In third period, I took control of the class by telling the students to be quiet before playing the video containing the daily announcements. This works -- third period, a Drawing and Painting class, is named the second best behaved class of the day. The best class of the day turns out to be the second period AP class.
Meanwhile, just as I fear, students finish their "Me" projects early in the three Fundamentals classes and are left with nothing to do. I'm aware that there's actually a second assignment to complete -- the one where they trace their hands at different angles to make designs.
But the students have a ready excuse to avoid the "Hands" project -- they don't have enough of the correct tracing paper to do the assignment. So surely enough, the students start playing around -- most notably in fourth period where someone takes out a deck of cards -- in other words, the only "hands" they're drawing are poker hands!
Well, I suppose I should be glad that these students didn't take out cell phones -- but still, I'm not sure whether a deck of cards is something they should have. (But fortunately, I don't see any money exchanging hands.)
I wonder whether there's anything I could have done to avoid this problem. I've already known from previous assignments that if it's a multi-day assignment and the teacher leaves a single project, then many students will finish the assignment and have nothing left to do for at least one day before the teacher returns. And so I anticipate this today -- but I don't anticipate the "not enough paper" excuse for not doing the hands project. (Apparently the earliest finishers are able to get the paper and begin "Hands," but those who finish "Me" today don't get the paper.)
What this give me is something to think about for the next time I sub a multi-day. Not only should I check to see whether there's another assignment, but I should see what materials the next assignment will need and make sure that they are available.
If there are student TA's available, then I can ask them to prepare these materials and hand them out to anyone who says that they're done. Instead, today the two TA's in the fourth period class play cards along with the others!
I think back to the week I spent in a history and econ class as April turned into May. One class is assigned one day of taking notes and then a multi-day group project the rest of the time. But in that class, the projects must be presented to the class. Therefore no group can claim that they've finished the project until after the group has presented. On the last day, two groups do indeed present.
If this is a math class and the students don't have access to another assignment, then this might be a good time to bring back my old Conjectures/"Who Am I?" game. I haven't played this game in a while since I want to focus on my classroom management.
Also in fourth period, some students want to do work for other classes instead of play cards. But this requires going to their locker to pick up the book for the other class -- and so they ask me for a pass to their locker right after snack. I insist that they wait until the midpoint of the class to go to their locker -- otherwise someone waiting for a restroom pass might claim that I'm unfair (or even worse, claim that they're going to their locker instead of the restroom to circumvent my restroom policy). An argument could be made that this policy might inadvertently encourage students to play cards. ("I wanted to do my math HW but the sub wouldn't let me go to my locker to get my math book, so I'll just play cards instead!")
Every time that I have a multi-day assignment, I'm going to compare it to the charter school where I taught two years ago, and the problems I had with classroom management there. Certainly my use of teacher look this week is a significant improvement from two years ago, when I didn't use teacher look at all -- and that's why my middle school students didn't listen to me or respect me.
By the way, speaking of my old school, the student trick I just mentioned above ("I need to get something out of my locker!" to get around the restroom policy) never arose because that charter was co-located with a district elementary school that doesn't have lockers. But apparently, last year when the charter obtained its own campus, middle school lockers became available. If I were still teaching there, I can easily see myself getting in arguments over locker visits/restroom passes unless I'm very careful -- more careful than I actually was as a teacher.
I believe that this week marks a step in the right direction towards becoming a better manager. But I still have some ways to go before I can feel confident returning to teaching math full-time.
Lesson 2-1 of the U of Chicago text is called "The Need for Definitions." This is what I wrote last year about today's lesson. The part about the definitions of words from outside of mathematics -- such as terrorist -- is even more timely today as the blog calendar has placed this lesson closer to the anniversary of 9/11.
The second chapter of nearly any high school geometry text discusses the logical structure of geometry -- to prepare students for proofs. This includes the U of Chicago text, as well as Dr. Franklin Mason's text, and many others.
Lesson 2-1 of the U of Chicago text deals with definitions. But the introduction to the chapter mentions a 1986 USA Today article concerning a non-mathematical definition: cookie. Normally, as teachers we'd ignore this page and skip directly to the first lesson, except that this article is mentioned all throughout 2-1, even including the questions!
Now, of course, a teacher could have the students discuss the article as an introduction to the importance of precise definitions. Such an introduction is often called an anticipatory set -- a concept that apparently goes back to the education theorist Madeline Hunter.
A teacher could present the article as an anticipatory set, but I should point out that the article is over a quarter of a century old -- after all, my text itself is nearly that old. The article points out that the word terrorist was controversial even back then. As we already know, a decade after the book was written, the 9/11 attacks occurred -- and since then, that word terrorist has been thrown around so much more, with very strong political implications.
And, of course, there was another definition that led to a politically charged debate -- one that occurred just a few years after the publishing of the text. During the investigation during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the former president questioned the definition of the word is. So we see that there are two fields where precise definitions matter greatly: law and mathematics.
To me, it might be fun to discuss these examples in class. But it may be tough for the teacher to remain politically neutral during such a discussion, so we must proceed with caution.
The images at the end of this post do not mention the article -- I threw out any part of the section that refers to the article. I preserve the discussion about what a rectangle is, and the one definition given in the lesson -- that of convex set.
When approaching the questions, I first threw out Questions 1 through 3, since these questions go back to the article. I kept all of the questions about convex sets, since that's the term defined in the lesson, then kept the question where students guess the definition of midpoint -- a preview of Lesson 2-5.
Now I want to consider including the review questions as well. As any teacher knows, students have trouble retaining what they've learned, so we give review questions to make them remember. I avoided review questions during Chapter 1 since most of them were review of the Lessons 1-1 through 1-5. But most of the review questions in this section are labeled Previous course. I must be careful about these, since it all depends on which previous course is being mentioned here.
Question 20 in the text discusses the definition of words like pentagon and octagon. Like midpoint, this book will define these terms later in the chapter (Lesson 2-7), but this is labeled Previous course. I assume that the intended previous course is probably a middle school course. But -- remembering that this is a Common Core blog -- I decided to look up the Common Core Standards. The only standard mentioning the word pentagon is a 2nd grade standard!
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.G.A.1
Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.
So in theory, it might have been nearly a decade since the students saw the word pentagon. (The word octagon doesn't appear in the standards at all.) But I figure that upon seeing the question, the students will remember vaguely that these words all refer to shapes with different numbers of sides -- and at least know that a triangle has three sides, even if they must guess on all the rest. This is a good preview of Lesson 2-7.
In the other questions marked Previous course, the course referred to is clearly Algebra I. Once again, I don't want to intimidate the students with Algebra I questions in a Geometry class. Of course, we can see how Questions 21 and 22 came about -- they are clearly translations of the word problems "23 degrees less than the measure of an angle is the measure of its supplement" and "the measure of an angle is six times the the measure of its complement," respectively. I'm torn whether to include such problems. One thing that I definitely want to avoid is algebra problems masquerading as geometry problems -- for example, we take a linear equation from algebra and write its two sides as the measures of vertical angles (provided the two sides equal valid angle measures). The geometry in such a question is trivial -- just set the two sides equal to each other since vertical angles are congruent, then the rest is all algebra. The geometry in a question about complementary and supplementary angles is less trivial, but then -- so is the algebra, since a typical question will often have variables on both sides, and many students struggle with these.
In the end, I decided to keep Questions 21 and 22 but at least give the students a break by making the solutions whole numbers -- notice that as written, the solutions to both contain fractions. Question 23 seems to serve no geometric purpose at all. I decided to drop the second variable z and change the number 225 to 360, since students will often need to divide 360 degrees by various numbers -- for example, when finding the exterior angle measures of a 15-gon. This is the most difficult algebra/arithmetic that I want appearing in the first semester of a geometry course -- nothing beyond this is acceptable.
Finally, we reach Question 24. This is an Exploration question, asking the students to define the words cookie and terrorist. Once again, this makes a lot more sense if the article is mentioned in class. I decided that I'll include this and other Exploration questions, but label them as Bonus questions to emphasize that these questions are optional for the students. Of course, it can be thrown out completely if a teacher wants to avoid politically charged debates over the word terrorist.
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