The Pre-Al Review Unit

We have shifted our focus away from the Jacobs text for a while into our Pre-Algebra review unit. We'll be in this unit for about a month. Basically, I cram all of Pre-Algebra into about 20 days. It's intense, there are a lot of notes, and a lot of homework. They had an old Pre-Al test for homework Monday night that was due today (no class yesterday because of block) and today we worked on Integers (and they have a number of problems for homework, posted below) while we watched a NUMB3RS episode. These problems are due tomorrow! Stay tuned! Tomorrow is rational numbers...

Homework

Ex 1, 2, 4, 5

Ex 3

Chapter 9 Test

We took our Chapter 9 test today! I'll be taking these home with me and checking them over the weekend. The kids will get them back on Monday when we start our next unit: A Review of Pre-Algebra... Whoohoo!

Test Tomorrow!

Chapter 9 test is tomorrow and we used our time together today to review for that test. On a larger scale, this test is not as much of a bear as Chapters 7 & 8. They're going to be fine.

The next unit we will start is the Pre-Algebra unit... next Monday!

Using Excel to do the work for us

We used the computers primarily today to talk about mean, median, mode, range, and standard deviation. We talked about using Excel to do most of the math for us! That then begged the question, if computers can do this work... then shouldn't we be doing other stuff? I'll post the one of the excel docs on the class docs so you can see what we did!

A Trillion?

Collecting data and what to do?

Today we talked about and collected data from ourselves... that we'll use tomorrow with the computers. I want to show the kids how to use the computers to do some of the statistics work we've been doing for the past few weeks.

Tomorrow we'll plug all the data in the computer, Wednesday will be review and THURSDAY will be the test!

Collecting data

The Census

Since I was absent yesterday for fourth period (had to leave early with a debilitating headache), the kids ended up working on a lesson that I hadn't planned we would study on Sampling.

They worked on that and finished the first set for homework last night. Today we checked that homework, and then watched part of an episode from The West Wing, a political tv drama. The episode was about sampling with regards to the census, quite an appropriate topic considering next year we're up for a census... and we're studying data collection in Jacobs. :)

No homework, but there will be a test next week on Chapter 9.

Lesson 5

Today we quickly checked Lesson 5 Set I, and then moved into Set II. The kids will need to finish up Set II for homework.

And as Madeline found out yesterday, no worries if you forget your book! I scanned in the sheets from the book and emailed them to her. No more excuses for not having homework done because the book wasn't there! :)

Finishing up Chapter 9: Lesson 5

After a quick warm up we started the last section of Chapter 9 that we study: Lesson 5 on reading graphs. I introduced the lesson for them, and I've assigned Set I for homework tonight.

We also checked the range, median, mode and mean homework from the weekend.

We're coming down to the count... only two more units!

Warm up

On Trimester 2 Evaluations

I wanted to send out a note about how to read your child's second trimester math evaluation which you will be getting in the mail (along with your child's other reports) in the coming days.

You may have heard through the grapevine (in fact, you might have even heard through me!) that the Middle School Staff has been engaged in an Action Research Project on assessment and evaluation this year. (For more information on what exactly Action Research is, see this Wikipedia article.)

We've been asking ourselves many, many questions over the past few months. Among those are questions like:

    * Who are evaluations for? Students? Parents? Future teachers (of the students)?

    * What is the best way to convey how a child is "doing" in a class?

    * How can we improve our process to meet the needs of all parties involved in the assessment/evaluation experience?

(Note: These are a summary of the questions that my brain has latched on to and mulls over before I fall asleep each night--not necessarily representative of the entire Middle School Staff's questions.)

And, as you can imagine, many of us have taken on the task of actively experimenting with how our evaluations look, what they say, and how they say it. Some of us have added rubrics. Some of us have focused more on project assessment.

For my second trimester evaluation, I decided to focus on truly involving the students in the assessment/evaluation process.

There are many overarching goals that teachers have. These are the goals, dreams, and visions for what students will take from their time spent with us beyond how to add fractions and diagram a sentence.

As you probably guessed, I have a whole slew of these. :) But the one that got tapped these past few weeks was this: Students (and successful human beings) should be able to accurately evaluate themselves on how they are doing according to a specific standard--whether internal or external. Put plainly, people should know whether they're good at something or bad at something and how to process that.

When you open up your child's second trimester evaluation packet and turn to their math evaluation, you're going to see what I'm talking about.

The week before evaluations were due in advisor's boxes, each one of my math classes took an online form/survey of their performance and experience in my class. On that day, we rolled out the Mobile Mac lab and I made a BIG deal about all that I've written to you so far. I explained myself, and walked them step-by-step through the survey, answering questions along the way.

Basically, the kids had to answer the following sentences with the choices of Never... Sometimes... Most of the time... Always. And they could only choose one of the four.

Take a look at the actual evaluation the kids filled out. (This is just a PDF copy, you can't make any more submissions--don't forget to scroll down!)

I explained to the kids that they were to fill out the evaluation and that they were essentially writing their own evaluations. I, of course, reserved the right to adjust and tweak where I saw fit, and I would make my own comments on their reports as always. But you would be surprised how little I actually had to go back and change.

As the kids filled out the evaluations, many questions arose that sounded like, "Matthew... What if I'm more towards Sometimes... or maybe Most of the time?... I don't know... Can I say in between?"

I encouraged them to think these things through, for it's in that conversation that I think the magic of this evaluation and assessment experiment lie. And this is what I want to encourage you to do as you sit down and process your child's evaluation.

For example, "My child put down 'Most of the time' for 'helps to create a productive learning environment.' That sounds pretty good to me. Good job!"

Or... "My child put down 'Most of the time' for 'helps to create a productive learning environment.' That sounds interesting. What was it that kept you from putting down 'Always' on that one?"

To add another layer to the process, I decided at the last minute to let the kids see their final evaluations before they were delivered to advisors. In this way, I hoped kids would be able to continue to be part of the conversation about how they were evaluated and assessed in math. This created the space for kids to ask me, "Matthew? Why did you move me from 'Most of the time' to 'Sometimes' on this one?" And what a great conversation we had then!

Take a look at what the second trimester evaluations look like.

So, Matthew. Why this long blog post/email?

There are a couple of reasons. One is to keep you in the loop. Another is to try and prepare you and go ahead and answer some of your questions about how to read your child's evaluation.

And finally, I want your feedback. :) Be on the lookout for a post or an email asking for your feedback soon!

Thanks for all that you do--I hope all of this makes sense and that it was an easy and straight-forward read. I appreciate your patience and kindness as well in this wonderful dance we're doing called education your children. :) Have a great day!

Benjamin Banneker and Practice

Taking a break from Jacobs, we read a story about Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician and scientist. This is normally a weekly routine for first year math students, so it was a bit bittersweet to be read to again. :)

We also worked on just some simple mean, median, mode, and range problems that I would like the kids to finish over the weekend. I'll get that posted up on class docs in a bit. Have a great weekend!

Finishing up Set II

We finished up watching the NUMB3Rs episode we started watching yesterday first today, and then we checked the rest of Set I that they had for homework last night.

Afterwards, we worked on Set II of Lesson 4.... together. No homework!

Standard Deviation & NUMB3RS

Today we checked our work from yesterday and from homework, and then moved into watching an episode of NUMB3RS that focuses on statistics. They will also need to complete the rest of Set I, Lesson 4 for homework. (That was the trade off!)

Standard Deviation

We checked our Lesson 3, Set I today at the beginning of class and swiftly moved on to Lesson 4 -- Standard Deviation. This is the crux of Chapter 9.

The kids began working in Lesson 4, Set I, #s 1-15 and I'd like them to struggle through and finish for homework. (Most will need to finish tonight.)

Heads up--due to absences, some kids spent the first part of their period outside the room working on last night's homework. They only got a brief time to start working on tonight's homework and might need a little extra support tonight. (Either from a parent... or a phone call to Matthew!)

Measures of Central Tendency

Today we moved into Lesson 3, on mean, median, and mode. The kids are only going to do Set I from this Lesson, and I want it done by tomorrow. (Thus, it could be homework.)

Anna's Code

Evaluations!

Today after our warm up, we used the mobile Mac Lab to literally <> our evaluations. I've been experimenting with GoogleDocs, and Forms in particular, and the kids used a form that I had created to help in the writing of their evaluations!

You'll here more about this later, when evals come home, but if you want to see what it looked like, click here for a pdf version. (Look under All Class Docs)

Warm up!

Lesson 2, Set 1

After a special birthday warm up, we worked on the rest of Set 1 in
Lesson 2 on codes and ciphers. Not finished? HW! ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Matthew Ross
ross.matthew@mac.com
mross@cfsnc.org
919/414-1983

Sent from my iPhone

Codes and Ciphers

Today we finished up the NUMB3Rs episode on codes... and then jumped right into the next Lesson of Chapter 9 -- Ciphers!

Tonight / today in class we worked on problems #1-4 from Set I, Lesson 2.

If you want the background from that lesson check out "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" (Sherlock Holmes story) text.