Day 67: GAMES!!!

I have no coherent plan for my classes.  At some point, I'll write a longer post about curricula, but that won't be today.  I have a general idea of my goals.  I want my students to be able to leave my room as better critical thinkers than when they came in.  I'm finding myself caring MUCH less about the mathematics than about the problem solving skills.  To this end, I have been mixing up my activities, not letting anyone get too comfortable, but still feeling safe.  I want them to be able to adapt to whatever situation they are thrown into and find a way to deal with it, work through it and find a satisfactory solution (satisfactory to them.)

So today was game day!!

I have quite a collection of games on various topics, but all basically surrounding logic, planning and strategy.  Several of them are pattern recognition and identification as well.  Most of them are chosen because they are more obscure and I want kids branching out and learning new games, developing new strategies.  I gave a very brief introduction to each game and then used ClassDojo to pick students at random to choose the games they wanted to play.

In geometry, the engagement level was 100%!

Students persisted in learning the rules of complicated games because it looked cool and stuck with them until the end.  There were cooperative games, and competitive games, group games and solo games!  The games range from concrete mathematical skills to abstract linguistic skills and more.  Students had a great variety to choose from and if they didn't like one, they went and picked another.  They did an amazing job of taking turns and joining groups they wouldn't normally join so they could try out a new game.

They took the time to patiently explain the rules of games to others as they joined a group.

In pre-algebra, the students worked with EXACTLY the same level of persistence that they display with everything else they do.  The kids who give up easily on my assignments gave up and moved to another game when the rules took too long to understand.  The kids who work hard and persist in my assignments, regardless of difficulty, stayed with their games until completion AND chose more complicated games.

I may not be up on my educational theory, but I think this may be a great counterexample to the idea of "engagement."  If I have students who never engage, regardless of  my lessons or activities, then those clearly there is something else at play other than how "engaging" my lessons are.

At the same time, several students didn't want to take the time to read the instructions or find out how certain games were played, so they made up their own rules!  It was fascinating to see how these games, many of which they had never seen before, could be played in ways other than intended.  I think this speaks volumes for allowing students to explore their environments.


I worry deeply about the thought that ALL students are able to be engaged, if only the teacher were good enough, or able to find the secret formula.

I think there are some students who simply will not engage in the traditional public school setting.  I think there is a place where every kid can thrive and become the best they can, but it isn't always in an environment that I can offer. 

With that said, I can never know which kids are the ones who won't engage.  It's always possible that I just haven't hit the right activity or lesson to pull them in.  Also, I have a strong personality and I know that there are some kids who will never work for me, no matter how I try to engage them.  Just because I know that there are kids who will never engage doesn't mean I can ever stop trying.

I have to ALWAYS try to engage every student.  I just can't beat myself up if it doesn't happen.  I tell my students that they should be proud of whatever grade they earn, as long as they worked to the best of their ability.  I need to apply this to myself.

Not every student can get an A on every test in every class.

Not every teacher can engage every student.

But we have to teach as though we can.



Game days clearly need to happen more often.  I have to figure out how.  I can't have it as a "reward" because I think it implies that games are only for rewards instead of as a means to learning.  I might set it up as a station and assign kids certain days while I work with others.

Day 66: Proofs Assessment and Ponzi Schemes

After a couple of great conversations on Twitter last night about tasks and assessment, I went browsing through the internets.  I came across (by the direction of some great people) Mathshell.org and the amazing variety of CCSS aligned tasks and lessons there.  I picked two for today that are designed to promote problem solving and discussion and they worked FAIRLY well.

The activity in Geometry was a truncated version of a 7 day lesson about finding congruent triangles.  I've been working with the students about identifying what they need to know to determine if two triangles are congruent.  This activity was an extension of that concept.  In the first part, they were presented with a conversation between two students.

Solomon says: "I have drawn a triangle.  It has one angle of 30 degrees and another of 40 degree.  Adeline, you draw a triangle with the same properties."

Adeline says: "My triangle will be congruent to yours, because all triangles that have those two properties must be congruent."

Is Adeline correct? Explain your answer.

There were three conversations and questions like this followed by a proof and a counter-example.  Students were asked to evaluate and analyze the reasoning given to them.

They did very well on the first section.  Most of the groups drew pictures of counter-examples and explained why the information presented wasn't sufficient to create congruent triangles.  The second section didn't go so well.  They were able to see a problem in the proof and most could figure out how to fix it, but when it came to the counter example, I think the technique used was a bit over their heads.  The person used circles to talk about radii and congruent sides, which I understood immediately, but had to explain to many of the kids through Socratic questioning.

The task for pre-algebra was fantastic!  The kids were really into it.  It, also, was a bit above their heads, but they stuck with it and happily asked questions and attended to the answers VERY well.  It was a step in the right direction for the persistence that I'm trying to get out of them.

They were asked to look at a Ponzi Scheme!

I started out by asking them if they had ever received a text that read something like "You've been buzzed! Forward this text to 10 people in the next 10 minutes or everyone you've ever loved will be killed by falling trees!"

Most of them had, so I moved onto the concept of chain letters and gave them the following:

Dear friend,

Do you want to get rich quick?  Just follow the instructions carefully below and you may never need to work again!

1. At the bottom of this email there are 8 names and addresses. Send $5 to the name at the top of the list.
2. Delete that name and add your own name and address to the bottom of the list.
3. Send this email to 5 new friends.

The questions asked them to find out how much they SHOULD receive and what, if anything might go wrong.  Then, they had to speculate on why a Ponzi Scheme was illegal.

There was a ton of struggle in interpretation of the system, but once they got what was happening, they worked VERY hard on it and had some great discussions.  It took a bit of prodding to get them to put their answer in terms of exponents, but it was well worth it.

It put me back on track of thinking about engagement and what engages the kids.  I honestly didn't think that this lesson would pull them in so completely.  I've had other lessons that I thought would be killer and the kids didn't care at all.

It's so important to remember that they are people with on and off days and just because a lesson flops today, doesn't mean it will flop tomorrow or next week.

Day 65: Projects and Projections

Several students thought that a pocket pack of tissues would hold 170 tissues.  We have some work to do with estimation.  The students, however, are VERY receptive to it and want to do more, so I count that as a plus!

I'm working more on providing students with choices of what they wish to work on.  So far, I've found that when given the choice between doing an assignment or not, they often choose not.  But if I give a choice of three or four, they will pick and work on something fairly well.

In an effort to get students to show me what they know beyond the confines of a test, I'm starting to flip through Hands-On Math Projects with Real-Life Applications by Judith and Gary Muschla.  It's a book that I've had for years, book marking several projects, but haven't done many.  Eventually, I'd like to be able to hand the book to a student and say "Pick one!"  But after my recent experience with projects, I'm going to have to ease into that.

So I'm starting off with two that allow students to demonstrate knowledge and creatively express it.  For the first set, students can either design a math poster, or design a math lesson.  I told that they can earn extra points for picking topics that have not been covered yet.  In the future, I think I'll require them to do topics that we haven't covered.

Halfway through the class, I realized the mistake I made.  I should have assigned topics, at least for the first project.  I ended up spending a large portion of my time helping students narrow down topics to something poster-worthy, or making sure they weren't making another version of the posters that were already on my wall.

At the same time, I'm not sure that I should care.  I would LOVE for them to produce something original and creative, but I think it's unrealistic to expect that of everyone right off the bat, especially when they are unaccustomed to demonstrating knowledge in a non-traditional way.  Some of the students/groups came up with some interesting ideas while others had to be encouraged to do something more than "how to multiply."

I think this first one will be graded within the rubric I gave them, but generously.  I want to foster a sense of freedom of expression and I'll hope that it will expand outward from there, getting students to produce better and better things as the year goes on.

The room is more chaotic than I am comfortable with.  It makes my skin crawl slightly even though I know it's a part of the process.  I want the kids to be sitting in their desks, quietly working on their projects, quietly discussion strategy or style, but that's not them.  They are loud and boisterous, like I am.

Sometimes, this is what learning looks like.  I need to do a better job of letting go of the reins while still making sure that students are doing what they need to.

This job is hard...

Plus, I've come to the scary and inevitable conclusion that I'm doing too much too soon without sufficient planning.

Seriously, I have no idea what I'm doing.


I thought I was casting multiple nets in the hopes that I would catch something, but it's starting to feel like I'm chumming and taking a nap while the fish eat...

Day 64: When I Get Older, Losing My Hair...

My warm-up today was days 6 and 7 of Estimation 180.  It led to a fantastic discussion about the importance of estimation and how to get better at it.  We will CLEARLY be doing more of this.

I did a TON of soul searching over the weekend after updating my grades to find almost all of my pre-algebra students were "failing" and the geometry kids were not NEARLY where they should have been.  The quizzes that they took on Wednesday were terrible.  I was worried that they were too hard, but I don't think so.  I think it was more that the students weren't taking them seriously.

So today, we talked.  I reiterated my expectations of them and, more importantly, asked them to think about their expectations of themselves.  What do THEY want to accomplish?  Are they happy with bad grades? Is that the best work they CAN do? Or is it the best work they WANT to do?

Then I gave them a choice.  Keeping in the spirit of an open gradebook and moving towards standards based grading, I explained that if they can show me mastery, or even improvement, I will change their grades accordingly.  They had the option of working on their quizzes to resubmit for a better grade, continue working in their workbooks, either on work they still owe or moving forward, or they could choose to work on something from another class.  It was up to them, but they had to working.

I will say that they stepped up and made me proud.  This was, with minimal exceptions, across the board today!  In geometry, there was one group who all earned A's on the quiz the first time around, so I pulled them aside and taught them Swish, the game I bought this weekend and got to try out at dinner with math teachers on Saturday! (Thanks for the awesome time, @SweenWSweens, @MaxMathForum, @BobLoch, @hfxMark and @MrAionsWife)

After a single introductory round, the young ladies picked the game right up and played solidly for the rest of the period while I circulated and helped other students.  It was fantastic to see kids starting an activity clutching their heads in pain and finish by shouting at each other in triumph!

I hope that sometime soon, we can have a game day.  I don't want games to be a reward for good work, but rather be the work that is its own reward!

In the first pre-algebra class, there was a student who is doing poorly, not because of low aptitude, but because his behavior, which I deem as not age-appropriate, has been distracting him from doing his best.  Today, when it became a distraction to others, I pulled him into the hallway with the school behavior specialist and we had a talk.  We told him that we want him to do well and that I KNOW he can do the work, but his choices are making it difficult for that to happen.

He went for a walk with the behavior specialist while I got the rest of the class started on their work.  When he returned, he worked his butt off! I showered him with praise, genuine and heartfelt.  I told him how proud I was that he was making a better choice and, if I could help him at all, to please let me know.

I found several other students in the hall and made a special point to tell them how proud I was of the work they were doing this year.

In "difficult" schools, we spend WAY too much time focusing on the negative behaviors and not celebrating victories in a genuine way.  As @AGHolman told me a few months ago, true praise can't be "Great job showing up to school today!"  It must be real, heartfelt and not sarcastic.

I think about the segment of Chris Rock's standup where we talks about how certain people want pats on the back for doing what they're supposed to do.  As racially charged and funny as that piece is, I think he's wrong.  I think that when students spend so much time hearing about what they do wrong, they need to hear a sentence or two when they do something right, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem to us.

It may be the whole world to them.

And it may be the sentence that helps them make better choices.

An interaction with a student (holding back privileges due to his behavior) resulted in him throwing his belongings against the wall and sulking angrily at his table.  After he had cooled down, I pulled him outside and talked to him.  I told him how, at the beginning of the year, he was on the ball, doing everything right.  I told him how concerned I was about his decline over the past few weeks.  I told him that he had the potential to be an amazing role model for the other students, but instead, he was allowing them to be role models for him.

I told him that he was allowing others to make bad choices for him when he knew better.  I said all of this with love and concern, making sure that I wasn't yelling.  I could see his eyes getting wet and he agreed with everything I said.  He came back in and began working his butt off.

Today was a good day for student interaction.


I came to work today not "feeling it" at all and was worried about how I was going to interact with the students.  I opened up to them about how I felt and the thoughts I had been having over the weekend and they turned my day around.  These are the days worth getting out of bed.

With that said, I'm ready to go back to bed...

Weekend Thought: A Balance

Author's Note: The following post is lengthy and may depress/disillusion those of who think I'm better than awful.  Feel free to skip to the bottom for a summary of the post and a cry for help.

I am not a man of moderation.  When I do something, I jump in with both feet, regardless of how insane it may be.  At the same time, it may take me a while to decide to jump in at all.  This seems to be true in almost all aspects of my life.

"I want some wings."  **eats 40**
"I want to start running."  **signs up for half-marathon**
"I want to watch TV."  **binge watches 6 seasons of Parks and Rec**
"I should do some crunches."  **does 15,000 in a month**
"I could go for a pizza." **eats a pizza**

You get the idea.

Those of you who read my blog know that I have a tendency to do this in my teaching as well.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails horribly.  A prime example of this was two weeks ago when I decided to turn my class into Genius Hour.  I stepped away from the typical classroom style, gave the kids iPads and said "learn what you want to learn."

Another example is how I have jumped into the #MTBoS with both feet, preaching the gospel of being a connected educator with everyone I meet.


This life of extremes has led to two VERY different styles and mentalities over the years and I want this post to serve as a cry for help.  Allow me to set the scene of my teaching mentality for the 3 of the past 4 years.  It may shock those of you who only know me through twitter or this blog, but I assure you (and my family and coworkers will agree) that it is true.

I should also state that what I'm about to write is based entirely on my perceptions and is probably inaccurate and tainted with bitterness and frustration.

I used to dread going to work.  I began in my current district by teaching in our alternate education program. It ran from 2:30 (when the rest of the school cleared out) until 7.  It was designed for students whose behavior made them unable to be a part of the general school population.  Before these students showed up, I was in several different rooms, teaching from my backpack.  I didn't use a cart because my classes were both upstairs and downstairs.  It felt to me as though I was assigned the leftover classes, filled with leftover students.

In hindsight, this was not even remotely a fair assessment of the situation, but it is what I thought.  I constantly complained to my wife about how lazy my students were and how they wouldn't do any work.  I had some pretty great students, but I never thought about them. I only ever thought about the ones who didn't do what I wanted all the time.

I was miserable and I was making everyone else miserable too.  I was constantly applying for new jobs, thinking that if I could get into a "better district" that all of my problems would be solved.  Every interview filled me with hope and every rejection sent me further and further into despair.  I began to feel trapped and, unfairly, began to resent my students and coworkers for it.

Every lesson that failed was because the students were unprepared, or didn't know the basics, or wouldn't put in the effort, or...or...or...

But it was NEVER my fault.  I was doing my job! I was showing up every day and covering the content that I was supposed to cover with creativity and brilliance and passion and I held my student accountable for their learning.  I was strict, but fair and I didn't coddle them the way the other teachers did.  I wasn't going to let them pass my class if they didn't have the knowledge to do so.

After three years of this, I could feel myself burning out.  Last year, I tried a new tactic.  Indifference.

"I'm going to go in every day, do what I can do and not get upset when they kids don't do what they are supposed to do!"  Furthermore, I planned to have this year, my 5th year in the district, be the year when I kicked my feet up on the desk, gave kids worksheets, rode out the year, collected my student loan forgiveness and left teaching forever.

I knew that I wasn't doing much good for the kids and I certainly wasn't happy so, there was no reason for me to stay.

Then I attended Twitter Math Camp.  My mentality on teaching in general and my role specifically changed almost overnight.  It might be called a religious experience.

This year, I have changed almost every aspect of my teaching.  I am warmer, kinder, more understanding with my students.  I give them freedom to express themselves and I ask their opinions on how the class is going, what they would like to see.  I give them ownership of their education while still realizing that they are children who need to be guided.

When I encounter a student who doesn't know how to add, I don't blame the student for being lazy.  I don't blame the elementary school for passing on a student who clearly had not mastered material.  I do my best to help that student.  I make up alternate assignments or work with them to get up to speed.  I have them work on simple problems to boost their confidence and give them a feeling of success.

This may sound all well and good, but I know I take it too far.  I gave a project that was supposed to take a week.  When less than 5% of my students turned in the finished product, I started out angry.  Then I quickly shifted the blame to myself and began thinking about what I could have done differently to encourage students to complete the task on time and with higher proficiency.  Several suggestions came to mind, including making all of the work in class, setting daily deadlines and goals and talking about the project much more.

I'm now experiencing the opposite of what I was for the past several years.  Now, people are telling me that the kids have to be held responsible for SOME of their learning.  THEY have to make the decision to do or not do the assignments.  No matter how interesting I make a lesson, some kids will simply refuse to do it because they won't ever find it more interesting than playing Call of Duty.

A few weeks ago, someone posted on Twitter (I can't remember who) that striving to make your lessons engaging implies that math is not engaging already.  It implies that we should be catering to their desires and interests all of the time instead of saying "sometimes you will enjoy this, sometimes you won't.  That's life and it has to be done."  I completely understand the logic behind this.  We don't want to train our students to be assembly line workers.  We want to train them to be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc, but the reality is that the vast majority of them won't.  They still need the skills required of them in case they DO become assembly line workers.

I can almost feel the pendulum starting to swing back and I don't want it to! At the same time, I don't think it's good where it is.  I need it to stop in the middle. (Well, maybe a bit this side of middle)

So now I get to the point of this post.  I have NO idea where to draw the line.  I have come to the realization that I don't know how to distinguish between things that they should be held accountable for and the things that I should be.

Not being a man of moderation, I don't know where the middle ground is, or even how to find it..



If you got bored and skipped to the bottom, I don't blame you.  Here's a summary of the novella leading up to this point:

I used to only blame the students for their failures.  Now, I only blame myself.  I need to find a medium.  I don't have any idea where the line is between my responsibility for teaching and their responsibility for learning.  I know that it's a fluid line and changes with every child in every grade, but I don't even know where to begin.

I feel as thought there should be an entire class dedicated to this topic in every teacher preparation program.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Maybe the true purpose of this blog is to serve as a guide for what NOT to do.

But, hey! At least I'd still be teaching someone something.

Day 63: Mathsgiving!

The day before Mathsgiving Break!!

So what if I'm the only one who calls it that! You wanna fight about it???

I collected the open-ended sections of the Geometry test and gave them the multiple choice section.  They did, overall, VERY well on that section.  I'll grade the open-ended over the break and I expect they will do well on that too.

After everyone finished their tests, I talked to them about how much I appreciate the work they have been doing.  I was frustrated with them yesterday and I didn't want them to think that I disliked them or didn't appreciate their strengths and effort.  I talked about Bloom's Taxonomy and how I want them to be able to create things that demonstrate their learning.  I also assigned them to write me a few paragraphs over break about how they think class is going: what they like, what they don't, how things can be improved.

If they DON'T say fashion, I will be sad.

In pre-algebra, the students were given 7 open-ended problems to work on in groups.  Most of the groups worked very well but there were several incidents that confused me.

One student tried to turn in 3 problems with half of the class left.  I told her there was still time and she should try to finish what she could.  Instead of doing that, she crumpled her paper and threw it away.  When I asked her why she threw away what she had worked so hard on, her response was "I don't want to do any more and you won't take it now."

I don't have any idea how to respond to this.  I suppose she was thinking that she wouldn't get partial credit for only doing half of the assignment, but as much as I've been thinking about it, I can't come up with a rational reason for why she would throw away all of the work she did just because she couldn't turn it in RIGHT THEN.  She may have had an irrational reason, but when I tried to ask her, she screamed at me about how she didn't care.  I'll pull her aside after break and ask her about it.

In the second class, only one student followed the direction I gave to put their answers on a separate sheet of paper.  About half of them didn't read any of the directions or actually answer the questions that were given.  I think when we come back from Thanksgiving break, I'm going to have them redo their work for credit.

Seriously, if the question you're being asked has parts A, B and C, and your answer is a single digit, I think something may be wrong.

How do you impress on students the importance of following directions and answering the questions being asked?


From the 45 pre-algebra students who had a project due today, 2 turned it in.  I think when I do projects in the future, I need to work with the class to create a daily timeline of things to turn in.  I think many of the students are still at the point of "if it's not due tomorrow, I'll do it later" and on long-term projects, even as long as a week, that's really a detriment.

When we come back from break, we're going to have to work on organization and planning as well as math and literacy.


Anyone who thinks that teachers only have to know their own subjects clearly has no concept of what this job entails.  Thank goodness that teachers get the respect that they deserve!

Day 62: Explorations and Lack of Effort

Finally got some clever responses!

Since I noticed that I hadn't entered any grades yet, my plan for geometry class today was a two-part test.  The first would be individual and multiple choice while the second would be with a group and open-ended.

I found an e-mail this morning, however, that said that half of my geometry class was being pulled out for all of period 1, so plans changed slightly.  Instead, we spent the period exploring shapes! Yesterday, we talked about the interior angles of a polygon.  We explored the idea of creating triangles inside polygons to find the sum of those interior angles.  Today, I gave them the same warm-up, but changed the word "interior" to "exterior."

This turned out to be a MUCH richer discussion with students making all sort of conjectures, only to have them disproved by other students.  Several of them wanted to treat the polygons as though they were regular (the polygons, not the students) but a few others claimed that we couldn't.  We assumed that they were so we could talk about a specific case, then changed the angles to talk about a general case.  The students came up with a general rule for the sum of the exterior angles of convex polygons and we showed it worked in a few different cases.

Then a student asked about concave polygons.  So we explored those!  Protip: THIS exploration is wildly more interesting than convex.  A great collaborative effort brought us to the end of the period and a general rule for the sums of the exterior angles of concave polygons.  I was VERY impressed by them.

When the rest of the students returned, I handed out the open-ended portion of the quiz for them to work on in groups.  They did not even come close to finishing.  Even worse, I was stunned by the confusion on the faces and in the questions of these kids who are normally sharp as tacks.  The first question read as follows:

In making a paper airplane, a student folded the top edge of her paper into 8 equal angles.  What is the measure of each angle?
Classify each angle.

I don't even know how to begin explaining this problem without giving it away.  I think it might be a matter of concentration, reading directions and persistence.  After 40 minutes, in which none of the groups finished the 4 problems I gave them, I told them to finish it up for homework and come in tomorrow ready for the multiple choice section.

I'm hoping that if they work on it at home (which most of them will) they will see that it's a pretty simple set of problems.  It's possible that just being in word problem format threw them off, which means I need to do more word problems.

In pre-algebra, we also took a quiz.  It was a much more procedural quiz than I would have liked and I could come up with a host of legit reasons why that was, but the truth is that I'm tired and I need to make sure they CAN do the procedural stuff.  This group of students has a tendency to give up SO quickly on complex tasks that it's hard for me to even know if they understand the procedural work.

The results of the quiz are, however, quite encouraging!  With a few exceptions, the majority of the students DO understand the procedures and shouldn't get bogged down by them on more complex tasks.

On the other hand, all of the students in pre-algebra have projects due tomorrow and, from the questions I'm being asked, it appears as though not a single one will be turned in on time.  I'm hoping this is not the case.  I am praying to be surprised.