Monday, July 23, 2018

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Speed Dating

When I first found the MTBoS, one of the first things I heard about what "speed dating." Perhaps it's just what I remember because it seemed so out of place in a classroom.

For whatever reason, in the years that followed, I have never used the structure. Last week was our annual week of mission trips and life skills classes. That meant returning to eight days of classes this week and next before Spring Break. Our factoring test will happen right before we leave, so I needed something to fill these few days with practice since we did all of our learning before the week of trips.

Enter: speed dating. I pulled together an assortment of factoring problems (GCF, grouping, trinomials, special cases) and wrote each on a quarter sheet of paper. We set the tables in parallel rows and had the students on the interior rotate each round. By my third class, I added in conversational aspects where they greeted their partners and asked them a random question. We are a small school where most of our students know one another, but I was so pleased when these questions helped create relationships between my students who talk a lot and my students who rarely engage with anyone else. They spent ten seconds sharing something about their life (favorite color, plans for spring break, which trip they went on last week), and it promoted really positive conversation. I don't often work on that relationship building because our general school culture provides so much time for it outside of class, but experience made me want to do more.

With regard to the activity itself, the ownership students took over their learning was huge. I had students telling me that they felt like they really understood factoring! They were so proud of themselves. By the end, they were standing up next to each other showing each other how it worked whenever their partner was stuck. For as much as I've harped on them helping each other, with this structure, they really did it!



Sunday, January 28, 2018

Assessment in Desmos

We had a wacky fall semester. Because of some construction, we started later than usual, then we lost a week to Hurricane Irma, and before I knew it, I had to bump two topics I usually teach in the fall (systems of linear inequalities and absolute value functions) to the spring.

As I was looking through activities in the Desmos Bank, I found one that I really liked and thought I could actually adapt into an assessment since this entire "mini-unit" is comprised of graphs.  We did multiple Desmos activities for each, and I prepared my students from the beginning that this test would be different than other tests they've taken this year. This is the assessment

On test day, we used iPads and Apple Classroom. I was able to lock their screens into Safari (though not into that specific tab) and see that they remained in Desmos the entire time on my iPad. Through the Desmos Teacher part of Activity Builder, I could see their specific work and progress through the activity. Having both seemed like overkill at times but was also really nice for a well-rounded perspective.

After the test, I gave them a quick survey to get feedback about their experience. Every student but one had incredibly positive comments.



For the first class, I neglected to give them paper. They are used to writing on the white board table with dry erase markers, but for integrity reasons, I didn't want them doing that. After their feedback about how hard it was to do without writing anything down, I gave my other two classes a blank piece of paper. And I gifted that first class an extra point (out of 25) for being my guinea pigs (which I don't ever do).

I wasn't sure how I was going to grade/return their tests, but I ended up creating a score sheet that listed the screen number and a brief description. Then I had a blank next to each possible place for earning points. I like being able to pause the activity so that I know they can't get back into it and change their answers, but I don't like pausing the activity because I want them to be able to go over their work.


**The above is the blog post I intended to write last weekend after giving this assessment. Then this week happened.**

The results of this assessment blew all other tests out of the water. I had higher scores than ever, and they had answered in really interesting ways. However, I had a few students who REALLY struggled. Since it was such a unique experience in the classroom, I knew we had to spend some time discussing it after the fact.

From the teacher dashboard, I was able to anonymize their names so that we could speak about individual student work without them knowing who was who (and even without knowing who they were themselves!) In one of my classes, the resource teacher was sitting in to check in with some of her students, and her reaction to the depth with which we could discuss work was one of my favorite parts. No one said, "Aristotle is stupid. Aristotle doesn't know anything. etc." instead, they made comments like, "Aristotle didn't read the directions. Aristotle needs to ask more questions in class. Aristotle should come see you for help." We were able to talk about why students who had used inclusive inequalities that went through the point were correct but those who had a dashed line even though it looked like it went through the point didn't actually include the point. There were so many "aha" moments for students who had memorized this idea but didn't really get it until that discussion. We could also speak about how different answers could all be correct and how elegant some of the solutions were. That discussion might be the best thing we've done all year.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can really work something like this into my assessments for the rest of the year, but it was a total hit. I'd love to move this direction in the future.