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Having Fun in Pre-Calculus

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Pre Calc Fun
When looking back on my educational journey the most memorable learning moments were when there were hands on activities or an activity that involved community building. When thinking about pre calculus fun may not be the first word that comes to mind. Having activities instead of lectures does not seem usual for math class. I always questioned how I would incorporate hands on, or fun activities for my students in math class that were still educational. 

Around finals time I noticed the students feeling really stressed and just wanting extra time to study and get more help in preparation for the final. One thing I enjoyed in college was getting together with classmates and bonding over food and drinks while we studied the night away together. I wanted to provide extra time for my students where they could receive extra help on the review guide with peers and the teacher. We came together after school before our final day over hot cocoa and pre-calc. The girls were working all around the room with their peers as I walked around to offer extra assistance. It was such a success because the girls enjoyed coming to review while drinking hot chocolate and building a community together getting ready for the upcoming final. Cocoa and cram is something I will continue to do for upcoming finals. 

I have found that when you give your students the opportunity to be the “teacher” they absolutely love it. Students also like to use technology and be creative with the assignment at task. I wanted to make use of flipgrid where my students can use this platform as a study tool. From the review packet I assigned each student a problem. They had to post a flipgrid of them doing the problem and explaining the steps. Now when students are doing their review packet and are stuck on a problem they could go to flipgrid and find that exact problem with a student explanation. The girls loved playing teacher and having this resource. I would look over the room and see math around the walls with smiles and laughter on the girls faces. Many girls mentioned how useful it was to have this resource when studying the night before the test. 

Having an activity where students can have hands on materials and make a fun experience out of it will create a better connection with the material. Having a good experience will allow the students to have a better memory of what they did. In class I wanted to create a fun activity that was also educational. I came up with trig wars. I had flash cards with different problems they would need to solve. The girls would pair up and challenge each other. Through the period everyone was continuously playing and even if they did not know the material well it was a great opportunity to have the girls practice and work with other students. At the beginning I presented a prize for the student who makes it all the way to the top. This got them very excited and competitive where they wanted to participate and do well. You would see the girls cheering each other on and get very into the game. It was a game disguised with learning and it was a success. 

Sometimes it takes thinking outside the box to create memorable activities for the students to enjoy. Just these few activities made the girls excited about learning math and being engaged. I felt sneaky because the girls had fun but they were really learning. I am going to continue to create and use these activities so I can make my students math education more exciting and memorable. 

Carondelet: The Future Footprint

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For those who do not know, my degree is in planning, public policy and management. A few months ago when Bonnie commented that the next construction project could be to build a new gym, it got my wheels turning. In my mind this is a good idea, and desperately needed, but construction wise there may need to be a few steps before this comes to fruition.  

*As a caveat, I am using information that has been told to the staff for this vision. Obviously, there could be information that I am not privy too, and there are a few items missing from the list. This is a general overview.

This is the way I see the order of construction happening. 

  1. New Office Space: Before anything can be done the offices in the Convent need to be moved. The idea is to remove the tennis courts but keep the parking. Build a second story of offices where the tennis courts used to be. That can be the new offices for the president and other staff. One of the reasons for this is because the underground parking can be used for guests that are visiting campus and taking tours. They would get into an elevator (or stairs) to take them to the second story where they could be met with a nice little reception area. This would also add more roof space for solar panels. *Note: The new offices could be built with almost no interference to the ongoings of daily school life.

  1. Convent: The convent, as we all know, is an older building and would not meet today’s construction codes. After the new office spaces are built, the Convent would be torn down and be turned into the new gym with a new locker room for changing. It could also have designated team rooms with white boards instead of putting teams in the locker room, or a classroom. There also can be a designated entrance that can be seen by those who have not stepped foot onto campus. This would be easier for ticket sales or merchandise sales. *Note: The new gym could be built with almost no interference to the ongoings of daily school life.

2. A) Chapel: With the building of a new gym the means that the footprint would be a little bit longer than what is currently there. As we know, the chapel is not used as much as it once was. The idea would be to build a new chapel on the grass right outside of the back 40’s with a possibility of holding 60-70 people (or about two classes of kids).

  1. Basketball gym (The Old gym): The old gym and the back 40’s would be completely gutted and redone. In that building there could be a small theater (about 100 people), rooms for choir, and art. The old locker room would be completely removed and a smaller gym would take its place with either one (or two courts). This is where P.E. could be held, dance rehearsal/class, also freshman/jv volleyball and basketball could practice there. With multiple teams practicing at once that means students would be able to get home sooner and would not have to spend so much time on campus like they currently do. Also, having a dedicated walkway so students and teachers alike do not have to walk in the rain.
I understand that this is a multi-step process and would take years to get the funding for and to actually complete, but it is worth envisioning the future of the Carondelet campus.

AP Statistics Conference

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            Conferences
are generally not “fun” per se; it’s not their purpose to entertain you. The
purpose of these types of conferences is to educate, and in that regard, the
Pacific AP Institute was perfect.
            I’d taught
Honors Statistics in prior years. The class was designed in such a way that
those wanting to take the AP test would be prepared, but those without interest
in taking it could choose that route. I generally taught with the style of,
“…if you plan on taking the AP test, this is something you need to know and be
able to do. If not, don’t worry too much about it…”
            Teaching an
AP class, where the vast majority of students would be taking it, was a little
intimidating. I constantly wondered if I was teaching something in a different
way than the test would expect, that I was forgetting anything minor, or if the
AP test had somehow evolved throughout the years in a way that my expectations
were now just out of date. I was trying to hold myself to a standard that I
didn’t have a full grasp of.
            Enter: the
Pacific AP Institute.
            Not that it
was my choice to attend, but I’m extremely grateful I was given the
opportunity. The Statistics section of the conference was led by Josh Tabor; a
name I somehow recognized. I soon came to find out he was one of the main
authors of the new book I had been recently told I was using. In addition, he
was both a leader of the AP Readers that graded the tests every year, as well
as on the committee of those who write new questions from year to year. How
lucky can one guy be?
            The
conference was everything I wanted; a practical look at what was on the AP test
and how it was reflected in the new book. He gave us extensive looks at what
questions looked like, how they were graded, and examples he/others wrote into
the book to give students similar practice. Josh gave us his class notes, tests,
and project ideas. What had been, in my mind, an empty field where a course
needed to be developed by me, was now a fully furnished house, ready for me to
customize it to my style and preferences.
            I left with
tools to consider like http://rossmanchance.com/applets/, https://www.statcrunch.com/, and
the Fathom program. I left with a preview of the AP Classroom site that would
soon be released (to be discussed in a later blog!). But most significantly, I
left with confidence (as well as a couple massive material-filled binders and
teachers’ editions of books I both was and wasn’t using). 
            I’m very
thankful that Lesley had me attend, and I thoroughly suggest a conference like
this to anyone who will be, or currently is, teaching an AP class.

Podcast Review: America’s Education Problem from The Daily

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I listened to the podcast from The Daily called America’s Education Problem. This episode interviewed Dana Goldstein and the host, Michael Barbaro, talked about standardized testing. I wasn’t very excited to listen to this podcast but Susan recommended it to me so I thought I would listen. This was SO interesting. Dana had some really interesting statistics and facts that actually blew my mind. One statistic that stood out to me was only 14 percent of American students could distinguish, reliably, between fact and opinion. This blew my mind, especially because I see it happening in my science classes. Dana brought up another good point after she shares that statistic and she says, ” And think about the implications of this in a world where there’s so much misinformation on social media, political advertisements that are trying to sway your opinion.” All I could think about was all the information they see every single day on Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat and how most of it is not accurate and how they might not be able to see that. Something that I have been trying to do better this year with my biology students is to always back up their opinion with statistics. I tell them that no one is going to believe them if they do not have reliable sources or have data that supports what they are saying. If they are drawing conclusions, I tell them to use the data they collected in their lab. If they are forming an opinion about a topic, I tell them they need to include their research in their final answer…I tell them that if they want anyone to believe them they HAVE to back up what they are saying. I am afraid that they are reading “information” on social media and listening to the news that could be spewing false information and they might not be able to distinguish if it’s the truth or a lie. 

So, on an assignment from last semester, I really tried to get my students to back up their opinion. They were given the following question, “Should Creatine Supplements Be Regulated?” We had talked about cellular respiration and now they had to take what they learned, do more research, and come to a conclusion about the above question. They had to find articles that had multiple viewpoints (because I think it’s important to always hear both sides) and then use the information and data they collected to write a paragraph. I stressed how important it was to support your argument with legitimate facts; not ones found on Instagram or “something my friend told me”. I was still slightly disappointment with their final paragraphs but there were some people who had convinced me that they should or shouldn’t based on the facts and data they included. I think going forward, that is something I will continue to stress.

Building Anti-Racist White (history) Educators.

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With Martin Luther King Day coming up this Monday and Black History Month coming up in February, I decided this is a good time to join an educator group that has the intriguing title “Building Anti-Racist White (history) Educators.” The group is sponsored by the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project. UCBHSSP director, Rachel B. Reinhard, Ph.D., is hosting monthly meetings on the UCB campus to discuss what it means to be an anti-racist educator, in the particular context of history classrooms.

Most educators claim they are not racist. Being anti-racist takes it a step further. Anti-racism cannot be passive. The mission of this group is to be actively involved in the fight against racism. This involvement begins with education. The first session began with a discussion about how most white educators do not even realize how racist our society is and has been for the past 400 years. From slavery to white privilege, racism is deeply engrained in our society, so much so that much racism has become invisible to many white people. Educators need to understand racism before they can teach about racism.

We also discussed how easy it is for white educators to fall into the trap of believing they know what is best for students of color and of how easy it is to focus on “helping” students of color rather than focusing on the manifestations of white racism. The focus must be on the white students and adults who need to be made aware of how white privilege affects people of color every day of their lives. Influencing the minds of whites creates a path that will lead to the end racism. How do we go about this? How do white educators learn to become productive allies in the work toward achieving racial justice in education and society? These are the questions this group will be addressing during the next several months.

When it comes to practicing anti-racism, I have come to realize that I have a long way to go. One thing I now know is the focus needs to be on white people and how so many knowingly and unknowingly perpetuate racism every day. I have witnessed racism since early childhood. I understand where it is coming from. Since I am white, I find many white people are open to me about their racism. Being white gives me enough credibility with white racists that they actually listen to me, at least for a while. Changing their minds is not so easy. It’s going to take a lot of white voices speaking out for anti-racism to make real progress. My greatest hope lies in our students who seen to really get it. Racism is not cool.

Further reading and listening:

Watson, Angela. “10 Things Every White Teacher Should Know When Talking about Race.” The Cornerstone For Teachers, Watson, Angela. “10 Things Every White Teacher Should Know When Talking about Race.” The Cornerstone For Teachers, thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/10-things-every-white-teacher-know-talking-race/.

Dillard, Coshandra. “Black Lives Matter Week of Action.” Teaching Tolerance, www.tolerance.org/magazine/black-lives-matter-week-of-action.

Fugate, Katherine. “White People Are Broken.” Medium, Medium, 1 Sept. 2018, medium.com/@katstory/white-people-are-broken-ab0fe873e5d3.

Diangelo, Robin. White Fragility Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Allen Lane, 2019. Amazon

Pie-Eating Pedagogy

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Image result for pie eating contest

It’s taken a while to process the vast quantity of things that I learned during the California Science Teachers Association conference in San Jose- the closest terrible metaphor I can come up with is digesting after a pie-eating contest.  As a brand new science teacher, I was excited to go to a conference with all these science teachers who had ALL THE ANSWERS on how to get students to learn! And think! And turn into amazing scientists! I was especially jazzed that the whole science department was going, so we could bounce ideas off each other and really maximize the takeaways from the conference

Now that it’s been a few months, I’ve been able to start actually using the strategies in my classroom.  I’m not really good at picking one thing to implement at once; I typically go for the AND approach, since I want my students to have the benefit of all the things right away.  With that in mind, here’s some of the interesting takeaways that I got:

Low floor, high ceiling
The California Academy of Sciences had a fantastic workshop that focused on making concepts accessible to all students, while still challenging the high achievers.  Their example? Assessing how much of the moon is lit by the sun when it is a crescent moon.  The ‘low floor’ is the moon, which is a universally experienced object, so it’s a low floor that everyone can come in on.  Students made predictions, then put their predictions on anonymous post-it notes that the teachers collected and put into makeshift bar charts.  I’ve since used this in my class, and it’s a fantastic way to take away the fear of wrong answers, because no one sees who put what!  
The teams then worked on modeling the moon’s lighting based on motion, then reassessed their answer, making a new set of bar graphs. When I used it in my class, it was an extraordinary way to visualize how much the students had learned from the less.

At the conference, the groups were then invited to explore one of a series of questions that were posted around the room that varied in difficulty. This is the ‘high ceiling’ concept; some groups only tackled one of the simpler questions, while other groups stubbornly attacked every single question.  I loved how it allowed freedom of approach while still providing challenge that wasn’t just extra work.  I’m starting to incorporate this in my classes with a ‘Go BEYOND’ question for students; these questions require students to really think about the concepts that we have discussed, but students who are at a more basic level of learning can choose to focus on the base information instead.I’m still struggling with the idea of accepting that some students won’t reach for the difficult questions, but perhaps I need to keep in mind what MUST be learned versus what they COULD learn…

Manipulatives
There was a great couple of workshops that used poker chips to model chemical reactions, and I immediately implemented it in my classroom to help with balancing equations!  Students have a tendency to jump to playing with numbers, but I hoped that slowing down with the chips would make them check in with what was actually happening with the balancing.  Interestingly, there was a divide in students that has replicated in Ian’s class- some students had it click when they used the chips, but others got lost as soon as the manipulatives were introduced! It’s nice to see a method for engaging the more visual and tactile learners, but I think in the future that I will give students the option to use them, based on whether or not they were helped previously.

There were a few other interesting ideas that I want to try to tackle, such as the concept of a storyline to tie all the units together, but that’s going to have to come during summer break when I have time to think.  I’m tossing around the idea of a molecular gastronomy final project though- something that ties together the thread of science communication with a variety of chemistry principles that we have talked about, which has the added benefit of making the girls make the connections to practical applications? If I play my cards right, maybe we’ll end up with a feast during finals week…

If anyone wants to see the various notes that I took in Notability, they are all here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1Ssr9qiRDTlkfwEM5QusIqHPNMuV41Cu2

The Value of Experimentation and Choice

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Katie:
In science, we love to experiment.  We especially love to test published things that surprise us, or make us skeptical. We also LOVE to learn new things, whether or not they are particularly relevant to anything at that particular moment.

As some of you may know, I was a practicing analytical chemist for about 11.5 years; before I was an analytical chemist, I was a student at UC Berkeley in the Chemistry department. When I switched to teaching, Carondelet was the amazing answer to a fervent but unhopeful prayer. Imagine my surprise when every single credential class told me that the classic method (the only method I remembered) of telling students things and expecting them to learn didn’t work.  Between my ESL and special education credential classes, one of the major emphases was CHOICE.  Choice in how to access the material and choice in how to convey their mastery of the material.  By allowing students choice, they theoretically can engage with the material in a way that excites them and maximizes their potential for creativity and success.  I decided to experiment a little bit with the idea of choice for my forensic science class’s final project.

Students were allowed to choose between doing a case study or a discipline survey; within each of these, they were allowed to pick what specifically they wanted to cover.  Then came the wild, crazy, freewheeling part that made me twitchy- they got to choose ANY method of getting that information to me, as long as it met certain requirements.  

I’ll admit, I was pretty skeptical.  So skeptical that I had my students make their proposals back in September, with 3 check-in dates to make sure that they all were making appropriate progress.  I also threw in a peer-review day where each student had to review another student’s final draft and fill out a detailed peer review sheet- where the peer reviewer received a grade for how useful they were actually being. 

The end products were much better than I had hoped. One student wrote a song about a particular case (it missed a fair number of the required sections, but it’s catchy!), one did a news story, several did Powerpoint presentations, and quite a few did traditional essays.  While a couple fell short of what I had hoped for, it gave me ideas like this WebQuest that I had to make for my credential program.

Susan:
The Biotech class became something of an experiment this year too. With transitions to new teachers, we decided to reboot the curriculum and find more opportunities for student choice. We decided to have the students choose between a curated list of books that would give them an opportunity to dive deeper into one of the aspects of the course. After a round of votes, students were able to choose from titles focussing on GMO foods, Superbugs/Antibiotic resistance, Crispr/gene therapy and patients’ rights in medical research. Again fearful that the students wouldn’t make progress on the goal of reading the book for use in the final project, we scaffolded the semester with progress checks, proposals and peer reviews. 

Katie:
When Susan started discussing the final project for the book club, I loved the idea of having students decide how to present their mastery.  I also wanted them not to simply throw up an infographic that was a summary of the book that could have been made from detailed Wikipedia entries though.  In my ESL engagement class, we had just talked about using an INTO-THROUGH-BEYOND series of activities to help students grow, and this concept echoed in my head as we were trying to figure out what to do with this project.  Ideally, our classwork had provided the INTO, giving students a foothold into the basic topics.  The books and labs should have taken them THROUGH the concepts.  Now, they had to come up with the BEYOND.  
Susan & Katie:
These projects really highlighted the benefit of allowing choice.  The schemes the students came up with were wildly different, and well worth engaging with.  One trio successfully lobbied for a group podcast response to The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks; this highlighted the students’ creativity and the skills they learned in their podcasting class. Another made a fantastic set of interviews with students about GMOs and a thoughtful discussion of the topics discussed. Finally,the GMO topic elicited another creative video with a pair of students creating a newscast centering around basic facts with GMO foods. Of course we still got a few of the summary/infographics, but when presentation day came, all members of the class were inspired by each other’s work. There even was an impromptu round of applause for the most impressive projects, and hopefully inspiration for them to take to their next BEYOND project.
After seeing the amazing products that the students created and their depth of understanding, we are both encouraged to apply the creative BEYOND project in our classes moving forward!  

Final Project or Final Exam?

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I often wonder if it is better to
give students a final exam or project to measure their learning and progress at
the end of the semester.  For my level 4
Spanish course, I decided to do a final paper in place of a final exam this
year. Throughout this semester, we have studied various complex authors in the Spanish-speaking
world. As a culminating paper, students had the opportunity to write a dialogue
between two of the authors that we studied this semester. In the dialogue
students had to synthesize, the topics and information that we learned from
these authors based on our discussions and analysis of the literary texts. An
important as aspects of the paper was for students to demonstrate that they
understood the author’s texts and could incorporate themes as well biographical
facts from the writer’s lives. The students completed the paper in various
stages.
The first stage involved an
activity called “Around the World Café.” I divided students into groups and
assigned an author (that we had studied during the semester) to discuss. On a
large piece of paper, the students could write ideas about these authors, their
themes from their works and important biographical information. After about 5
or 10 minutes, the bell would ring and the students were given another piece of
paper with the name of another author. The students could review the
information and add ideas to the other group’s notes.  We continued this activity until all the
papers had been passed around and each group discussed and added comments to
the papers. The point of this first activity was to review the literature and
authors that we had studied.
In the second phase, students were
required to choose two authors and to start writing an outline of their
dialogue. In the third phase, students wrote a draft and met with me
individually to check on their progress. This was a checkpoint to ensure that
students were on track and to offer constructive feedback. After revising
drafts and completing the final dialogue students were given, time to practice
orally their dialogues. On the day of the final exam, students presented and
acted out their dialogue with a partner. 
Overall, I was very pleased with
the results. This was a great activity for the students to be able to
synthesize what we learned in a creative format. It also took some pressure off
students. They were relieved that they did not have to take an exam but they
still had to use their critical thinking skills to demonstrate what they
learned. For me, I thoroughly enjoyed reading these dialogues. 

Claim Evidence Reasoning

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My
drive to work usually involves listening to any one of my many favorite
podcasts.  In December, The Daily, from the NYTimes, had one about education that got me thinking, especially since we
are prepping to analyze the data collected in the MAP tests that have been
going on Fall semester. I’m eager to see if our diligent and creative efforts
to teach our girls results in improved reading and math skills. Listening to
the podcast and reading the current analysis of the international PISA test,
got me thinking. I’ve been watching the PISA tests for a long time and
every time they come out, I am always sad that there’s a statistic about our
country falling behind in some area. One stat really upset me this year–how
could only 14% of students tested be able to read passages and determine if the
statements were fact or opinion? As a scientist and science teacher, I love
opening my students eyes to the wonder of the details of biology, chemistry or
physics, but most of all I hope that I instill critical thinking skills. This
stat reinforced my current obsession with teaching science practices and data
analysis. I am especially motivated to challenge the students to read more from all kinds of content online, to
make claims about the topics we study, to
back their claims up with evidence from
real data, and to explain their reasoning
about why they chose particular data (CERs). If my students were starting to
get tired of hearing me assign a CER, the recent data release about PISA
testing will unfortunately prompt me to do it more!

CMC North Conference

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I wanted to start with just saying how much I loved going to this conference. I forgot about how much I like to learn new techniques and share ideas and thoughts with fellow teachers. During this time I was also able to get closer with the Sara and Mary Beth learning about them personally and professionally. I went to three different speakers where I gained resources, tools, and techniques to use in my classroom to become a more effective teacher.

Building Agency: Helping Students Deal with Anxiety
Build positive relationships; build community
Establish classroom norms and agreements
Embed small group interactions in classroom instruction 
Model expectations
Differentiate instruction to meet students where they are 
Give students voice

Math anxiety is a big topic of issue with my current students. Our students range from being a freshman in calculus to being a sophomore in pre algebra. Just from peer influence and outside pressures of college and home life students are having anxiety about math class. Our students need to be in the right mindset to even be able to come and learn. Being able to figure out the root of the anxiety is the very first step. To be able to do this you will need a safe and comfortable classroom environment where students feel they are able to share this information with you. One of the underlying roots that we can take action on is a positive relationship. If we are able to become aware of this need we can plan our teacher moves around them. Robert Sylvester said “We know that emotion is very important to the educative process because it drives emotion, which drives learning and memory.” This really stuck with me because we want our students to be in a place where they can even have the ability to learn.