Lesson 1-5: Drawing in Perspective (Day 15)

Today I subbed in a middle school Spanish class. This is a two-way immersion class -- I subbed in such a class at this school last year, but it wasn't the same teacher. Indeed, I see the teacher before school starts -- and she tells me that this is the first time she's ever written a sub lesson plan at a middle school.

There is no special aide today, and so it's worth it to do "A Day in the Life."

8:15 -- The day begins with homeroom. I still can't access the homeroom announcements video, and so the Pledge of Allegiance must be done manually again.

8:20 -- Like all middle schools in the district, the periods rotate. Even though today is Day 7, apparently it's the first day in this young school year that starts with sixth period. Apparently the first two days both started with Period 1, and then it was Period 2 on the third day, all the way until Period 6 today.

Sixth period is the first of two eighth grade classes. Before she leaves for her meeting, the regular teacher warns me that this is her worst-behaved class.

These students have several assignments that they could work on. First, they could color in a map showing all Spanish-speaking countries (a fairly common early school-year activity in foreign language classes). Second, they could complete a homework packet on verb tenses. Finally, there is a new assignment that can be completed on Chromebooks. In this case, they create a Google document with a table containing the flags, names, and capitals of all twenty Spanish-speaking countries.

Sure enough, a group of boys starts playing with some cushions/pillows and hitting each other. I make them put the cushions away. In order to keep positive, I praise some students on the other side of the room for not playing around.

As an incentive, I sing "Meet Me in Pomona," since that fair is now open. I keep track of names to place on the good list (those who had made it to the Google table) and bad list (lunch detention).

9:05 -- Classes are shorter today for Common Planning Wednesday. Sixth period leaves and first period arrives. This is the first of three seventh grade classes. As it turns out, these students have the same assignments as the eighth graders.

9:50 -- First period leaves. Second period is the teacher's conference period, plus there is snack break.

10:40 -- Third period arrives. This is the second of three seventh grade classes.

During the long break, I decide to research a different song besides "Meet Me in Pomona." Actually, there's a Square One TV song that I've been meaning to sing in class but never had a chance -- "Sign of the Times." I've mentioned it on the blog before -- it contains a line in Spanish. And so I want to sing in either Spanish classes such as this one, or a class with many Hispanic students.

Barry Carter provides the lyrics, plus there is a YouTube video of this song that I finally get to sing in class today:

http://wordpress.barrycarter.org/index.php/2011/06/07/square-one-tv-more-lyrics/

Sign Of The Times

Lead vocals by Cris Franco

(something in Spanish)

X is the sign of the times
X es el símbolo de los tiempos

There’s a lot of times going around
A time for lunch, a time for school
But the coolest times going around
Is a multiplication tool

Take a X, we’ll show you where it fits
Not the Brand X, not the Band X
There’s no other corner quite like this
Three times two makes six

X is the sign of the times
X es el símbolo de los tiempos
When you’re going to multiply
Just use the symbol X
Es el símbolo de los tiempos

When you’re adding and your numbers are all the same
You take a shortcut: multiply
Count the number of the numbers you want to gain
That’s your multiplier

X is the sign of the times
X es el símbolo de los tiempos
When you’re going to multiply
Just use the symbol X
Es el símbolo de los tiempos

There’s a multiplication table
Everyone should know by heart
From zero times zero to nine times nine
That’s the place to start

Es el símbolo de los tiempos

We know two times two is four
Three times three is nine
But you can do a whole lot more
With X, the sign of the times

Es el símbolo de los tiempos

Three times four or six times two
Equals one times twelve
Figure out the way it works
And try it for yourself

Es el símbolo de los tiempos

The same is true of four times five
Which equals two times ten
Five times six, fifteen times two
Equal each other again

Es el símbolo de los tiempos

You could keep on going
As long as you’re inclined
With different combinations
Just use the sign of the times

Es el símbolo de los tiempos
Aieie, ha ha ha!
Es el símbolo de los tiempos
(trills)
Es el símbolo de los tiempos
(something in Spanish)
Es el símbolo de los tiempos
(something in Spanish) Aieie! Aieie! Aieie!
Es el símbolo de los tiempos
(something in Spanish)
Es el símbolo de los tiempos
(fade out)

[Notice the ASCII error here -- that A with a tilde should really be an i with an acute accent.]

Unfortunately, the song incentive doesn't stop me from having to write up two detention students. In trying to determine whether they were working on the Google assignment, I see that they simply write "California" as the the name of a Spanish-speaking country! (No, "Calexit" never happened.)

11:25 -- Third period leaves and fourth period begins. This is the last of two eighth grade classes.

12:05 -- Fourth period leaves for lunch.

Notice that five classes (beginning with Period 6) meet before lunch today. That's because today is Common Planning Wednesday, with shorter classes. In fact, lunch is at the same time (on the clock) everyday at this school.

I don't remember the bell schedule from last year. It seems as if the only time I subbed last year on a Wednesday was for a special ed teacher with an aide, and thus I never did "A Day in the Life" on a Wednesday at this particular school last year.

At any rate, many middle schools do this -- on short days, have more periods before lunch so that the break is at the same time everyday. My old charter school did this -- but it was a K-8 school, so this schedule was also influenced by the needs of the elementary kids. Still, this had led to an argument where one of my charter students claimed that I didn't know how to tell time.

12:50 -- Fifth period arrives. This is the last of three seventh grade classes.

1:30 -- Fifth period leaves. But now I have after school supervision duty (since the regular teacher had been assigned it this week).

1:40 -- After school duty ends -- but then I must return to the classroom to charge Chromebooks.

This is a problem that I've had as a sub many times before -- the students leave without cleaning up and charging the laptops. I've spent the last ten minutes of class checking each student to determine who's done the work and who hasn't so that I know which names to write on the good/bad lists. They can't put the Chromebooks away until after I've checked (otherwise they could do no work all period, then claim that they typed a long assignment on the Chromebook that they've already put away). I try to get the each kid to put the computers away as I check his or her work -- only about half listen.

This is a tricky one. I could start the work check/clean-up earlier, say with fifteen minutes to go. Or perhaps 20 minutes might be needed -- ten for checking work, ten for cleaning up. But then again, this is a short 40-minute period, so I'd be spending half the period on checking/cleaning! And then when I checked the work, some students would say that they didn't finish because I never gave them enough time to work!

And of course it's tricky due to the after school supervision duty. Some students might have been willing to stay behind and help put Chromebooks away, but I had to shoo them out the door, or else the administrators might think that I was neglecting the after school duty. But if I didn't spend time putting the laptops away after the duty, the same administrators would think that I was leaving the classroom in disorder.

Notice that with the period rotation, this is the very first time that fifth period has rotated into the last class of the day -- and these are seventh graders (who were at a K-6 elementary school last year). So most of them don't know the procedure for putting computers away at the end of the day. The slots for charging are numbered, but the Chromebooks themselves aren't. But there are two different types of chargers -- Chromebooks with a larger adapter must be placed into slots 1-12.

Then again, it's because of the period rotation that I have another option -- I could sacrifice the last period of the day by not worrying about whether the students did enough work and instead focus only on putting laptops away. If some student does no work the entire period, oh well -- the more important task is the clean-up. Because of the period rotation, this period won't be the last class tomorrow, so they can do more work tomorrow.

In this hypothetical scenario, instead of 10 or 20 minutes, I split the difference and give them a full fifteen minutes. With this extra time, I carefully explain and demonstrate the difference between the small and large adapters, so that the students can learn the procedure.

I actually use the behavior during the clean-up to determine the good and bad lists. Those who help others during the clean-up can get on the good list. I tell them that those who leave their laptops on the desks will be placed on the bad list. And the clean-up is also used for the music incentive -- I sing "Sign of the Times" as soon as all the laptops are put away correctly. (If it turned out that 15 minutes was too much time and there's extra time left, I just keep on singing!)

By the way, the reason that my work check took a full ten minutes is that as a sub, I don't know the names of the students. I could walk around and see who doesn't have work in 1-2 minutes -- but then I wouldn't know the name of the kid who did no work. But if I were a regular teacher, I'd probably know the name, so I could check work much more quickly. (There are no assigned seats -- attendance is done via a special procedure where students call out their numbers -- in Spanish, of course.) Thus I must take the roster and check-off the names of students who complete the work, so that I can tell which names are left.

In fact, you might argue that my good and bad lists take completed work into too much consideration instead of behavior (thus rewarding noisy yet hard-working students and punishing those who are quiet but slow workers). But once again, I don't know the students' names. Completed work is something that's easier for me to check off than figuring out the names of misbehaving students. ("Oh could you please tell me your name so I can give you a detention?")

Then again, if a student leaves a laptop on his desk, I still wouldn't know his name. In this case, I'm hoping that the song incentive and peer pressure are enough to get him to put it away, so that I wouldn't have to write any actual names. (If it doesn't work, I must resort to writing a description of his backpack, since it's much too hot for coats/jackets.)

It's time for Geometry. This is what I wrote last year about today's lesson:

Lesson 1-5 of the U of Chicago text is called "Drawing in Perspective." In the modern edition of the text, perspective doesn't appear until Lesson 9-4. This is more logical, as Chapter 9 in both editions is the chapter on three-dimensional figures.

Perspective appeared as Lesson 0.8 in Michael Serra's Discovering Geometry, which we already covered nearly two weeks ago on Day 8. This time, I'll reblog the old Lesson 1-5 post from last year.

Indeed, Lesson 1-5 is the other worksheet I taught in middle school three years ago as part of my opening week activities. This is what I wrote about it:

Speaking of class, today I gave the last of the opening week activities previously posted on the blog -- Designing Buildings. This is what I wrote earlier about this activity:

And as it turns out, Nguyen covered something similar to this in her class as well:

http://fawnnguyen.com/designing-buildings/

Nguyen's lesson takes a different approach to drawing three-dimensional figures. For one, the focus on this lesson is on buildings. Her lesson begins by having some buildings already drawn and the students counting the "rooms" and "windows." (As it turns out, one "room" is one cubic unit of volume, and one "window" is one square unit of lateral area.)

I like the way that Nguyen's lesson begins. Unlike the bridge problem, where I wanted to avoid beginning the school year with a problem that's impossible to solve, here we begin with a very solvable problem. The only issue I have is with the second question, because it requires materials. I work from the assumption that most classrooms don't have the blocks and isometric dot paper that Nguyen's classroom has.

(As an aside, notice that cubes drawn on isometric dot paper are definitely not in perspective. This is because, while edges perpendicular on the cube intersect at 120 degrees on the iso dot paper, edges parallel on the cube remain parallel on the paper. Therefore there are no vanishing points.)

Then again, my worksheet is very similar to Nguyen's. On the front side, I gave the same example as she did and the three buildings for the students also come from the Ventura County teacher. I used two of her easier buildings -- A and B -- and the more challenging Building F.

The back side of my worksheet differs slightly from Nguyen's, though. Her worksheet specified the number of rooms and windows and asked the students to draw the buildings. Mine, on the other hand, simply has the students draw four different buildings with eight rooms and then asks them to count the number of windows in each one.

Now that I'm giving this activity in an actual classroom, I don't have any interlocking cubes (which I can only assume means "Lego bricks"), but I did find some small manipulative cubes. There weren't enough for me to give every group eight cubes (as specified in the assignment) -- instead I gave five to each group of sixth graders and seven to each group of seventh graders. (Half the seventh graders were absent because they hadn't satisfied California's 7th grade vaccination requirement.) The eighth grade groups did receive the full set of eight cubes. I believe that having actual blocks certainly helped the students visualize the three-dimensional buildings.

By the way, here are the rules the middle school classes came up with as part of the Rules Posters. At last I'm done discussing the rules here on the blog:

1. Raise your hand

2. Be silent and listen when it's someone else's turn to speak

3. Stay in your seat

4. Keep your hands to yourself

5. Keep the desks free of drawing

6. Treat the books, papers, and any other resources like you would treat your own items

7. Keep your voice at a conversational level

8. Allow the speaker to finish before you raise your hand

9. Speak in a respectful manner

10. Stay on task, work hard, and do your best!

Returning to 2019, let me end the cutting-and-pasting right here. Last year when I wrote this, I used this as an excuse to bring up classroom management from three years ago yet again. Now that subbing has started up again, my focus now isn't on past classrooms, but present and future classrooms.

Last year, I wrote a little about classroom management with Chromebooks. If students aren't going to work, I personally don't think they should be allowed to have any non-academic free time on the Chromebooks. But once they take the Chromebooks out, it's difficult to get them to avoid playing on them. Only once does a student take out a cell phone today.

One thing I've been thinking about a possible future class of my own is what I should do about allowing phones and other electronics -- particularly those that are taken out after students claim that they're "done" with the assignment.

As of now, I think a good policy might be that phones are allowed only on test days -- and of course, that's after the student has completed the test. Then if students rush through the test just to get more phone time, their test grades will suffer -- as opposed to rushing through a mere assignment to get extra phone time (where the assignment is worth only a few points).

What should a student do who rushes through the assignment quickly? To me, the best answer would be nothing at all. Then if students know that the alternative is just to sit there bored doing nothing, then they might prefer slowing down and doing the assignment. Doing work for other classes might be a possibility -- but then what happens is students say "I need to use my phone/Chromebook to do research for my other classes," and then it quickly turns into non-academic playing on electronics.

Of course, I've already mentioned one other time when I would allow phones -- if a student is taking a math picture for me to post on a blog or Twitter. Thus, if a phone is out at the wrong time, then I'd require the student to send me an appropriate math photo immediately. If the appropriate math photo isn't received, then the student is punished for having phones out.

One thing I realize about today's classes is that I seem to establish more rapport with the eighth graders than the seventh graders. Ironically, in last year's post I wrote about getting along with the seventh graders more. I think it's because many of this year's eighth graders remember me as a sub in several of their classes last year.

Here is the worksheet for today: