8:00 -- Second period is an Algebra 1B class. These students are learning about quadratic equations, specifically the discriminant and how it leads to the number of real solutions. There are 15 questions on the worksheet, and so I do the entire first column of five questions together with the students.
8:50 -- Second period leaves and tutorial begins. A few more students show up today than November.
9:25 -- Tutorial ends and third period begins. This is the other Algebra 1B class.
10:30 -- Third period ends and snack begins.
10:50 -- Like many special ed teachers, today's regular teacher co-teaches another class a period. It's a Geometry class. These students are just starting Chapter 10 of the Glencoe text, on circles (like Chapter 15 of the U of Chicago text).
I've written about this class as well in my January 17th post -- I was the sub that day. I even blogged that day about the visitor (today's regular teacher) who helped keep fourth period under control.
During class, I copy the following from the board -- lesson plans for both Algebra II and Geometry:
Algebra II:
Monday: 7.4, Adding and Subtracting Rational Expressions
Tuesday: 7.4, Simplifying Complex Fractions
Wednesday: 7.4, Review
Thursday: 7.5, Solving Rational Equations
Friday: Chapter 7 Quiz
Geometry:
Monday: 10.1, Circles and Circumference
Tuesday: 10.2, Measuring Angles and Arc
Wednesday: 10.3, Arcs and Chords
Thursday: 10.4, NTG Inscribed Angles
Friday: Quiz on Lessons 10.1-10.3
I wrote about the Algebra II lessons two weeks ago when I covered an Algebra II class. (Once again, this is the topic of Barry Garelick's college placement exam problem.)
Our focus is on Geometry and Chapter 10 of the Glencoe text. Again, we haven't really reached circles in the U of Chicago text, since most of the circle lessons aren't until the last chapter.
Notice that Monday's lesson was on circumference -- and Monday was a few days after Pi Day. Since area doesn't appear in the Glencoe text until Chapter 11, the circumference lesson is the closest this text gets to giving a pi lesson on Pi Day. If I were a teacher at this school, I'd make a little more effort to have Lesson 10.1 land on Pi Day.
(In fact, the during the first year of this blog, I covered the second semester lessons in a very different order from that of the U of Chicago text. I was at least partly inspired by the order of the Glencoe chapters when I gave that lesson.)
Today's lesson corresponds to Lesson 15-3 of the U of Chicago text. As I wrote last year, 15-3 is the last lesson in the U of Chicago text that appears on the SBAC. Problems based on the Inscribed Angle Theorem are also fairly common on the Pappas calendar.
Actually, the lesson today goes a bit farther than our 15-3. In addition to Inscribed Angle Theorem. students also learned that opposite sides of an inscribed quadrilateral are supplementary. The resident teacher even uses the phrase "cyclic quadrilateral" to describe such figures. On the other hand, cyclic quadrilaterals are not introduced in the U of Chicago text.
11:40 -- I return to my own classroom for fifth period -- only to find out that the regular teacher has returned from his meeting. So my day essentially ends here.
Notice that fifth period would have been a special ed Geometry A class. I never actually take a good look at the content of the quiz that these students take today. An educated guess is that since the gen ed kids are in Chapter 10 and half of ten is five, the special ed students might currently be studying Chapter 5 of the Glencoe text. This chapter is on various properties of triangles (concurrency, the Triangle Inequality, and so on).
As far as behavior is concerned, there is an aide for third period but not second, and so the focus for today's post will be the second period class.
In his lesson plan, the regular teacher strictly enforces the no cell phone rule (except for music or use as a calculator) and the seating chart. But some students enter the class violating both -- they go to the wrong seat and take out their phones. So I must spend the first few minutes correcting them.
Since the main lesson is on quadratic equations, I sing the famous "Quadratic Weasel" song. I tell the students that if they all finish enough problems, I'll sing the song again for them.
But several students start making fun of me. One guy asks me to tell him something about myself, and so I reply that I was a math major at UCLA. Then he asks how long I spent at UCLA, and so I inform him that I needed four years and one quarter to complete my bachelors and masters degree. At this point he makes jokes at my expense -- he starts doing problems on the worksheet and then says, "I finished my work. Do I get a masters degree now?"
At the end, I don't sing Quadratic Weasel again because two students fail to do enough work. Indeed, one student lacks a pencil and doesn't ask for one until less than 15 minutes remain, and another lacks the worksheet itself and doesn't ask for one until less than 10 minutes remain. These guys are also using phones before asking for materials, and so I write these two names on my bad list.
Is there anyway I could have managed this class better? The class starts out on the wrong foot because the first thing they hear me say is negative. I criticize them for having phones out and especially for being in the wrong seat. After all, the first thing the lesson plan directs me to do is take attendance, and I wish to take it silently by checking the seating chart. (Note: This is not the same as taking attendance silently without a seating chart by using the names on the worksheets. I've done that enough times to know that this will never work. But taking it off the seating chart is reasonable, especially when the regular teacher demands that I enforce the chart.)
Instead, I should take attendance based on where the students are sitting -- lightly in pencil directly on the seating chart. (Some teachers place the seating chart in a dry erase packet, so that I can take it in marker.) I introduce the assignment and even sing the song once or twice before telling the students the rules for the day.
Yes, this means that students are sitting in the wrong seat with phones out for the first five minutes when they're not supposed to. But in this case, it's worth sacrificing the first five minutes so that the first thing they hear out of my mouth is something positive (in this case the song), not negative. Then students are more likely to avoid hating me right off the bat -- and they're more likely to respect me and follow the rules the rest of the period.
I'm not sure what I should have done about the masters degree question. I suspect that there are two possible reasons the student asks me to describe myself. One is that he's hoping to waste time talking about myself and less about math. The other is that he's upset about the way I criticized him and the class the first few minutes -- so he wants me to tell him something that he can make fun of (in this case my degree). Thus it's possible that if I had started the class positively, then he doesn't even ask me to describe myself.
In the future, I wonder whether describing, say, my days as a high school track athlete might have been a better way to answer his question. As a regular teacher, I can tell the students about myself and ask the students to describe themselves as well as part of a structured activity (such as VanDerWerf name tents, for example).
Once again, I don't want to use music as a crutch where I can't manage the class unless I promise to sing. But Quadratic Weasel is such a simple natural song for lessons in the unit, and so I wish to perform this song whenever I can.
On the other hand, Quadratic Weasel is so short that I shouldn't have demanded so much work to be completed for such a brief song. We work on five problems together -- so I could check all the papers after each problem, and sing the song every time all students have copied the problem. Then most likely, the two guys who lack materials would have asked for them much earlier -- indeed, these two enjoy the song more than the others and are hoping for me to repeat it.
I fix some of these problems in third period. I don't tell them the rules until five minutes in, and I sing the song after every problem. I also tell them that I would sing the song a sixth time if enough of them would try one of the remaining problems on their own. But not enough of them do it.
Third period is the best class of the day as it goes much more smoothly than second. But this is the class with the aide, so it's likely that her presence is what made third period quieter, rather than anything I improved that period. Nonetheless, I want to practice good management habits so that the next time I'm the only teacher in the room, I know exactly what I must do to be effective.
Lesson 13-5 of the U of Chicago text is called "Tangents to Circles and Spheres." I never wrote much about this lesson -- neither last year nor the year before last.
I believe that tangents to circles appear in Chapter 10 of the Glencoe text -- most likely it's just around the corner in Lesson 10.5 or 10.6, so the kids at my school will see them soon. This also reflects the placement of this lesson in the modern Third Edition of the text, where it appears as Lesson 14-5, in the circle chapter. (Recall that our current Chapter 13 doesn't appear in the new edition, and so Chapter 14, not 15, is the circle chapter.)
Since today's Thursday, I can't use last year's lesson, which is really an activity. So I'll post the worksheet from two years ago.
Oh, and before I end this post, I must admit that I enjoy musical Google Doodles, including today's doodle for eighteenth century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach. It was fun to play one of the two built in songs, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," and have Google add harmony so that it sounds like an authentic Bach piece!
No comments:
Post a Comment