1. EDIT: August 13th Info from My New District
2. Original August 12th Info from My Old District
3. Blaugust: Making Self-Care a Priority
4. Links to Other Blaugust Participants
5. A Rapoport Geometry Problem
6. Other Rapoport Math Problems
7. Reblog: Something I Read/Learned That Summer That Intrigued Me
8. Conclusion
EDIT: August 13th Info from My New District
Even though this is my August 12th post, I am now editing this post with new information regarding how distance learning will work in my new district.
Today, August 13th, I receive an email from my new district. It turns out that there may be subbing opportunities for us after all, even though it will still be full online learning.
Before I received this email, I was considering following my old district calendar for one more year, and so I declared this post to be Day 1, which would make August 6th my final summer post. But instead, I will now follow my new district calendar -- which I'd been planning to do this year all along, even before the coronavirus closure.
This means that today's post -- officially dated both August 12th-13th -- is still a summer post. I will make one last summer post tomorrow -- after tomorrow's distance learning training for us subs in my new district. In that post, I'll explain what I learned from that training -- and that's important since last year, the lion's share of my subbing calls were in my new district.
Then Monday will be the first day of school in my new district -- and that's when I'll repost Day 1 on the blog and return to a school-year blogging schedule.
(Note: For lack of a better choice, I decided to give this the "Calendar" label, since it's all about what the school calendar will look like for me this year.)
Original August 12th Info from My Old District
So many things have changed since my last post. On Friday evening, I received an email from my old district -- the one that has announced a four-stage reopening plan. According to this email, even though the district is stuck in the first stage (full online learning) until LA County is removed from the state watch list, there is a possibility that we subs may be called in after all.
This has several implications for the blog:
- Summer blogging is almost over. At first, I was going to remain on a summer blogging schedule until students returned to the classroom, which would be at least the second stage (office hours). But I should post on any day that there's a possibility for being called into the classroom for office hours.
- Therefore all summer blogging projects are immediately halted. [August 13th EDIT: Even though this and tomorrow's posts are still considered to be summer posts, I'm stopping the summer projects anyway in order to focus on the transition to distance subbing in both districts.]
- Ian Stewart's book for summer side-along reading is over until next summer. We just finished Chapter 12 in my last post, and so we'll pick it up from Chapter 13 next year.
- Java, my most important summer project, is over for now. The main reason for Java was something to fall back on if there was no work for me as a sub. But thanks to that email, I should have some subbing work this year. But it would have been less embarrassing if my last post hadn't been "Lemay Chapter 13 Part 1," without completing Part 2 of that lesson.
- Shapelore is also done for now. I was hoping to do at least some of Chapter 15, but instead we end it without doing Lesson 14-7, the last lesson of Chapter 14.
- As for the music project, we also end it tantalizingly close to completion, as I was only at the old charter school for a few more weeks past what I reblogged in my last post. But if I'm called in to sub, I might sing songs (even though it's online) and fill in whatever's missing (including the last few songs from the charter school, tunes for lyrics without a tune, and songs that I created after leaving the old school). I'll go back and edit the summer posts if I add or change any tune, and add the "music" label to any posts in which I post songs or lyrics not previously blogged or reblogged. I'm also saving the lyrics on my hard drive, as well as printing and gluing them into my new songbook (which would qualify it as an interactive notebook).
In my original August 12th post, I wrote:
It's possible that my new district will email me a sub plan tomorrow or Friday, in which case I'll edit this post and label Monday as Day 1.
It's possible that my new district will email me a sub plan tomorrow or Friday, in which case I'll edit this post and label Monday as Day 1.
And that's exactly what happened, which is why I'm editing this post today, August 13th.
Blaugust: Making Self-Care a Priority
As for Blaugust, this will be a typical challenge for me after all. I should have just as many Blaugust posts this year as last year. Since today is August 12th, let's look at the twelfth prompt from Shelli's Blaugust list:
As for Blaugust, this will be a typical challenge for me after all. I should have just as many Blaugust posts this year as last year. Since today is August 12th, let's look at the twelfth prompt from Shelli's Blaugust list:
Self-Care… how to make it a priority?
I've only posted once before on August 12th, and it was four years ago -- just as I was preparing to work at the old charter school. Shelli had a different prompt list that year, and thus I've never responded to today's prompt before.
Of course, this prompt is perfect for this year -- self-care is on everyone's mind now due to the coronavirus pandemic. I want to make sure that I take care of myself and stay healthy as I prepare to return to the classroom for online learning.
As I've said before, some people are "zero-percenters" who believe that their personal probability for contracting coronavirus is 0% (to the nearest percent), and so they oppose any restrictions that affect their 2019 pre-pandemic habits. For example, they believe schools should be open for in-person learning five days per week, with no masks or social distancing, and perhaps not even extra hand washing either.
I don't consider myself to be a zero-percenter -- that is, I assign a probability of at least 1% to catching the virus. But my biggest health fear that not that I'll catch the coronavirus, but that I'll catch an ordinary cold and have it mistaken for the coronavirus.
I catch colds frequently -- this has been true my entire life. And I often sneeze or cough a lot just after I go on a two-mile jog, which I try to do once a week, on Saturdays. Most of the time, this sneezing and coughing is gone by Monday, but sometimes it persists. Thus if I run on Saturday, report to a school campus for subbing on Monday, and then sneeze once, I'll be immediately told to go home out of fear that I might spread the coronavirus.
I've had this sneezing problem after runs for decades -- shortly after I graduated high school (and ended my Cross Country running career). But in the past few years, I've sneezed less after runs -- and had more headaches instead. But headaches are also listed as a coronavirus symptom.
I'm not sure about the protocol for my district, but I've heard that in other districts, each person, upon arriving on campus, is asked the question, "Have you had any coronavirus symptoms in the past fourteen days?" -- and these include sneezing, coughing, and headaches. And if the answer is "yes," then that person is asked to leave the campus at once.
Before the pandemic, the correlation between jogging and sneezing was so strong that on Saturdays before job interviews (for a teaching position, say), I would skip the run altogether, since I didn't want to sneeze a lot during the interview. I tried to avoid skipping the run on back-to-back weeks, so that I never went two full weeks without jogging.
And so if, on any day in 2019, before the pandemic -- or for that matter, in the 21st century -- you asked me the question "Have you sneezed, coughed, or had a headache in the past 14 days?" then the only truthful answer I could give is "yes." It's not that I sneezed or had a headache every day this century, but that I've never had as many as fourteen straight sneeze-free, headache-free days.
So now you see the real problem here. If I'm called in to sub and I'm asked that question, then I can only truthfully answer "yes," at which point I'm sent home. That means that I wouldn't be able to sub at all this year -- or any year, until the coronavirus is eradicated and that question is no longer asked upon school entry.
Last year, I also had a cold -- not mere sneezing caused by jogging, but a real cold. It spanned several weeks -- I think it started about two weeks before Christmas and ended around Groundhog Day/Super Bowl Sunday (just over a month before the start of the pandemic). If I had a similar cold this year, from December 11th, 2020 to February 2nd, 2021, then I'd be sent home from any school, no questions asked -- so I'd have no income for nearly two months.
Moreover, people often say "There's still so much we don't know about this virus." The college football season has been cancelled at UCLA and many other schools because of a newly discovered relation between heart problems and the virus. So "Have you had heart problems in the last 14 days?" might become an additional question asked at the school gates this year.
And this is what my biggest fear is this year. Six months from now, someone might discover that people with the coronavirus are more likely to have, say, their foot fall asleep. And then at the school gates, someone asks, "Has your foot fallen asleep in the last 14 days?" As the number of symptoms associated with the virus increase, so does the likelihood that I'll have to answer "yes" to a "last 14 days" question, and hence the likelihood that I won't be able to sub that day -- even if that particular instance of foot falling asleep (or whatever) has nothing to do with the coronavirus.
Well, there's nothing I can do about my foot falling asleep, but there is something I can do about the sneezing and headaches associated with jogging. I've noticed that I'm less likely to sneeze or cough if I jog only one mile instead of two.
So I'm considering jogging a shorter distance but more often. For example, I am going to jog one mile on Saturdays and a half-mile on weekdays when I'm not called in to sub. If I sub a lot in a week, then I am going to some exercise other than jogging (such as lifting weights). I am going to do my usual two-mile jog on summer Saturdays and Super Saturday (that is, the Saturday before Christmas), and possibly the Saturday before Thanksgiving and at the start of spring break (even though those are one-week breaks, not two weeks).
This way, I can stay in shape and avoid gaining weight, while allowing me to answer "no" more often to any "last 14 days" questions at the school gates.
Links to Other Blaugust Participants
As usual, let me link to some other Blaugust participants. Shelli, the leader of the Blaugust challenge, posts today:
Spring Break has finally come to an end and tomorrow, we report back to our classrooms for 7 days of pre-planning. I know my room is an utter mess and in a normal year, I would have been working up there the past week, carting bag after bag of new school supplies, but not this year. This year has been weird. I have been to my classroom twice since March 13 and only for a few minutes each time. I know that I will be really busy the next few days as I re-orient myself to the classroom.
Today was a weird mix of self-care and PD.
Hey, she mentions "self-care" -- so her topic somewhat matches mine today. Also, I think it's funny how, while I've taught of the time from Pi Day until now as an extended summer break, Shelli's thinks of it as an extended spring break -- the break that should have started and ended in March.
Beth Ferguson -- aka Algebra's Friend -- posts today as well:
I decided to try out a hyperlinked document to experiment with how to put together a unit for students. I started with a familiar one. I am working on a series of enrichment lessons for gifted middle schoolers who are already accelerated in basic math. I found this "notebook" style to be challenging and yet, it may be useful.
OK, so it's interesting to see how to do notebooks in the coronavirus era. She says that this is for "gifted middle schoolers" and the topic is quadratics, so I assume she means Algebra I eighth graders.
Another blogger today also chooses "self-care" as her topic today -- Julie Reulbach. (I've mentioned Reulbach in previous posts, though not in connection with Blaugust, but with "Winterm" -- a special week of projects right after winter break.)
I say this every year after a summer of sleeping more, exercising more, and eating better. “This year, I will keep this up. This year, I will take better care of myself once school begins.”
Reulbach lists four goals for herself -- and she makes it a point not to say "I'll try," but "I am going to" meet her four goals.
And so am I. I am going to do the things I listed earlier in my post to stay healthy. (In fact, I went back and wrote "I am going to" earlier in this post after reading Reulbach's post.)
A Rapoport Geometry Problem
Today on her Daily Epsilon of Math 2020, Rebecca Rapoport writes:
What is the ratio of the area to the circumference?
[Here is the given info from the diagram: a circle of radius 24.]
This is a straightforward application of our main area circumference and area formulas, given in Lessons 8-8 and 8-9 of the U of Chicago text:
A/C = pi r^2/(2pi r) = pi*24*24 / (2pi * 24) = 24/2 = 12.
Therefore the desired ratio is 12 -- and of course, today's date is the twelfth. (That's right -- the ratio is always r/2 for any radius r.)
Other Rapoport Math Problems
There are some interesting problems from earlier this week. I'll continue to post non-Geometry problems if they contain errors, such as yesterday's:
integral _1 ^2 (x^3 + 2x^2 + x + 1)dx
OK, so we perform the integration -- thinking back to our Starbird Calculus lectures from January:
x^4/4 + 2x^3/3 + x^2/2 + x from 1 to 2
= 2^4/4 - 1^4/4 + 2*2^3/3 - 2*1^3/3 + 2^2/2 - 1^2/2 + 2 - 1
And as soon I saw this, I found the first two terms -- 16/4 - 1/4 or 4 - 1/4, and saw that there's nothing that will cancel that 1/4. Thus the answer can't be an integer at all, much less the date -- and so there must be an error.
Let's complete the calculation anyway:
= 4 - 1/4 + 16/3 - 2/3 + 2 - 1/2 + 2 - 1
= 15/4 + 14/3 + 3/2 + 1
= 45/12 + 56/12 + 18/12 + 12/12
= 131/12
= 11 - 1/12
The answer does round to 11 and yesterday's date was the eleventh, but nowhere in the problem does Rapoport tell us that we need to round the answer. If this were in an AP Calculus class, I expect the student to give the answer 131/12 rather than 11. Therefore I consider this to be an error.
The problem from Monday is also interesting:
How many three woman committees can be made from among five senators?
The answer is 5 choose 3, which is 10 -- and of course, this problem was from the tenth. But what makes it interesting is that the very next day after Rapoport gives this problem about women in the Senate, one particular female senator made the news. Kamala Harris, the junior senator from right here in California, was named as a candidate for Vice President.
This isn't a traditionalists' post, so I do wish to keep politics to a minimum here. But it's hard for me, as a Californian, to ignore the presence of a senator from our state on a presidential ticket. And indeed, I wonder whether Rapoport intentionally placed the female senator question this week -- even when she first printed this calendar, she had to know that party conventions would be this month and that a female senator would likely find herself on a ticket.
(Also I notice that another Californian -- Congresswoman Karen Bass -- was also considered for the Vice Presidential pick.)
Even though Harris was a candidate for Prez as well, I never mentioned her in my "political colors" post earlier on the blog because she had already dropped out of the race by then.
And that's enough politics for today. If you want to read more about Harris, you can check out today's Blaugust post from "Hazel Eyed Math Nut" Tara Daas:
https://hazeleyedmathnut.blogspot.com/2020/08/8-covid19-pre-planning-hanging-on-is.html
What is the ratio of the area to the circumference?
[Here is the given info from the diagram: a circle of radius 24.]
This is a straightforward application of our main area circumference and area formulas, given in Lessons 8-8 and 8-9 of the U of Chicago text:
A/C = pi r^2/(2pi r) = pi*24*24 / (2pi * 24) = 24/2 = 12.
Therefore the desired ratio is 12 -- and of course, today's date is the twelfth. (That's right -- the ratio is always r/2 for any radius r.)
Other Rapoport Math Problems
There are some interesting problems from earlier this week. I'll continue to post non-Geometry problems if they contain errors, such as yesterday's:
integral _1 ^2 (x^3 + 2x^2 + x + 1)dx
OK, so we perform the integration -- thinking back to our Starbird Calculus lectures from January:
x^4/4 + 2x^3/3 + x^2/2 + x from 1 to 2
= 2^4/4 - 1^4/4 + 2*2^3/3 - 2*1^3/3 + 2^2/2 - 1^2/2 + 2 - 1
And as soon I saw this, I found the first two terms -- 16/4 - 1/4 or 4 - 1/4, and saw that there's nothing that will cancel that 1/4. Thus the answer can't be an integer at all, much less the date -- and so there must be an error.
Let's complete the calculation anyway:
= 4 - 1/4 + 16/3 - 2/3 + 2 - 1/2 + 2 - 1
= 15/4 + 14/3 + 3/2 + 1
= 45/12 + 56/12 + 18/12 + 12/12
= 131/12
= 11 - 1/12
The answer does round to 11 and yesterday's date was the eleventh, but nowhere in the problem does Rapoport tell us that we need to round the answer. If this were in an AP Calculus class, I expect the student to give the answer 131/12 rather than 11. Therefore I consider this to be an error.
The problem from Monday is also interesting:
How many three woman committees can be made from among five senators?
The answer is 5 choose 3, which is 10 -- and of course, this problem was from the tenth. But what makes it interesting is that the very next day after Rapoport gives this problem about women in the Senate, one particular female senator made the news. Kamala Harris, the junior senator from right here in California, was named as a candidate for Vice President.
This isn't a traditionalists' post, so I do wish to keep politics to a minimum here. But it's hard for me, as a Californian, to ignore the presence of a senator from our state on a presidential ticket. And indeed, I wonder whether Rapoport intentionally placed the female senator question this week -- even when she first printed this calendar, she had to know that party conventions would be this month and that a female senator would likely find herself on a ticket.
(Also I notice that another Californian -- Congresswoman Karen Bass -- was also considered for the Vice Presidential pick.)
Even though Harris was a candidate for Prez as well, I never mentioned her in my "political colors" post earlier on the blog because she had already dropped out of the race by then.
And that's enough politics for today. If you want to read more about Harris, you can check out today's Blaugust post from "Hazel Eyed Math Nut" Tara Daas:
https://hazeleyedmathnut.blogspot.com/2020/08/8-covid19-pre-planning-hanging-on-is.html
Reblogging: Something I Read/Learned That Summer That Intrigued Me
Before I edited this post on August 13th, I wasn't going to reblog posts from years ago. Originally, I was considering this to be a school-year post, and the only reblogging I do is of my Geometry lessons that I post every year.
But now that this is considered to be a summer post, I can reblog if I wish. And since this post is dated both August 12th-13th, I could reblog an old post from either the 12th or the 13th.
Only once have I ever posted before on August 13th -- six years ago, the first year of this blog. But that year, August 13th was the first day of school in my old district, and so I posted a Geometry lesson -- Lesson 1-8 of the U of Chicago text. This was before I started the digit pattern for posting lessons, and it was also before I'd ever heard of Shelli's Blaugust challenge. Thus there's nothing for me to reblog from that day (except Lesson 1-8, which I'll post on Day 18 in my new district).
But August 12th is a different story. Four years ago, I posted on August 12th -- I alluded to that post earlier today. It was the week before my first day at the old charter school. I'd just learned about Blaugust, and I was responding to one of Shelli's old prompts as an official Blaugust participant.
And so this is what I wrote four years ago, in 2016:
12. Something I read/learned this summer that intrigued me…
Earlier, I mentioned The First Days of School, by Harry and Rosemary Wong. Here is a key chapter that I read:
-- Chapter 3: How You Can Be a Happy First-Year Teacher. The Wongs write:
The first day of school or a class -- even the first few minutes -- will make or break a teacher. It is those first few minutes and first few days of school that are the subject of this book.
Earlier this week, there was a special training session. I met Dr. Brad Christensen, a STEM specialist from Illinois State -- and he was obviously at our school to discuss the Illinois State text during a Professional Development session.
As I explained earlier on the blog, the Illinois State text is a strong project-based curriculum. During the session, Dr. Christensen demonstrated two math projects that are similar to those that can be found in the text. The first involved using dowel rods and rubber bands to construct as tall a structure as possible. The other was a method of estimating square roots using colored squares.
Back in my Square Root Day post (dated 4/4/16), I mentioned various activities that we can give students in order to learn square roots. This activity would have been perfect for Square Root Day, because it allows students to find rational approximations of irrational square roots. It would have fit in well with some of the activities that I mentioned the first week in April.
Notice that this activity actually directs students to perform a linear interpolation. It's possible to perform this interpolation without using colored squares -- to find the square root of a whole number n, use the formula:
sqrt(n) =approx. floor(sqrt(n)) + (n - floor(sqrt(n))^2) / (2n + 1)
Here floor(sqrt(n)) means the square root of n rounded down to the next whole number, which can be found using inspection or trial and error. We can avoid using the floor function by letting a^2 be the largest perfect square that doesn't exceed n, to obtain:
sqrt(n) =approx. a + (n - a^2) / (2n + 1)
But this demonstrates the whole purpose of the colored squares activity -- those formulas are especially hard to remember! The activity takes a little effort to understand -- but once the students get it, it becomes a nice method for interpolating square roots.
According to Dr. Christensen, it's important when beginning a learning module to have the students just jump in and begin the project. There's no point in having the teacher explain anything to the students first, because there's no reason to believe that the students are even listening -- and so all that time spent explaining is wasted.
This philosophy, of course, is in direct opposition to traditionalism. Traditionalists assume that students will listen to the teacher's explanation just because he or she is the "sage on the stage." That is, they'll listen to the teacher because it's proper to do so, and students do only proper things. I believe that students are less likely to listen to a teacher in middle school than in early elementary school, which is why I agree with traditionalists in the early, but not the middle grades.
Dr. Christensen told us that there is room for traditional lessons within a learning module, especially if some students need them. The important note, though, is that the projects should come first. The projects are the cornerstone of the Illinois State curriculum.
Oh, and by the way, Dr. Christensen showed us the science curriculum. I wasn't sure whether or not it would be divided into Earth Science for sixth graders, Life Science for seventh graders, and Physical Science for eighth graders -- considering that California's "preferred model" for the Next Generation Science Standards is integrated science. Well, the science texts he gave us follow the traditional order of Earth in 6th, Life in 7th, and Physical in 8th. Nevertheless, the texts are definitely NGSS-aligned.
Earlier this summer, I wrote that the Illinois State text provides a four-point rubric for us to evaluate the students' projects. Well, we can convert these to letter grades, as follows:
4 = A
3 = B
2 = C
1 = F
You may notice that there is no D grade here. As it turns out, many schools chartered with the LAUSD, including mine, have adopted a no-D policy. The only grades that can appear on a report card are A, B, C, and F.
I've written a little about the no-D grading system earlier on the blog. In particular, I mentioned it back on the last day of the first quarter in 2014 -- second week of October. (I actually reblogged that post at the end of the first quarter in 2015 -- last week of October -- but then I added a discussion of other grading systems that have nothing to what I'm teaching, so I recommend reading the less distracting 2014 post.)
I know that I've changed my mind several times over the summer. But regarding my pacing plan, I want to use the pacing plan that I mentioned back at the end of the first semester in 2016 -- third week of January. According to this plan, we determine which learning module we should be in by looking at the first digit of the day number of the blog calendar. So Module 1 will begin on Day 10 and end on Day 19.
My testing dates will change a little from what I posted earlier. But I did write that there will be a test the second week of school -- and that isn't going to change. And I have an answer ready for why there will be a test so early in the year -- it is a benchmark test.
You see, the second week of school is Benchmark Testing Week. At this time, all students take diagnostic exams in English and math. There is a Benchmark Testing Week every trimester -- the second and third Benchmark Testing Weeks occur at the midpoint of the respective trimesters. This also explains what I'll be doing the first nine days of school if Module 1 doesn't begin until Day 10 -- opening week activities followed by the first Benchmark Testing Week.
The purpose of Benchmark Testing is to measure growth -- indeed, all teachers have a special Data Wall in order to measure growth. Hey, didn't Fawn Nguyen just say something about growth in her post linked above? Exactly -- Benchmark Testing is all about growth, while the SBAC and NGSS tests are all about proficiency.
Returning to 2020, as I reread this old post, I shed a little tear. Look at all the things I mentioned that I would do in my classroom:
But now that this is considered to be a summer post, I can reblog if I wish. And since this post is dated both August 12th-13th, I could reblog an old post from either the 12th or the 13th.
Only once have I ever posted before on August 13th -- six years ago, the first year of this blog. But that year, August 13th was the first day of school in my old district, and so I posted a Geometry lesson -- Lesson 1-8 of the U of Chicago text. This was before I started the digit pattern for posting lessons, and it was also before I'd ever heard of Shelli's Blaugust challenge. Thus there's nothing for me to reblog from that day (except Lesson 1-8, which I'll post on Day 18 in my new district).
But August 12th is a different story. Four years ago, I posted on August 12th -- I alluded to that post earlier today. It was the week before my first day at the old charter school. I'd just learned about Blaugust, and I was responding to one of Shelli's old prompts as an official Blaugust participant.
And so this is what I wrote four years ago, in 2016:
12. Something I read/learned this summer that intrigued me…
Earlier, I mentioned The First Days of School, by Harry and Rosemary Wong. Here is a key chapter that I read:
-- Chapter 3: How You Can Be a Happy First-Year Teacher. The Wongs write:
The first day of school or a class -- even the first few minutes -- will make or break a teacher. It is those first few minutes and first few days of school that are the subject of this book.
Earlier this week, there was a special training session. I met Dr. Brad Christensen, a STEM specialist from Illinois State -- and he was obviously at our school to discuss the Illinois State text during a Professional Development session.
As I explained earlier on the blog, the Illinois State text is a strong project-based curriculum. During the session, Dr. Christensen demonstrated two math projects that are similar to those that can be found in the text. The first involved using dowel rods and rubber bands to construct as tall a structure as possible. The other was a method of estimating square roots using colored squares.
Back in my Square Root Day post (dated 4/4/16), I mentioned various activities that we can give students in order to learn square roots. This activity would have been perfect for Square Root Day, because it allows students to find rational approximations of irrational square roots. It would have fit in well with some of the activities that I mentioned the first week in April.
Notice that this activity actually directs students to perform a linear interpolation. It's possible to perform this interpolation without using colored squares -- to find the square root of a whole number n, use the formula:
sqrt(n) =approx. floor(sqrt(n)) + (n - floor(sqrt(n))^2) / (2n + 1)
Here floor(sqrt(n)) means the square root of n rounded down to the next whole number, which can be found using inspection or trial and error. We can avoid using the floor function by letting a^2 be the largest perfect square that doesn't exceed n, to obtain:
sqrt(n) =approx. a + (n - a^2) / (2n + 1)
But this demonstrates the whole purpose of the colored squares activity -- those formulas are especially hard to remember! The activity takes a little effort to understand -- but once the students get it, it becomes a nice method for interpolating square roots.
According to Dr. Christensen, it's important when beginning a learning module to have the students just jump in and begin the project. There's no point in having the teacher explain anything to the students first, because there's no reason to believe that the students are even listening -- and so all that time spent explaining is wasted.
This philosophy, of course, is in direct opposition to traditionalism. Traditionalists assume that students will listen to the teacher's explanation just because he or she is the "sage on the stage." That is, they'll listen to the teacher because it's proper to do so, and students do only proper things. I believe that students are less likely to listen to a teacher in middle school than in early elementary school, which is why I agree with traditionalists in the early, but not the middle grades.
Dr. Christensen told us that there is room for traditional lessons within a learning module, especially if some students need them. The important note, though, is that the projects should come first. The projects are the cornerstone of the Illinois State curriculum.
Oh, and by the way, Dr. Christensen showed us the science curriculum. I wasn't sure whether or not it would be divided into Earth Science for sixth graders, Life Science for seventh graders, and Physical Science for eighth graders -- considering that California's "preferred model" for the Next Generation Science Standards is integrated science. Well, the science texts he gave us follow the traditional order of Earth in 6th, Life in 7th, and Physical in 8th. Nevertheless, the texts are definitely NGSS-aligned.
Earlier this summer, I wrote that the Illinois State text provides a four-point rubric for us to evaluate the students' projects. Well, we can convert these to letter grades, as follows:
4 = A
3 = B
2 = C
1 = F
You may notice that there is no D grade here. As it turns out, many schools chartered with the LAUSD, including mine, have adopted a no-D policy. The only grades that can appear on a report card are A, B, C, and F.
I've written a little about the no-D grading system earlier on the blog. In particular, I mentioned it back on the last day of the first quarter in 2014 -- second week of October. (I actually reblogged that post at the end of the first quarter in 2015 -- last week of October -- but then I added a discussion of other grading systems that have nothing to what I'm teaching, so I recommend reading the less distracting 2014 post.)
I know that I've changed my mind several times over the summer. But regarding my pacing plan, I want to use the pacing plan that I mentioned back at the end of the first semester in 2016 -- third week of January. According to this plan, we determine which learning module we should be in by looking at the first digit of the day number of the blog calendar. So Module 1 will begin on Day 10 and end on Day 19.
My testing dates will change a little from what I posted earlier. But I did write that there will be a test the second week of school -- and that isn't going to change. And I have an answer ready for why there will be a test so early in the year -- it is a benchmark test.
You see, the second week of school is Benchmark Testing Week. At this time, all students take diagnostic exams in English and math. There is a Benchmark Testing Week every trimester -- the second and third Benchmark Testing Weeks occur at the midpoint of the respective trimesters. This also explains what I'll be doing the first nine days of school if Module 1 doesn't begin until Day 10 -- opening week activities followed by the first Benchmark Testing Week.
The purpose of Benchmark Testing is to measure growth -- indeed, all teachers have a special Data Wall in order to measure growth. Hey, didn't Fawn Nguyen just say something about growth in her post linked above? Exactly -- Benchmark Testing is all about growth, while the SBAC and NGSS tests are all about proficiency.
Returning to 2020, as I reread this old post, I shed a little tear. Look at all the things I mentioned that I would do in my classroom:
- Establish order during the earliest days of school (following the Wongs).
- Assign a square root activity to my eighth graders.
- Teach the science curriculum to all three grades.
- Use a four-point rubric to grade the STEM projects.
And looking back four years later, I realize that I did none of those things that year:
- I thought that I was establishing order, but a few weeks later it was clear that I wasn't.
- I never assigned the square root activity (an "arts" activity, not a "STEM project").
- The problems I had with teaching science are well-documented here on the blog.
- I never used a rubric to grade the projects. Indeed, what happened was that so many students were confused with some of the earliest projects (especially "Show Me the Numbers") that I would have needed to give nearly every student a grade of 1 = F. So instead, I just graded the assignments for completion, which meant that no student had an incentive to do any of the projects correctly. Thus no one learned anything from doing the projects.
In fact, something else I wrote around this time was:
Continue: Just as I want to stop doing anything that takes away from order in the classroom, I wish to keep doing things that contribute to order. To me, the best way to maintain order is to guarantee that the students have something to do at all times. Again, my best days as a sub occurred when students knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing at every moment of the class and knew how to do it.
But this is something that was easy for me to type on my home computer for this blog, yet difficult to remember when I was standing in the classroom in front of actual students.
In fact, I realized the truth of this statement just before I left the old charter school, when I had assigned projects to my sixth and eighth graders. Even though neither project came directly from the Illinois State text (the eighth grade project was merely based on an Illinois State project while the sixth grade project had nothing to do with the curriculum), the students were more successful because they knew exactly what they were supposed to do at all times.
The main idea of the Wongs' book is that teachers should establish procedures early in the year so that the students know exactly what is expected of them at all times. While some tasks (such as how to get the laptops and put them away properly) are obviously procedures, the extent of what exactly is a procedure goes much further. Indeed, nearly everything we ask students to do can be considered as a procedure. This includes how to do the Warm-Ups at the start of each class -- and yes, how to begin and complete the STEM projects.
The other issues mentioned in that old post are particular to the Illinois State curriculum itself. I admit that what the Illinois State presenter was telling that day was overwhelming. Coming into that day, I was under the misconception that the STEM text was the Illinois State curriculum. So I was shutting out what he was saying about the square root project, which was arts, not STEM. And this is not to mention some of the other parts of the curriculum -- die cuts, DIDAX -- that I was ignoring completely as the presenter explained them.
It didn't help that some of these components (including the entire science curriculum) were only on the Illinois State website, which was difficult to navigate.
In that post from August 12th, 2016, I mentioned the pacing guide that I'd follow that year. But all I did was allot two weeks per STEM project and then filled in the rest of the "unit" with lessons from the "Student Journal" or traditional text. There was no time listed for other parts of the curriculum, not even the square root arts project. (I'd reached the square roots unit fairly early in the year, but by then I'd forgotten the project.)
When die cuts and DIDAX were explained to me, I should have asked the presenter questions about how exactly I should use them. Instead, I probably thought of it as, "Well, I might never use any of these things in my classroom." And I likely didn't ask the presenter because I didn't see any of the other (elementary) teachers asking for them -- in other words, I did exactly the opposite of what we tell students they should do in the classroom.
And when I had the chance to meet the presenter one-on-one in October, I only asked him about the STEM projects -- since once again, I still thought that STEM was the entire curriculum. I didn't even think to ask about arts projects, DIDAX, or the science text.
I don't need to repeat those endless pacing plans that I wrote after the fact of how I should have tried to juggle all parts of the Illinois curriculum (including science) that year. And that's especially so since each time I posted them I'd tweak them a little. Suffice it to say that I should have planned it better -- and if I had, I would have had a more successful year. I probably would have completed three years at the school before its charter renewal was denied.
But still, it pains me a little each time I reblog my posts from the year I was at the old charter school and I think about what could have been.
Conclusion
Once again, my next post -- the final post of the summer -- will be tomorrow. And again, the main topic of that post will be the online training for subs that we'll be getting. It will definitely shape what the upcoming school year will look like for me.
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