Do the impossible
Posted in class design on Dec 3rd, 2009
I teach a “mathletics” class where we do mostly mathcounts problems. I wasn’t happy with the way it was structured last trimester, because kids generally weren’t engaged as much as I would have liked. So this trimester I re-structured things. I keep a spreadsheet of team points, it’s a running total. Today we completed a [...]
Posted in algebra 1, assessment, geometry on Nov 18th, 2009
If you are assigning scores to questions on a test, I used to make hard questions worth more points than easy questions, because I thought that they should carry a greater reward for correct answers. This caused problems because many students who had a decent level of understanding of material were not getting the questions [...]
Posted in Differentiation, algebra 1, geometry on Sep 20th, 2009
One of the things I’d like to do this year is engage more students at their level. Perhaps try to have more class time where there are multiple activities/groupings simultaneously. The main idea behind this is that my one class, one-idea, one-option norm is almost guaranteed to miss the sweet spot for low and high [...]
Posted in algebra 1, class design, geometry on Sep 8th, 2009
Unless student exploration and problem solving are the task at hand, give the kids access to correct answers for every activity they complete. I find that one of the biggest differences between the way that I complete problems and the way most of my students do is that I check the answer using the back [...]
Posted in class design, everything else on Apr 28th, 2009
I’ll take the bait, and put out a math lesson plan. I suppose its better late than never, though I may have missed out on the discussion for this one. Title of the Song: Iteration, Efficiency (or lack-thereof) and Counting Combinations, when it really maters. Objectives: Students are able to apply iteration (that they discover [...]
Posted in algebra 1, class design, technology on Mar 31st, 2009
Last year, I finally resolved to end the “wandering eyes” problem during tests. It seemed like there was no way to ensure that nobody would sneak a peek during tests, and when kids had the same test they would easily be able to cop an answer from their neighbor and it would be really really [...]
Posted in algebra 1, class design, geometry, technology on Feb 14th, 2009
I stayed home yesterday because of and woke up again today with a sore throat. So, being the fish that I am, I swam around on the internets for a while. I don’t remember how I stumbled on it, but I ended up at Kirby Urner‘s 4d solutions and read through quite a bit of [...]
Posted in class design on Dec 16th, 2008
I feel like lecture mode is taking over my classes. I’m using worksheets not activities to drive student engagement in the math and that stinks. I think a paradigm shift from worksheet driven class to activity driven class is in order. In a worksheet driven class you spend a lot of time trying to set [...]
Posted in class design on Dec 11th, 2008
I’ve been planning a lot lately more than I should, especially considering how effective it has been. While planning I: update the class websites, look at the material and write my objectives, then I look for sets of problems that work as review for the warm up, sets of problems to do in class and [...]
I don't speak for my school district.
