Month: March 2024

Posted in Collaborative learning, Competition, Differentiated instruction, Games, Instructional design, Kinesthetic, Learning styles, Math, Student engagement, Test prep

Chapter 66: On Target

Posted on by redforkhippie

I have a love-hate relationship with school breaks. On the one hand, they’re a chance to decompress, catch up on some projects at home, do some advance planning, and spend some time with my dogs. On the other hand, they’re a monumental disruption that distracts the kids and makes it extremely difficult to get them to concentrate on anything long enough to learn.

This ain’t my first rodeo, so I got wise this year and didn’t bother attempting to teach anything new the week before spring break. Instead, I devoted the entire week to activities meant to reinforce concepts the kids had already mastered: a catch-up day on Monday to help my frequent absentees backfill those last few holes in the gradebook ahead of report cards; a doodle-by-numbers activity I pulled off Teachers Pay Teachers to review angle-sum rules; an Easter-egg hunt with math problems inside the eggs and a key that required the kids to find the correct answers in order to get their next clue; and a low-prep darts game we’ve played a time or two in the past.

The game is very simple. Get yourself a ball-darts game and a bunch of math problems over whatever the kids have been learning recently. I bought the dartboard you see in the picture from Amazon earlier this year. The kids like it because the board and the balls all light up.

Divide the class into two teams (if you have an odd number of kids, choose one to be your scorekeeper) and have them form two lines. The first kid on Team 1 throws a ball at the dartboard to determine the point value for the first question. Kid 1 can confer with the rest of the team about the answer to the question, but Kid 1 is the only person allowed to answer it. If Team 1 misses, Team 2 has a chance to rebound before throwing the ball and answering a question of their own.

I like this game a lot because it’s high-engagement; gives struggling learners a chance to practice with help from their classmates; meets the kids’ social needs; and requires no prep beyond downloading a worksheet and printing it out to use as your question bank. (Protip: If you need a bunch of questions quickly, search Teachers Pay Teachers for your concept + “drill” to find practice problem sets.)

If you want to send your engagement through the roof, keep a supply of dollar-store prizes on hand and award a small prize to the winning team. (For my middle-schoolers, I’ve found candy and anything dinosaur-themed to be popular prizes, but your mileage may vary.)

Posted in Competition, Games, Math

Chapter 65: Ka-Boom!

Posted on by redforkhippie

A lot of my students were just starting to learn their multiplication tables when the pandemic forced the world to shut down and schools to switch to a remote-learning model. As a result, multiplication is a struggle for many of them, and I’ve spent part of this year trying to backfill that gap. Rote learning is pretty dull, so I like to use games to make it more interesting for the kids.

Ka-Boom! is one of those games you can mod up to fit just about any subject. This time around, I got a bunch of popsicle sticks and wrote either a multiplication problem or the word “KA-BOOM!” on one end of each stick. I store the sticks in a ziplock bag, and when it’s time to play the game, the kids get out a coffee mug and put all the sticks in it with the problems pointing toward the bottom. To play, one person draws a stick and reads the problem on it out loud. The student then must try to solve the problem. If a player gets the correct answer, s/he can keep the stick. If a player gives the wrong answer, s/he must put the stick back. If students draw a “KA-BOOM!” stick, they must put all of their sticks back into the mug. Whoever has the most sticks at the end of the game is the winner. (There are several ways to end the game. I usually just call time about five minutes before the bell and have the kids count their sticks, collect any prizes I might decide to award, and put the game away. I’ve also had the kids set aside the KA-BOOM! sticks as they are pulled, which keeps the game from continuing forever, or if you want to do a lightning round, you can end it with the first KA-BOOM! and tally up everybody’s points to determine the winner.)

Posted in Humor, Math, Mnemonic devices, STEM, Whimsy

Chapter 64: Wakanda Forever!

Posted on by redforkhippie

Every now and then, I come up with something ridiculous that works far better than it has any right to. Such was the case a few months ago, when I was teaching my seventh-graders how to use cross-multiplication to find equivalent ratios. I asked a kid to tell me the first step in a problem similar to the one I’d just shown the students, and the response was a blank stare. (Seventh-graders, as it turns out, have the memory of a goldfish and the attention span of a fruit fly. I am still learning workarounds for this.)

“You cross-multiply by multiplying the bottom of one fraction by the top of the other,” I said, making a sort of “X” gesture with my arms and pointing to show which numbers should be multiplied. As I spoke, the gesture reminded me of something, so I closed my hands and added, “Looks kind of like the Wakanda forever salute. That’s how we’re going to remember it.”

The kids rolled their eyes and laughed at their hopelessly white, middle-aged math teacher mimicking T’Challa’s famous salute, and then we tried some more problems. Whenever somebody got stuck, I said, “You need the strength of the Black Panther to solve this one.”

About half the kids now mutter, “Wakanda forever!” while they’re working out equivalent-ratio problems.

I imagine Shuri would approve.

Posted in Hands-on activities, Instructional design, Kinesthetic, Learning styles, Math, Student engagement

Chapter 63: The Force Is Strong With These

Posted on by redforkhippie

My eighth-graders used a lightsaber to help them remember the difference between positive and negative integers. I threw some simple addition and subtraction problems on the board and had them take turns walking along the number line, pointing with the lightsaber, as they counted off numbers to solve the problems. Everything to the left of zero was the Dark Side, and everything to the right was the Light Side. The Star Wars analogy was silly, but they had fun with it, and it helped them remember the difference.

If you teach math, and you don’t already have one, I highly recommend making a number line that the kids can see from across the room and posting it on the wall above your whiteboard. Physically walking along the number line really helps the kids get their heads around integers.

Posted in Classroom environment, Classroom reveal, Decor, Flexible seating, Whimsy

Chapter 62: Belated Classroom Reveal

Posted on by redforkhippie

A new classroom is a new canvas for painting. It’s been my experience that students do not struggle with math because it is too difficult; they struggle with math because they are afraid of it. To help overcome that, I wanted to turn my room into a comfortable, relaxing space that would make them feel the way I felt every time I walked into a Nature Company store in the 1990s.

I used a faux-Lazure technique to paint the walls, mixing a few drops of craft paint with roughly three parts Mod Podge and one part water to make a thin glaze that I scrubbed onto the walls with a circular motion. I layered the color onto the walls gradually, which gave it the soft, blended effect you see here. I like this technique because it has a luminosity that makes you feel as if you are standing inside a watercolor painting. I chose a soothing color palette that is supposed to help kids relax and focus.

I find houseplants very calming, so I bought a big plant stand from Amazon and covered it with fairy lights, plants from my personal collection, and a tabletop fountain that was given to me by a former student several years ago. (The kids LOVE the fountain.) I gave some consideration to the possibility of building a papier-mache tree in one corner, but the lighted tree was on sale for $80, which was less than I would have spent on materials to construct something myself, and it paired nicely with the icicle lights that I absolutely had to have after seeing that decorative overhang cantilevered above the windows. I love fairy lights and have used them to decorate classrooms for years.

The three ceramic squares are significant because two of them are imperfect: “GOOD VIBES ONLY” has a flaw in the glaze that looks as if someone smudged it before it was fired, and “BE KIND” was stamped at a 90 degree angle, so the holes that are supposed to be on the bottom of the square are actually on the side. The only one that is flawless is “DREAM BIG.” I tell the kids that’s because the only place we are perfect is in our dreams, and while it’s good to strive for perfection, I am never going to demand it in my classroom. All I ask is that they show their work, so if they make a mistake, I can help them correct it.

Posted in Math, Professionalism

Chapter 61: Pivoting

Posted on by redforkhippie

This time last year, my beloved superintendent was under attack by an angry mob that didn’t understand how FERPA works. The school board caved to this bunch and fired the New Mexico Superintendent of the Year for — *checks notes* — upholding federal law, so as soon as my contract was up, I resigned in protest and took a job teaching middle-school math in another district. (When a board member expressed disappointment over my departure, I just shrugged and said, “Well, you know what they say: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”)

The learning curve at my new job has been outrageous: new subject, new age group, and new class sizes. When school started in August, it had been over a decade since I’d had to spare a thought for classroom management, and I spent the first semester feeling very much like a rookie.

This didn’t really surprise me. I figured I’d spend a big chunk of the year reinventing wheels and building tools from scratch, which is exactly what happened. Last semester, I was at school until 6 p.m. or later almost every evening, and most weeks, I was spending at least one day of my weekend in my classroom as well. Throw in two hours a day of driving (my school is 56 miles from my house), and — well, it was a lot, which is why I haven’t had time to post here in almost a year.

The good news is that I have finally started to get my feet under me this semester. I know my kids’ strengths and weaknesses well enough to know what works and what doesn’t. I’m gradually remembering all the tricks and techniques I used to keep a lid on behavior issues in Tulsa. I’ve curated a pretty respectable collection of materials — handouts, games, problem-solving activities, and real-world scenarios — and I spent one weekend in January devising a better filing system for all the hard copies and grading keys that kept getting lost on my desk. I still have a few bugs to work out, but things are running much more smoothly now than they were six months ago.

The even better news is that my stress level is lower than it’s been in years, because my colleagues are fantastic. I didn’t know this was even possible, but there is no drama in our building. None. Seriously. Nobody seems to be angling for anybody else’s position. Nobody seems to be trying to get anybody else in trouble. Nobody stands around talking crap about anybody else. It’s truly remarkable.

I’m on spring break at the moment, so I’m hoping to spend a little time posting some of my successes, which include using lightsabers as pointers on a walkable number line; using Legos to teach slope; pulling in a spur-of-the-moment Marvel Comics reference to help the kids remember how to cross-multiply; and sending my kids on an Easter egg hunt that was a logistical nightmare to set up but an absolute joy to watch them solve.