Posted in ELA, Math, Teachable moments

Chapter 67: A Rant

Posted on by redforkhippie

New Mexico’s Public Education Department is trying to force schools to increase our number of instructional days by about 20% next year unless we manage to improve our ELA test scores by 8% to 15% overnight.

This would be a reasonable demand if not for the fact that A.) PED told some schools last year that a 5% improvement was an unrealistic goal, B.) the schools operating on four-day schedules generally perform better than the schools operating on the five-day schedule favored by PED, and C.) this policy basically forces teachers to commit to another year in our districts before we how many days we’ll be required to work, which I am pretty sure isn’t actually legal.

Politicians and bureaucrats would rather chew off their own legs than involve an actual teacher in any decision that affects schools, but if they asked me, I could tell them why ELA scores are low:

  1. The questions are poorly written. I have a master’s degree in English and can’t figure out the answers to some of the released items from the state ELA tests, because they’re so convoluted and ambiguous that they sound like what you’d get if James Joyce wrote a parody of the SAT while high on psychedelic mushrooms.
  2. The tests are poorly timed. Every year, PED tells us to give our end-of-year tests six weeks before the end of school, and every year, PED is disappointed that the kids haven’t mastered all the material.
  3. COVID. Specifically, the cognitive and emotional impact of trauma, economic marginalization, and long COVID, all of which affect test scores far more than the loss of instructional quality and quantity caused by the shutdowns in 2020 and 2021.

If PED were serious about improving test scores, they would:

  • Hire a team of journalists to edit the tests for clarity. This would boost scores instantly, because kids would understand what the questions were asking.
  • Streamline standardized testing. We lose nearly four weeks of instructional time to standardized tests every year: a week each for BOY and MOY benchmarks, and up to two weeks for the EOY. Worse, the aforementioned timing issue leaves a lot of kids (and probably a few teachers) with the impression that whatever happens after mid-April isn’t really important — so we basically lose another six weeks to post-assessment apathy. This is both inexcusable and entirely avoidable.
  • Reduce middle-of-the-year disruptions. Every teacher knows that students’ behavior and ability to focus deteriorate as their excitement about an upcoming break increases. They’re at school, but they’re not learning much. We could reclaim some of that lost time by dumping Monday holidays, inservice days, etc. and tacking those days onto our existing longer breaks. (And if we want to honor historical figures, we can study them on their special days.)

By my calculations, implementing my ideas would reclaim between 32 and 37 days’ worth of lost or compromised instructional time — significantly more than the 25 days PED is trying to add to the calendar.

Most problems have relatively simple solutions, but it’s hard to see them when you refuse to listen to actual stakeholders.

Emily

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.

Posted in Advice for rookies, Cross-curricular instruction, Differentiated instruction, Instructional design

Chapter 60: A Word of Caution

Posted on by redforkhippie

Good grief. Has it really been two years since I last updated? Sorry about that; I plead grad school and licensure dossier.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of time mentoring younger teachers, coordinating cross-curricular projects, and working with prefabbed materials to try to save time, streamline my planning, optimize lessons for remote delivery, etc., etc., etc. Here is a thing I know:

You cannot trust prefabbed materials.

Every prepackaged curriculum has gaps. Even a comprehensive package will lose pieces over time. If your district has been using a particular curriculum for more than a year or two, it is probably safe to assume that you are missing at least one significant tool. Maybe your teacher’s manual never found its way to you and is instead on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.” Maybe the district decided to save money by skimping on consumables, so you don’t have a full class set of whichever workbook you’re supposed to have. Maybe the program itself ignores the importance of differentiation, so it won’t work for the kid who is reading three years below grade level or can’t remember his multiplication tables or transferred in from another state in the middle of a semester or [insert obstacle here].

Most of us are aware of this problem, so we supplement. If we have time, we sit down, comb through the next unit, figure out what’s missing, and create materials to fill the gaps. If we don’t have time, we grab whatever we can find at Lakeshore Learning or Teachers Pay Teachers or wherever we like to buy stuff for our classrooms, and we poke it into the holes in hopes that it will keep the wind from howling in through the cracks.

It’s OK to do that. You are under zero obligation to create every single assignment from scratch. But if you’re going to use prefabbed materials, you owe it to your students to curate those materials carefully and make sure that A.) they actually do what you need them to do, and B.) they don’t give conflicting directions or information.

This time of year is crazy, and we’re all in survival mode. I get it. I do. I’m writing this post because I started a cross-curricular project with three colleagues and completely failed to vet their materials before tossing them on Google Classroom. My students and I are now living with the ensuing chaos, and I have no one to blame but myself. Reading all the materials and talking to colleagues about how to reconcile the conflicts would have completely eliminated this problem and spared my kids a lot of stress. They deserve better from me, and you can bet they’ll get it next time.

Learn from my mistakes. Vet your materials, and make modifications as needed. Investing a few minutes now can save you and your kids a lot of time and heartache later.

Posted in Uncategorized

Chapter 59: Teaching with brain fog, Part 2

Posted on by redforkhippie

In my last post, I mentioned careful editing and giving students bonus points to catch my mistakes as strategies I use to deal with post-COVID brain fog.

Those strategies help when I accidentally type the wrong word on class materials, but what happens when I lose my train of thought mid-sentence, which is another annoying symptom of Long COVID?

It takes more time and more advance planning, but whenever possible, I backstop myself by making a Google Slides presentation and/or a handout to guide and reinforce my direct instruction. If I need to give the kids vocabulary words, explain a concept, or provide historical context for a lesson, I throw together a quick Google Slides presentation that hits the highlights so I don’t lose my place or forget something I meant to tell the students.

This has been a bit of an adjustment for me. Before COVID, I was accustomed to walking into class with a lesson plan and maybe a vocabulary list, glancing at it before class started, and then writing notes on the board while I discussed the day’s topic with the kids. I might look at the lesson once or twice during class to make sure we were staying on schedule, but most of the time, I just worked from memory, trusting my brain to keep me on track.

I can’t trust my brain to keep me on track these days, so I have to rely on Google to do it for me. It’s more work, but it’s not entirely a bad thing. My kids are used to checking Google Classroom at this point, and having the lecture/discussion topics condensed into a slide show makes it easy for students who are absent or working from home to keep up with the highlights, even if they miss some of the details. It’s also nice for the students who have trouble taking notes quickly to be able to go back and look at the lesson again to see what they missed.

Assuming I have some kind of notes to work from, I can usually create a presentation in an average of two to three minutes per slide, depending on how elaborate I make the slide, how many illustrations I use, and how much animation I decide to do. For note-taking purposes, I find it’s usually helpful to keep the animation relatively simple. I set my slides to advance on click, by paragraph, so the kids can’t see the next point until I’m finished talking about the first one. To speed up the process of building the slides, I pick (or design) my background style on the title slide, build a second slide with information on it, set up the animation the way I want it, and then just duplicate that slide to use as a template so I don’t have to redo the animation every time.

A good rule of thumb on slides: Confine yourself to one topic per slide, with no more than three or four points about that topic, and make sure the font is large enough and clear enough for kids to read from the back of the room. I’d rather make 20 slides that the kids will actually read and use than five overpacked slides that they ignore because they’re bored or intimidated by the sheer quantity of text in front of them.

Emily

Posted in Uncategorized

Chapter 58: Teaching with brain fog, Part I

Posted on by redforkhippie

If you’re among the thousands (millions?) of people struggling to function through brain fog in the wake of a COVID infection, I have a few strategies to share that have really helped me over the past 10 months as I’ve adjusted to a new normal.

One of my weirdest post-COVID experiences started right after my fever broke: For several months, my brain seemed to have been taken over by my iPhone’s predictive-text algorithm — the one that thinks if you start typing “obstinate,” you must mean “objectivity,” or if you’re typing “introvert,” you must mean “intramural.” It was exactly as annoying as you think it was. I thought I’d finally gotten past it a few months ago, but this weekend, I was texting with my little brother and typed “under” when I meant “unto,” so apparently this is still a thing when I’m tired or under stress.

Anyway, the main coping strategies I have for this weird dysphasia — the fancy term for when your brain refuses to use words right — are to copy edit the snot out of everything I write and to offer the kids bonus points for finding any mistakes I miss.

When I taught in Oklahoma, I would deliberately plant an error in the objectives and instructions I posted on the board each day, then offer five bonus points to the first kid who caught it. This accomplished five things:

  1. It taught the kids that it’s OK to make mistakes. If the teacher makes at least one mistake every single day, then she obviously doesn’t expect everybody else to be flawless.
  2. It encouraged the kids to get to class on time. If you’re the first one in, you’re the first one to see the board, which means you have a better chance of being the first one to catch the error.
  3. It encouraged the kids to look at the board. There’s no point in posting objectives or instructions if nobody reads them. I never had to worry about kids asking what they were supposed to do, because they came in and read the instructions as soon as they hit the door.
  4. It gave the kids practice proofreading — always a plus in an ELA class, but not a bad exercise for other classes, either. Attention to detail is valuable in every discipline.
  5. It increased the chances of somebody catching it if I made an inadvertent error. Usually, the mistake I planted was the only mistake on the board, but some days, I’d go too fast or get distracted while I was writing and end up making an accidental error somewhere. The kids always caught it for me.

If you aren’t bribing your kids with bonus points to get them to proofread for you, it’s worth trying. I think you’ll find it increases engagement and improves your relationship with your students, who tend to feel safer when they know that A.) you make mistakes, too, and B.) you are willing to admit it.

Emily