Finding great activities - an unending priority

Always finding the best way to teach math is an unending battle.  Finding ways for the students to truly discover high level math concepts is a difficult endeavor.

This past summer I was lucky enough to be part of a grant with UW-Platteville on STEM (along with 4 kick-butt co-workers).   We have done a number of things as a team to help make our school a better problem solving place.  One thing from the summer course was to do a STEM assignment in one of our classes - tape it, keep student data and reflect upon it.  I figured why not post it here too.

My project was to use ziggurats to help drive summation understanding.  It is a project I took directly from the summer grant.   And I am thankful that I was able to have the materials given to me versus me having to create the materials.  Making projects during the school year itself is a tough mission; that is why getting projects during the summer is so important.

So the project had plane views of different ziggurats (pyramids) which I combined with set of blocks where I wanted the students to calculate the number of blocks in 7 layers of zigguarat, but more importantly to create a summation that would represent the total too.

There were three designs, it was a challenge for the students.  Each group quickly calculated the number of blocks in the ziggurat, but to turn that into a summation proved more challenging.  Especially when the summation had to have an odd number in the sequence!  (It went 1 squared, 3 squared, 5 squared, and so on).

I have taught Pre-Calculus for a decade and this was the first time where I truly saw the "a-ha" moment with all my students working on summations.  And unsurprisingly it is the first time I have taught summations any way besides lecture and practice.  So why hadn't I done it?  Plain and simple - just time.

Finding and creating projects is time consuming, and I just had not had it before this grant - that is why professional development like this and time in our district is so important.  It is important for us to remember and ask for the time, without making and taking time we end up in a routine.  And that routine will rarely lead to improved teaching.  And small successes are the stepping stones to larger things.

Our school's larger thing now is our commitment to have all our students get a hand-on STEM experience - we do that by using homeroom time working outside of a class and a grade.  We were able to do this through a grant and community support and the results are looking great (STEM progress video).  It all starts with small steps - like the STEM class at UW-Platteville.

And while time is important, activities come from being fearless also.  I remind myself that sometimes I just need to make the time to try something new.  I need to say if it does not work it is okay, try, revise.  I just need to make finding great learning opportunities a priority.

Curriculum - searching for the grail.....

So how do you select curriculum in a small district?  Form a committee?  There is only a few of us in the entire district (Grades:  4K-5, MS, HS, Admin -- ~7 to 8 of us).  So as the HS teacher, the only HS teacher it feel likes it starts with me.  So like any other school you ask for books and start searching through them, and finding what?

I hope for the book that helps our school make the students better problem solvers and learners, ready for whatever they do upon graduation.  And I am constantly thinking about what that should look like in a textbook.  How does that text book progress from Kindergarten to Calculus?  (or 4K versus Kindergarten)

I am feeling like I am searching for the holy grail, I need the theme song to Indiana Jones just to survive it.  I am sent books that are over a 1000 pages long (1300 pages/180 days --- 7.2 pages per day -- CRAZY!) -- I know that I don't have to teach the whole book - but we (the students and I) get to carry them around all the same.

I have looked at integrated and non-integrated, CCSS aligned, ACT College and Career Readiness models.....  And it leads me to one common belief, it is what we do in the room, not which book we have that matters most.

It is how we make sure they understand concepts versus procedures.  It how we lead them in problems solving, encouraging/modeling persistence.

The curriculum is not that important, the teaching is...      except....

Except I really need the text book series to have assessments and workbooks - because with so many different preps there is no time to make everything I need.  (Which is why I am scared of CPM, great book - but I don't feel I can prep for it, not enough hours in the day).  I currently make a lot of my own assessments with projects, but sometimes I need to use book assessment or worksheet as a base for a class (then just add a question or two, cross one off, etc).  This modification process is what keeps me sane (or at my present level of insanity).

So as a small district searching for texts you would figure someone would have made good assessments that use high level skills and practices -- cause big or small we all want that resource.  You wish for assessments that would be awesome (I mean they are written by the authors!),  But often they are the same "pump & dump" - little different than the 10 plus year old texts I have -- except they cost $100 each.

Perhaps I want too much, but I will keep combing the desert in search of that text book series that matches my school's vision.