Lesson 0.4 of Michael Serra's Discovering Geometry is called "Op Art." Serra explains what this is:
"Op art (optical art) is a form of abstract art that uses straight lines or geometric patterns to create a special visual effect."
Optical art is closely related to the concept of optical illusions. I don't even want to attempt to draw some of the more complex optical illusions by hand, so I just use a Google search instead. On the other hand, the impossible objects page comes directly from this site:
http://brainden.com/impossible-objects.htm
Unfortunately, only the Penrose triangle printed properly. It is named for Sir Roger Penrose, whom Serra describes as a British mathematician and avid puzzle enthusiast. (He is in fact still alive -- he just turned 87 this month.) So I actually had to draw in one of the impossible drawings -- "Three prongs from two?" (called "the devil's fork" by Brainden). Well, I suppose if I can draw it, then so can our students.
Here is the Blaugust prompt for today:
How do you handle Parent Communication? What has been successful for you?
That's one thing I don't write about much on this blog -- parent communication. During the one year I worked at a charter middle school, I wrote about parent communication on the fourth day of school:
9:55 -- The previous day we discussed the classroom rules. Today I pass out Behavior Contracts for all of the students. Each student writes down the rules we agreed to, and then the students take them home for the parents to sign. In this way, each student is to be made accountable for his or her own behavior throughout the year -- and if a parent requests a conference, I can just take out the contract and let the parents know that their child has violated that contract.
I also wrote once about my main form of home communication -- Parent Conferences Week. Let me cut and paste some of what I wrote that day:
7:50 -- Our first parent arrives -- yes, parents can choose to come before school if they desire. It's the mother of one of our sixth graders. The mother and her daughter arrive at the history room, where all three middle school teachers -- the history teacher, the English teacher, and me -- are sitting. We've agreed that it's easiest to do it this way, so parents can speak to all three of us together.
As it turns out, this girl is earning straight A's and is one of the quietest students our classes. So naturally, all of us have only positive things to tell her mother. We three teachers wish that all of our students were like this girl.
1:30 -- Our first afternoon conference begins. It's the father of one of our most troublesome seventh graders -- he just barely scraped through my class with a C, but he failed history and English, and even received a C in music -- a class in which almost everyone gets an A. I tell his father that he can do much better, but he hangs out with the wrong crowd. Just yesterday he or one of his friends pulled a classic prank -- putting a tack in my chair.
2:55 -- After a lull without any parents, the mother of a sixth grader arrives. The girl is getting B's in both my class and history, yet is failing English. The mother is a Spanish speaker, so our history teacher must translate for the English teacher, who explains that the girl has trouble writing. My colleague tells her mother about an time last month where I had the whole class write standards when they were too loud (during IXL time, of course), and the poor girl cried as she was unable to finish.
3:00 -- In the middle of the English teacher's exposition, the mother of an eighth grader arrives. I go over to talk to this mother as the English teacher is still talking to the sixth grader's mom. The eighth grade girl is earning C's in all three classes -- mine, history, and English. I tell the mother that even though her daughter passed some of her tests, she failed some others. Still, I let the mother know that the girl is very well-behaved and likes to help us out after school, especially the English teacher.
3:40 -- The parents of a sixth grader arrive -- but they are in a hurry due to a family emergency, so they just pick up their son's report card (I gave him a C) and leave.
3:55 -- No more parents show up. The history teacher counts out the remaining reports and figures that about two-thirds of the parents showed up this week.
But six months before the first day of school that year, I wrote the following statement on my blog:
I know that I can be a better teacher by showing common courtesy to students, parents, and staff members.
So this is the guiding principle when it comes to communication with anyone, including parents. I'm not quite sure whether I adhered to this principle fully -- was I completely courteous to parents?
There is one form of parent communication that I used that year -- yet I never wrote about it in any blog entry. At our school, I was required to file all completed assignments in folders -- the students had nothing to take home. Some kids wanted to show something to their parents, and so one day, I decided to type up notes to parents of students who earned A's on tests. This way, parents can receive positive information about their children, not just negative info. Unfortunately, I also had to make many phone calls to the parents of misbehaving students.
One Blaugust participant posts under her first name, Elena. She teaches Geometry at a private high school in Virginia. Here is a link to her most recent post:
https://elhistuck.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/on-the-eve-of-year-9/
She doesn't write about parent communication in this post, but she does in a previous post:
https://elhistuck.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/homework-policies/
So it was that through my first six years of teaching, I assigned homework on an almost nightly basis, though I was very cognizant of keeping assignments short. It always pained me to hear students and parents complaining about their schedules and struggling to balance everything. I was also teaching at a Christian school where I was strongly discouraged from giving homework on Wednesdays as many students had church that night.
Yes -- sometimes I forget that many churches hold services semiweekly and that there are meetings on Wednesday evenings as well as Sunday mornings. The idea here is that parents often complain to teachers about homework policies -- especially if they feel that the teacher is giving too much homework when their children have other activities (including Wednesday church).
In both of Elena's posts that I link to above, she mentions the increasing use of technology in the classroom, including Desmos. Recall that the online SBAC test here in California has an embedded Desmos calculator. According to Elena, the same is true for the state test in Virginia.
This reminds me of the time when I had a parent complain to me about my homework policy. You see, the Illinois State text that I used that year had an online homework component. And I was required to assign the online homework (since to the administrators, the only acceptable answer to "Are all parts of the Illinois State curriculum implemented?" was yes). But some parents didn't have Internet access. One man was particularly upset that the only way his eighth grade son could practice the new material was online.
As the use of technology in the classroom grows, I expect there will be more disputes between parents and teachers over online software, especially online homework. And often, the teacher will be trapped in the middle between the parents who don't want their children to have to use the software and the administrators who require the use of the software. And the administrators are often trapped in the middle between the teachers who have trouble using the software and the textbook companies that push the technology (such as the Illinois State text).
In the end, I decide to let the eighth grader take the printed textbook home so that he could study it the night before the test. And I believe that he passed that test the next day.
In the end, I probably should have printed all online assignments on paper and made copies. Then students have a choice to do the written or online assignment. If the student chooses online, then he returns the worksheet blank with a note indicating that he completed it online. This would then alert me to go to the Illinois State website and check the assignment.
Anyway, the lesson here is that parent-teacher communication is a two-way street. It's important to find compromises and for me, the teacher, to be courteous towards the parents.
Here are today's worksheets:
No comments:
Post a Comment