @tperran which has been extremely helpful. We started a new unit on polygons and I have easily adapted his powerpoints to fit my class better. They are more creative in the practice and examples given than I have been, and I appreciate that. Here are my adaptations on polygons, parallelograms, rectangles, rhombus, and trapezoids.

Up this week we'll be talking about kites and perhaps building our own rhombicosidodecahedrons.

The End.

In algebra, we reviewed point-slope form and went straight into standard form. I think they actually caught on pretty easily. I didn't do anything particularly exciting or magical but they liked standard form because it was only one step extra after they've found slope-intercept form. Fractions threw them for a loop, as usual. My eighth graders did much better with fractions than the older students, but they're advanced, so I guess that's expected.

I'm still mad that they have no clue what this had to do with real life. I know that's my fault though. They don't know how to predict things using linear equations or graphs. They might understand the whole slope and rate of change thing but that's the extent of it.

Geometry is just poopy and I dislike it very much. I'm about 75% more likely to give a free day in there than in any other class. I don't even want to type anything because then I would have to think about it and I just don't wanna.

This week I got fed up again with how boring my teaching is and just how blah school is in general. I guess it's just one of those weeks where it feels like nothing will ever change and even more than that, that there is no hope that things can change. I feel like change is just beyond me and it's too overwhelming too even consider.

I don't look forward to lesson planning or teaching this week.

Spirit Week. Homecoming Coronation. This was the obsession of my life this week, I only had class on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday was spent putting our backdrop together and decorating the stage for our "Evening on the Nile". Friday morning was spent rehearsing for the coronation and Friday afternoon was our spirit assembly with competitions between the classes. Our dress up days this week were Stoplight Day (wear green if you're single, yellow if it's complicated, and red if you're taken), Character Day (movie/tv/book), Generation Day (baby, toddler, adult, or old), Decade Day(any decade), and Class Color Day. Each class gets points for certain activities throughout the year and this week such as can food drive, penny for patients drive, breast cancer awareness drive, dressing up each day, and for the first time in years, a wall decorating competition.  Winner gets 4 points, second place 3, then 2, then 1. 


On Friday some of our class competitions were the duct tape wall, peanut butter popcorn toss, tug of war, jello eating contest, balloon pop, banana pass, how many will fit, scavenger hunt, egg walk, and 3-legged race. I could not have done all this on my own and I am so glad that I have my co-sponsor. The competitions got hectic because each class would come yell at us and defend they're class if something went wrong. I wanted to disqualify them every time that happened but my co-sponsor said we would have to disqualify everyone every time because that's just how it is.  


I'm so tired of our answer being "This is the way we always do it" or "We're never going to do this again". Why is not changing always the option? Either we do it like we always have or we aren't doing it all. Why don't we ask how we can help, how we make it easier, how can we better organize, how can we fix or improve it, instead of how can I do the least amount of work with the best possible outcome?  When is it okay to not change?

(steps down from soapbox)


In other news, I taught point-slope form to my algebra students and it went over decently. We'll see how much sense it really made on Tuesday when we try it again after a week. I basically presented it as a shortcut to getting to slope-intercept form when you don't have the intercept a.k.a. you have two points. I still have some people who struggle to understand the slope formula, which I don't understand how that is possible. But I plan on wrapping up this linear equation thing this week if at all possible and moving on. I feel like I'm making good progress throughout the material in my curriculum but I don't know how much they're truly learning. I know they like me and enjoy the class which at least is making them a tiny bit more favorable toward math but I don't know how much I'm really preparing them for the future standardized tests and harder math courses.


I wish I could just teach life. That's what I know about. That's what I'm good at. That's where I could make a difference. This whole math thing just makes things complicated.


Let's just say this...I will be 100% better in my second year as compared to my first. Is it wrong to feel like I'm betraying my older students because they have me at my crappiest?


In geometry, still trying to get through SSS, ASA, SAS, and AAS. I'm just...really bored with geometry. I guess I just want to skip ahead to reflections, transformations, and such because I enjoy artistic, creative things. I think they would enjoy it too but I can never be sure. I wish that I could make everything fun to learn.


If I could combine Dan's WCYDWT with math games and puzzles, I wonder if every topic in math could be taught in a more entertaining way. I know life is not about being entertained but I figure life is hard enough, why can't high school math be fun?

Today is a snow day and I should be doing lesson plans for tomorrow and next week. So I am blogging.

It's official, I'm halfway through my first year. My first Christmas break! I did nothing. Less than nothing. I stayed up all night and slept in all day. And...that's about it. I had big plans for wanting to redo the way I did...everything. And yet I still did nothing.

Wanting to do nothing has continued in to this week. I have algebra and geometry classes that are ahead of each other so letting one class catch up to the other means I get to use lesson plans I've already made. Score! It also means I have to make plans for the classes that are ahead. So only two preps and yet I can't even bring myself to do that. What is this sluggishness?

In geometry, we are starting to do congruent triangles. That seemed to go well and we just did SSS and SAS yesterday. I don't want to do proofs. We haven't really done any and I honestly don't see the point. On standardized tests, they're not going to have to write a proof and to me, if they know what the theorems mean and how to use that, then that's what is important. Also, I have just always hated proofs and I only used them in two classes in college and  I was pursuing math. To me, it's just not as important as getting through new material that we would normally miss out on.

In algebra, we are still doing slope and linear equations. I think I have drawn this out for so long that now they totally hate slope and we haven't even done point slope or standard form. Ouch. My real mistake is that I didn't set up the reason why slopes and lines are important. They have no idea how this pertains to real life. I was thinking about doing this spaghetti/penny lab but we haven't done line of best fit. And speaking of that, I thought it would make sense to do that at the end of everything but should that have been my intro into linear functions?

Next week is Spirit Week. I'm the Student Council sponsor so that means I will be spending all day Thursday and Friday constructing our background and decorating the stage for the coronation ceremony. Friday morning I will have coronation and rehearsal and Friday afternoon is our class competition assembly. So basically I only have Monday and Tuesday to actually have class. Spirit week is crazy in general because everyone is dressed up and excited and forget that this is school and we still have to do work. But it's even more hectic being the sponsor. Anything that is undecided or that goes wrong, I have to deal with. Oh nevermind, that's just a regular day at work. I say all that to say this...I will still not plan anything, especially ahead of time. And then we get out of school the 18th for MLKing day. This is just fueling my dispassion for planning right now. Oh lesson plans, I love that I hate you so.

I wanted to do a new seating arrangement and pondered many suggestions. I finally decided to the double E, which I will demonstrate here with x's.


x     x     x                    x     x     x

x                                              x

x     x     x                    x     x     x

x                                              x

x     x     x                    x     x     x


The idea is it is convenient for group work while at the same time giving me room to weave in and out easily between desks.

Mine turned into this:

x     x     x                   x     x     x     x

x     x                          
                                 x     x     x     x
x     x     x

x     x     x      

I just don't have enough room to do what I want to do. I have a stage in my room and a long honkin desk and my classroom is the end of an octagon so it's not square or rectangle, it's trapezoidalish.

Sometimes I think I would rather have tables than desks but I don't know if that would work out well either.

I have no desire to do lesson plans but there is no shortage of time for me to rearrange my room.

Ah, priorities.

Oh, finals week. I never want to meet you again.

I think I ranted and raved enough on Twitter to get my point across that I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to finals (and probably many other things too). But I would just like to pose one question to the universe: why is this not taught in college? Designing curriculum in general was not part of my education program. We talked about literacy and about out-of-date ways to use technology and diversity but we never learned how to design effective lessons, how to write your own assessments, how to use those assessments to improve instruction, or basically anything important. I did learn the useless format of a Madeline Hunter lesson plan, but that's the extent.

Anyway, things did not go well for finals week. We had evens on Thursday and odds on Friday. My plan was to review Monday-Wednesday, test on Thursday and Friday, week done. Not so easy. I had no idea how to create a final or how to write a review for said final. I am the only algebra and geometry teacher in my school so there is no such thing as a department final. So I did what I do best: stole it off the Internet. I then tried to modify it to more closely match what I've actually taught. This started out somewhat okay. Once I finished the Algebra Exam, I wrote out review questions that seemingly matched the test. Then, and here comes my mistake, I made the Geometry review based on our old tests. Sounds good, right? The thing is, the review was nothing like the test. Students were confident because the review was exactly what they had been doing all year but when it came to the test, they were nothing alike at all. I made the test multiple choice for all the wrong reasons. a. I thought it would be easier for them b. I knew it would be easier for me. c. That's what everyone else was doing. I have since learned my lesson.

My original thought was to make the test like all the past ones but have them show work on the test and write answers on a separate sheet. Then, I could easily grade the answers while simply glancing to make sure they showed their work. But alas, I succumbed to the many pressures.

I gave my first Geometry test on Thursday. It was a disaster. Apparently while I was doing my final edit the night before, I deleted a bunch of diagrams and drawings. I had to find the original tests I stole them from before I could then draw them on the chalkboard. The test was 50 questions and the students had 1 hour. Only one person even got close to being done. The rest didn't even make it to number 30. I didn't take into account how much work they would have to do to even be able to choose a, b, c, or d.

I edited the test for Friday. I cut out 13 questions completely and edited some of the remaining ones. That didn't work either. Students complained this test looked nothing like the ones we had been doing and they actually preferred working out the problems rather than multiple choice.

It went so badly that I was near tears and the students were the ones consoling me. They said, "It's alright Ms. Miller, it's only your first time." "We still like you." "It wasn't that bad." "We just needed more time." "Maybe we're just the slow kids."

Algebra exams went better. No real disasters or complaints. At least until I graded them. Why are grades so much lower? My usual students landed in the lower 80s and that trend seemed constant. I had to curve grades in every class and I did not like it. It felt very unfair and un-meaningful to try to pull their grades out of thin air. But as some of my twitter friends pointed out, it's more accurate to give a grade based on my professional judgement of their past grades than to assign a grade from one flawed test. I am just not happy with assessments in general.

How can we objectively measure something that isn't objective? I don't get assessed like this in real life. Sure, I get two formal evaluations a year. But most of my assessments come from results. Are my students test scores improving? How many students are failing my class? How many referrals have I written? How do I treat students? How much of a team player am I? Those are the things I am assessed on but what difference do those results make? I can be a bad teacher and get the same pay, just with different treatment from my colleagues. I can be an excellent teacher and get the same pay, and better treatment from (some) colleagues. Are these meaningful assessments of my abilities? What are meaningful assessments of my students abilities?

I always hear about you know you've learned something when you can teach it to others. I know that's true in myself, because I would never be able to create tests and lessons without truly knowing how to do the problems myself. The thought of having students create problems and such is very intriguing to me. What if my assessment was to give the students an answer and they had to create a problem that resulted in that answer? That prospect truly excites me. I know it has to jump at least 2 levels of Blooms compared to the questions I'm asking now. I love to create and design and it seems that's what the rest of us cell-phone-customizing-Youtube-watching-Myspace-layout-making-picture-editing-outfit-accessorizing people are about too. How can creative design become my assessment process? How do these assessments affect their lives or mine?

I don't have much to say this week.

It was a confusing mixed up week with students grieving and services being held and things being canceled.

I should probably be saying some deep, meaningful things about life but I got nothing.

I tried one lesson with my geometry class about circumcenters but the whole thing failed. I couldn't even make a circumcenter on my own.

Algebra- still trying to wrap up graphing and finding slope and intercepts. I may be taking too long on this but I've decided if they don't learn anything else, they will learn linear functions. We've done the slope formula on every warm up for probably 4 weeks in a row now.

Then the week went downhill from there.

Today was our first home basketball game and so we had a pep rally/karaoke contest. It was super fun! The students weren't shy or timid and just sang their hearts out. Everyone needed a good laugh and it was just fun. At the end we sang Lean On Me and all the students stood up, leaning and singing, just like a movie. Then we did the Cupid Shuffle and it was like High School Musical 3.5 up in there. I gave up any semblance of sanity the rest of the afternoon and spent time karaoke-ing in my room, watching students have rap and dance battles, and the kids tried to teach me how to jerk.

Next week is finals. I'm a little nervous. I never took one in high school and so the idea of writing one is somewhat foreign. Other teachers do multiple choice in order to make it quick to grade. But I've been doing free response all year so it seems weird to change now. I'm thinking about doing some matching or multiple choice for vocab and then free response for actual problems. I will be spending the weekend creating that and a study guide. Another teacher said she gives a study guide with all the problems worked out by her. I think I will let the students work on the problems on their own and then give out the answers for final studying. How many questions do you put on your final? Do you pull problems straight off of earlier tests? Do you do any bonus/extra credit/anything different?

I was tempted to just skip week 15 but my love for order would not allow it. We only had school on Monday and Tuesday which was lovely.My geometry classes quizzed on Monday and I honestly have no idea what my Algebra students did. On Tuesday we watched a Thanksgiving video that I made myself. I just got on youtube and found funny Thanksgiving clips from commercials and clean tv shows like the Cosby Show, Friends, and even some from MadTV that weren't bad. I figured the students would make fun of me but I'm so over that at this point. They did seem to like it and they laughed and that was the point so yay. My mentor teacher always shows the Charlie Brown movie for every holiday which is a good idea. I'd steal the idea but we have the same students and that just wouldn't work out.


So basically the whole week was planned on the fly. Which was....sort of refreshing. Results weren't what I wish they were but it felt kind of good. I did a lot of packets where students had to work together and that sort of thing. I like it but I don't know how well they do. I also am not sure how much they learn. I think I suck at assessments. I hate hate hate to put this out there but I try to be transparent and accept criticism. I tend to put things on assessments that we haven't actually done, but that I assume they should be able to do. It's like I know that's wrong but I don't know why. If I teach the 2 and 2, shouldn't they be able to put 2 and 2 together? Why doesn't that work? With each passing day, I see more and more the need for a concept-based assessment system. But I am afraid to see how many students wouldn't make it through. Also, I think @iMrsF (but I'm not sure) mentioned on Twitter the idea of students having the options of what items to complete in a unit and I think I love the idea. It would probably be a ton of work for me, I don't even know how I would go about developing that. But if students had a checklist of objectives for each unit, they could choose which activities to complete for each objective and still take the same assessment. Or different assessments too I suppose? If I could design that, I would design it in a way where students get immediate feedback and some type of creative outlet. They need to develop ownership and pride in their progress. I don't know a better way to do that than to have audience approval. Anyway the point of my story was that on Friday I gave a quiz that was the same type of questions as the packets we did in class and scores ranged from 97 down to 40. I blamed the multiple choice format but I'm sure the real culprit is not understanding the material with a dose of not having enough time to learn and apply it.

Geometry, eh I don't know what to say. My two top students recently got expelled and so now I am down to only 8 students who could care less and don't want to be there. As far as lessons go, I just don't know. I heard the comments that my quizzes are 'so easy' and I'm not sure how to take that. Is it a good thing because they match what we do in class? Or a bad thing because..well I don't know why. Material to learn should be challenging but if already learned then maybe assessment should be easy? Hmm.

I sort of got sick in the midst of this week but that was because I was getting very little sleep. So what probably was a simple sinus weather-changey thing turned into a 4-day-hoarse-voice-stopped-up-then-runny-nose-and-cough thingy. I survived with cute scarves and mint chocolate hot chocolate. ;) But this was just an exhausting week.

Things definitely are looking up as Thanksgiving break gets closer and closer and then the ultimate...Christmas break! Then I will officially be halfway done with my first year! I also read somewhere that after winter things get better with the students and I so want to believe that. But I can't actually say that our weather here has been wintry. It will be in the 30s one night and 70s the next day. I never know if I should wear shorts or a parka. But ironically, the temperature in my classroom never changes. Hmm...

This week was full of adventures including a 12:00 dismissal on Wednesday,  a tornado/fire drill that lasted 45 minutes on Thursday, standardized testing on Friday morning, our faculty potluck dinner, and the opening day of shot gun season for deer hunting. Goodness, so many distractions and time out of class. But I'm not complaining.

In algebra, we are forging ahead with this whole slope concept. I've told them we are not going to leave it until they get it. I've presented it now three different ways: counting the rise over run, using the slope formula, and finding the change in y over the change in x from an x-y table. Now we are moving onto graphing in slope-intercept form. It's been a challenge but I think they're actually getting the hang of it. I'm pretty sure they have the slope formula down which is a plus. They took a practice ACT test type thing on Friday and a couple students mentioned they knew how to find the slope so if I've done nothing else right, I know I've at least taught them that one important concept.

In geometry, we practiced generating our own Pythagorean triples as well as learning the converse of the Pythagorean theorem. Actually, I think I taught this concept backwards so it's a good thing I didn't quiz them over it yet. Hey, I'm still learning here!

Classroom management has gotten somewhat better but fifth hour still makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out. One day this week, I literally had one student paying attention and taking notes. I gave a homework assignment that two people turned in. The other students were just sitting around having casual conversation as if I was not even in there. I literally had to face the SMART board with my back to the class while the tears burned in my eyes. How's that for emo? But again I gotta keep pushing through and not hold yesterday against them today.

One super duper trooper encouraging thing did happen this week. My third hour class went from 5 students to 2 and so they went to an online curriculum. My class sort of converted to a study hall and so one of my algebra students has been coming for extra help. She's more motivated than I expected and we literally work through problems for the entire hour. She knows when she needs one more time to practice and when she gets it, she gets it. That in itself is so valuable. Anyway, I preview the material with her a little but so that by the time seventh hour rolls around she is answering questions and participating more than ever. Her previous test scores have been in the 50-70 range but this week she pulled a 95%. She gets it! Hey Mikey, she gets it! I wish there was some way to give every student this kind of one-on-one instruction.

Speaking of third hour, how the heck do I give my students a grade in the gradebook when they do all their work online? Do I give them points for working every day, points for every module mastered, points for tests passed the first time, or what? This is new territory for me.

Also, how do you deal with amount of information shared with you by the students? I have a handful of students who come to me and share these things with me, and...what do you do with that? I try not to ask questions too much because I don't want to be perceived as the nosy teacher who gossips and gets in everyone's business. Do I confront students about things that I hear? Do I act like I know nothing? Do I give advice or just listen? I'm on drama overload right now.

I figured out this week that I need to put grades in on a daily basis for my warm ups and homework assignments. I've been doing them weekly, out of 20 points or whatever. But the thing is, if students are absent (and they are, for days at a time) then they don't do the warm ups. They can make up homework but not warm ups. If I was good about collecting and grading absentee work then I would just have them make up the warm up. But I'm not good about that. I've started grading in class assignments and that hurts the students that are absent. So I realized I need to start dating the work I leave for them to pick up so both of us know when it is due. Also, maybe I should save my SMART board presentations with my writing on them so students can use those to teach themselves. The problem with that is I don't write in a way that is so easy to follow, another thing I'm learning.

Am I the only person that feels like college professors are somehow more inspiring and life-changing than any other teacher? How do they get to be so profound and awesum? Do I need to get a Master's Degree to instantly become deep, mysterious, and all-around magnanimous? Inquiring minds want to know.

I don't believe in superstitious things but this was my thirteenth week of teaching that ended on Friday the thirteenth and was decidedly the week of my first year slump. Last week ended badly and the trend continue this week. By Tuesday I was nearly in tears and was on the edge of disintegrating the entire day. All my students noticed and thought they were to blame. So I let them think it. I can't really even explain what happened. I felt lost and stuck at the same time. Although when you're lost, you have no idea where you are. And when you're stuck, you're absolutely sick of where you are. I was both.

Here is an excerpt from an email that I sent, begging for help.

"I have not been strict in my classroom management and now they get away with things. My problem is fairness. If a student I really like does something wrong I won't write them up. If a student I don't like as much does it, then I want to write them up. That's not fair so I don't write anyone up at all. It's more than one or two students though. It's the general consensus of the class- they decide when to pay attention, when to be quiet, when to participate. I'm not in control of any of it. The only reason the classroom isn't ridiculously crazy is that at least they like me. If they didn't, I know it could be even worse. I have already earned the friendship of my students, probably too much of it, so it's not that I'm worried about them liking me. It's that I want to be known as a fair teacher but I've become fair in such a way that no one gets into trouble. I made myself write up two kids on Monday but that didn't change much come Tuesday. It's a start I suppose. I spent all day Monday and Tuesday looking mad and just not talking very much. The kids knew I was mad but didn't know why and so just kind of left it alone. In my anger, I tend to clam up and say nothing. I don't yell but I start to make sarcastic comments and just cut people short. Immature, I know, and not a good way to teach. In addition to classroom management troubles, I don't like my teaching very much. My lectures and guided notes aren't getting through to the kids. Class is boring and I know it and so I don't blame their behavior. I'm tired of lecture, notes, homework. I've tried some group things and they participate better but they aren't learning, just copying the smart kid. Their recent quiz grades have been low and every Monday, it's like they've been brainwashed to everything they've ever known previously. I am just battling feelings of being ineffective. There are only 2 math teachers at my school. I teach algebra and geometry and he teaches the rest. I get so much support and encouragement on twitter but it's still not the same as having someone who knows my kids, my admin, my colleagues, my community, and me. I have complete freedom to do whatever I want but in that freedom is lack of critique and feedback. I have literally nothing to build on and I create (or steal) my own lessons every day and even I don't like them. lol There are such better ways and ideas and projects out there to do but I can't do them at this point. I don't have the time or support to plan and implement them on my own. I feel like I am in this cycle that won't end until next year and yet I can't possibly keep going this way for the rest of the year. And that is how I feel about that."

I got tons of support and advice from my co-workers and my Twitter friends. I think it was just a low that I had to reach. Thankfully, Wednesday was Veteran's Day and we were out of school. I definitely needed a day to sleep in, chill out, and get myself together. I have to be honest and hurt my pride a bit here. I didn't think it could happen to me. Teaching is my destiny, all I've ever wanted to do, everything I've dreamed of and no one as good as me would ever have to deal with failure. Right? Now get off the pedestal and deal with reality. This crap is hard. You can't do it alone. Some of the best advice I got was to not let the bad students bring me down. But when I do get down, I have my twitter friends to pull me back up. That made me realize that I've got to keep trying every day. Not that I was ever going to quit or give up but I slowed down and let my thoughts get the best of me. I let perfection get the best of me. Life doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful and I don't have to be perfect to be effective. I'm here and I'm doing this, which is more than I can say for a lot of people. I've already achieved my life goal and I'm almost halfway through the hardest year of my career. It should be peachy from here on out, right? ;)

So Thursday comes. I taught a great lesson in Algebra on finding slope from a table. Even though I made it up in less than 20 minutes the night before, it turned out even better than I expected. The students made connections on their own and it was one of the first times I literally saw the lightbulb come on. That rocked. My day got off to a great start! I felt like I could do this again, that I was where I'm meant to be and hey, I'm pretty dang cute too! |(Sorry, just wanted to keep the ball rolling with all this positive thinking.)

I also came up with a new classroom management technique. I hate the cussing. I don't cuss and I absolutely detest it and think it is the epitome of ignorance. So I started the gift jar. Now if you cuss in my room, it's going to cost you. $.25 per word. If they can't pay today, their name goes up on the IOU list on the chalkboard. If they don't pay it the next day, it's a referral to the office for them. I told them that the gift jar money would go to the assistant principal who deals with discipline. Obviously no student wants that. lol Actually, my principal recommended I not do this because parents would get mad at me taking money from the students. My view, albeit a wrong one, is this: don't cuss. It's a rule. You're breaking it. I'm giving the students a second chance. It's their choice. Quarter or two hours of after school detention. Better yet, watch your mouth. They can't argue (although they do) because I should write them up the first time and so I'm doing them a favor. It has been 100% easier to enforce because I am offering them a second chance. If they refuse it, I'm off the hook for feeling guilty. Plus, it's fun because the students catch each other and make each other pay when I don't even hear. I just go along with it. The students asked if I would use the money to give them a party but I pointed out that I did not want to reward them for dirty language. So then they decided I should keep it for myself. :) Hey, a girl's got to keep her options open!

In other news, I'm getting to the point of geometry where my students are learning stuff they haven't previously known. Which makes it interesting and frustrating at the same time. They get frustrated with the struggle and shut down while I want to prolong the struggle and get them interested in thinking. Baby steps.

That'll do week 13, that'll do.

So I decided that I tried to cram entirely too much material into last week, and a short week at that. Absolute value equations, inequalities, and solving functions for a variable? A little bit crazy. The test was so complex that it took me a week to grade them. And I had to force myself through each one. Note to self: never do that again!

I was looking forward to this week, a new topic and only one: slope. I started out by just teaching rise over run. We used shapes drawn on a coordinate plane in geogebra and counted the squares to find the rise over run for each piece. I gave a creative (yet stolen) assignment for homework that worked out pretty well. The next day we transitioned into finding slope using the slope formula. I had an awesome lesson thanks to @sweenwsweens! I, Elissa Miller, rapped in front of my class. You literally would have to see it to believe it. But since you can't, you just need to check out his version or just steal the lesson and do it your self. It was empowering to say the least. I explained to the students that my point was that to make the slope formula memorable because it is something they will use over and over again. And after hearing my rapping ability (or lack thereof) I think they truly believed that could be my only possible reasoning.

Next, I tried one of my fellow blogging buddy's methods. Her math department recently redid their entire math curriculum based on packets called skill activities. It starts out with review activities which lead into the main focus skills and ends with secondary skills. While it looks like students are just filling out worksheets, these teachers are truly following Dan Meyer's mantra to "be less helpful" and further to "create crisis". Students work in groups or partners and teachers literally don't help until they have struggled to work things out or if the entire class is struggling. Teachers circle around to remediate and guide and students present problems at the end of class. I attempted this method and the students reacted strongly to the fact that I wouldn't help them. I surveyed the class and they all knew why I did it, they just didn't like it. We compromised and decided I would lecture less and they could do partner/group work more with more help from me. A little bit more anyway. I was disappointed with one class- I gave them one full class period and even went over the answers and they couldn't even bring themselves to write down the answers.

In geometry I tried a couple different worksheets dealing with triangles and proving that the formula for area of a triangle is derived from the formula for area of a rectangle. But due to extenuating circumstances, that was an epic fail. We worked on measuring with rulers and protractors and finding perimeter and area as well as classifying types of triangles. I decided to do something I've been wanting to try for a while: individual assessment (for lack of a better name). I had each student come to my desk and work out a quiz individually. They had to show me they knew how to use a ruler, protractor, perimeter formula, area formula, Pythagorean Theorem, and classification names. It taught me a lot because students were more cautious but more dependent on my reaction to their work as a way of deciding what they really knew. I doubt I will ever do this again, it took me 3 days to get through a class of 10 students. Maybe next time just one question, quick and dirty?

Monday in Algebra we did absolute value inequalities. Tuesday was solving formulas and functions for a variable. Wednesday was a short day and I only saw 3 classes so we played @ddmeyer's Estimating Age game which was super fun and mathematical. (His version, my version) Back to work on Thursday with Review Bingo for Friday's quiz. For some reason, missing that Wednesday just made all my students lose their minds. The review Bingo game went decently but that's mainly because I phrased it as vocabulary. There were problems to solve and they did okay, but come Friday, they completely lost their minds. We always review before a quiz and this week was no different. But for each type of problem, a large group of the class would claim having no idea how to even start the problem or what on earth they should do. It was a Friday, they were frustrated, I was frustrated, and we both kind of pushed each other to make it through and get it done. Some classes did not even finish by the end of the hour. After making the key, this 'quiz' ended up being worth 70 points when the biggest one previously was 40 points. I wrote myself a note on the quiz to NEVER USE THIS AGAIN IN LIFE.

I didn't realize until I attempted to grade these quizzes that I just tried to cram entirely too much difficult material in the space of a few days with an early dismissal thrown in the mix. I did not give the students enough time to for the concepts to sink in and make sense before moving to a new topic, related or not. I just left it where it was and didn't worry about remediation because we will be hitting these again in chapter 6 when we are solving and graphing systems of equations and inequalities. I thought the solving functions for a variable would be a great intro into linear equations and slope and whatnot. Which it would have been, considering I hadn't previously made their brains implode.

Geometry this week has kind of just been an epic fail and I don't really want to remember it or talk about it.

That's all I have to say about that.