Juda STEM Day - 2015-16 Robot Mazes

Wanted to share our STEM video, really proud of what we are doing at Juda!

Moving away from graded projects can be scary, but it worth it!

Teach 15 Reflect 4

So how do we make students really reinforce concepts and ideas we spend our precious class time showing, leading and/or guiding?  How do we make sure they are reflecting on the lesson objective, using the practices  - that they are making connections?  It is an interesting question - I often ask how do I make sure my students understand the concept and embrace their learning - but perhaps I should be asking how do I make students reflect?

Thinking about student reflection was part of a speech from Naomi Harms at a professional event I recently attended - she spoke about the need to only do 15 minutes of teaching, lecturing, practicing, working, etc and then 4 minutes where the students reflect.  That reflection can happen any number of ways - but the key is to allow that time.    And I am now working hard to set up my daily teaching to make sure students are reflecting, and that they are really embracing their learning.

It may seem like a modest change, but after reflecting on it I am hopeful that it can have a large impact in my students.  I think this reflection can have a large payback - the investment is small, about 8 minutes per period - but if students can make their connections in those few minutes then the impact will be much greater than 8 minutes of more lecture, or more practice, or more anything,

Seriously only 4 minutes reflection for 15 minutes of attention, seems too easy.  But when I think about myself - even now as an adult I struggle to pay attention and connect ideas when a lecture or speech is more than 15 minutes straight.  I am shifting my classroom, I had provided time to make connections but never said "Reflect on this," or "Discuss this with a partner," etc.

So I am going to add it and see how the first month goes.  Nothing ventured.....
Finally I just want to thank Juda, JAM'M, WTI and Morgridge Family for making the conference possible - hearing Naomi is making me think about my teaching and work on making it better.  So it was a good day.

Thanks to Forward Together - Green Energy Initiative, Solar

Forward Together just put together a little PR video about the grant that allowed Juda to install Phase 2 of their solar array (all project management done by students).  The applicant has to be a teacher on the grant so I was too much of a main character, when the students should have been, but it came out great (outside of how old I look).

Link to WEA Trust Video

Again - every school, every student should experience this during their K-12 schooling -- it can be done.  It is problem solving, it is real world.  It is just selecting great projects over good curriculum.

Commencement Speech 2014

This year I had the honor of being asked by the graduating class of 2014 to give their commencement speech. And the "techie, progressive" math teacher did not record it.  (Hopefully someone with forward me a copy and I will get it on youtube).

But I think it would be good to capture the highlights of the quick speech.  And the easiest way is to give the major ideas,  I speak from an outline, so there is no speech to post.

I welcomed the class and audience and joked about being memorable - which is difficult because I don't remember who spoke at mine or what was talked about.  Heck, I spoke at my HS graduation and I don't remember what I said!

I talked about change being a good thing and this success, their graduation, was just the start of something else, but this is only change to them - others have done the "change."  And they were ready, mostly, and more important than book skills - they knew how to tackle projects and could do stuff - through three Ps -- Passion, Problem Solving & Perseverance.

I spoke about those skills and honing them and not accepting the status quo.  I requested them to be "Law abiding, Good Mannered, High Character, Golden Rule Following Troublemakers."  I want them to cause trouble to the status quo.  I want them to make real change in the world.

Moving on - that is a change, but I want them to shake the foundations of the status quo and make real changes.  We talked about Juda's green initiative, talked about not accepting - questioning.  I explained that my request was difficult, but ended on a quote from Archimedes.

I explained that Juda Community and school has given them a fulcum --  their education, abilities and the 3Ps.  And that the graduates were lever. And as Archimedes said: 

               "Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum and I shall move the world."

I ended with "You can too."

How I started a big STEM project.

Here is a clip (made by one of my students) of me addressing a question on how I started our large Green Initiative STEM project. 

Just in the past week a group of students worked on mapping our school for energy saving opportunities beyond lighting.  Now they are working on gantt charts to define their deliverables.  It really is exciting to watch them take charge. 

Line Week - Day 4

Day 4 of  Line Week; today we practiced identifying slope and intercept from graphs!  First a side note, I usually test each Friday - I consider this to have a couple of benefits - one it allows me to pull lots of review problems all year long not allowing any topic to lose mastery (cause if you don't use it you'll lose it), two it gives me needed chair time.  When I teach I am up with the class, their doing, I am guiding, discussing, sometimes showing; Friday tests allow me to plan, grade and handle whatever is pressing (today it was ordering MS math team t-shirts). 

So I broke with tradition a little and shortened Algebra's test so we could work on identifying slope and y-intercept as a class.  We plotted a few lines, discussed slope and reinforced the last few days (then a "half-test").  Day 5 is Monday - wrap up day -- I like that it will happen after a weekend, it lets us review and discuss the concepts again.

The project over the next week is create two real world problems and graphs, one representing a positive slope situation and one with a negative slope.  I would expect problems like "John had $20 in his wallet and did Frankie's paper route for $5 per day, how much money does John have after five days?"  with a graph. It is a start (also all my projects are done until correct - so if it takes multiple revisions cause a student does have understanding they will work at it til they get an acceptable "product"  - like a workplace).    The real challenge is to take the next step, perhaps Line week 2, where we take data and decide if it is linear (something to add to Geometry?).  

So not a bad week, next week we will practice and I will assign "line homework" next week.  I never assign homework of the concept we are learning -- homework is practice of "known" things.  So even during "Line Week" we did not graph lines outside of class.  They practiced factoring....

Til Day 5.....

Line Week - Day 3 -- Identifying slope & y-intercept

So today was day 3 of "Line Week."  (insert proper theme music here)  We were in the computer lab again using our self-made excel sheets to graph different lines and look for relationships (see day 2 post).  We tried a Jeopardy game where I graphed a line and we identified the slope & y-intercept.  It worked okay with me graphing on the computer and projecting for the class, but did not work well when the students broke into groups of 2 and 3 to do with themselves.  We worked through it, but it is not something I will do again.

We then discussed a graph about money and days!  I graphed the line y = 3x + 12 in the first quadrant, with the x-axis being days and the y-axis being money.  They quickly saw the y-intercept of $12 and the end total at day 7 of $33.  I then asked how much money I was paid --- and the shout of $33 with quickly yelled! Then I got to say "Nope, why?"   That was awesome!  We worked our way thru the problem - starting with the slope of $3 per day, or the fraction $3/day.  That led to the discussion that $12 was the amount of money I had prior to the seven days, leading to the answer of $21 for 7 days.  This was a great entry into the mx and b having to be like terms to add discussion.

I asked for units on m, x and b --- without much effort the class was all able to explain the units of m-$/day, x - days and b - $.  I then worked thru mx -- $/day times days -- which is $!  The same as b!   That then lead to the  discussion of what is y = mx + b.

y is the vertical point, m is RISE/RUN (from our day 1 work with the stairs), x is RUN and b is a RISE.

So y = mx + b is RISE = RISE/RUN*RUN + RISE, where the RUN cancels, so RISE = RISE + RISE!  Like terms.  This lead into a couple minutes of talking about how we should think of m.  Again big ideas and fairly good returns.

As always - when the really good learning started it seemed the class ended, but will pick up with Day 4 tomorrow and Day 5 on Monday!  A weekend will allow for some good review of the previous week on Monday.....