Problem of the Week success:)

This week I graded what I think was the third POW writeup that I have assigned. Once again (even though I dread grading them) they provided "teacher encouragement." My 2 favorite comments in the "what I learned" portion were:

If you listen to the teacher she will give you hints that really help you. 

My parents said they didn't get to do fun assignments or sit in groups in their math class. (She thinks math can be fun??? = total success!!) 

I think the one about listening to the teacher is funny; the truth is many of my students tune me out while I am addressing the class as a whole. Then when the realize I've stopped talking they look around and say, "What are we supposed to be doing?" Ugh! I am trying some tricks to try to improve my students listening skills. One is to randomly call on a student at the end of class and ask them a question that they should know the answer to if they listened in class. I don't always ask them a math question either. I reward them with candy or letting them leave the room first.

One other thing that encouraged me this past week was noticing that I had one student use tables to graph lines. As a math teacher I think that is strange because I used to always put my equations in slope-intercept form to graph. Teaching from the IMP Meaningful Math Algebra book has helped me to allow students to discover the way that works best for them (believe me I always tell them the way I think is easier!! Haha!). I taught slope-intercept form (conceptually first in Overland Trail), graphing by intercepts, and graphing using tables almost simultaneously. I would stress the easiest way depending on the way the equation was written but told them over and over to use the way that makes the most sense to them. Out of 21 students I had 1 girl get 8 out of 9 graphing questions correct using tables. Even though it was only one student who chose that method it really encouraged me to see that some students really do benefit from the "alternate" approach. I have spent many years teaching them with the methods that I think are the most efficient. I feel like what I am doing now benifits my students more.

IMP Problems of the Week and Rubrics

For some reason today I have been thinking about how much I enjoyed doing the Problems of the Week (POWs) with my algebra students. (Disclaimer: We did not do them every week...we did about 2 or 3 each 9 weeks). Here is a post with a picture of part of a POW writeup that was good. And this post (toward the bottom) has a portion of one of my favorite write ups from this year. One of my favorite quotes from a POW was "every time we use this I go deeper into thinking than I ever have in math."

When I attempted to grade the first POW writeups I was so disappointed. I had a rubric that I used to grade it that I found at gphillymath.org and it was so helpful. Our Instructional Partner, Dr. Shelley Montgomery (@DrSMontgomery), came by and I was talking to her about my students' writeups. She asked me if I had given my students the rubric when I gave them the assignment. I didn't even find the rubric until I got ready to grade the assignment. I went over each of the categories for the POW Write-up and gave examples...but I did not give them the rubric ahead of time. Don't judge me! HAHA! Please remember I am a math teacher and I was not accustomed to grading writing assignments. I ended up giving the writeups back to the students WITH my grading rubric. The 2nd attempt at the POW writeup was much better. As the year went by my students really improved in this area. It was frustrating how many of them just did not pay attention to details. I am hoping that the experiences they had using rubrics in my class will serve them well as they use them in their future English classes - I know that their 10th grade English teacher uses them often.

If you are teaching using the IMP curriculum please go to the gphilly website. There are many awesome resources which will make your life easier. AND...give the grading rubric to the students on the first day that you go over the POW in class.

As a math teacher I feel that there are 2 different ways to use rubrics. The POW writeups are similar to the types that English teachers use. However, before this year I had mostly used rubrics to help me to grade my tests consistently. Awarding partial credit can get confusing when you can't remember how many points you gave for portions of the answers being correct. I have not included these "rubrics" on the quizzes or put them on the board for my students to look at while they are taking the quizzes but I feel that it would be a good thing to do. Maybe if the students saw the ways in which you were going to award credit they will be more willing to try problems that seem difficult at first.

Even the teachers had to PERSEVERE in problem solving to figure out the POWs - Coach Whitt was cracking me up on this day!

I love that the students learned how to ask for help and find other ways to help themselves via the Internet or asking for help from their parents or friends. I allowed that for POWs as long as they included how they received help in their writeups.

IMP Math Day 38 - Finishing Fort Hall Businesses and POW Write-up

Today my 2nd and 3rd blocks finished up Fort Hall Businesses. The neat thing about these questions was that the starting points were not given. The students are given a couple of data points in the situation itself and one of the problems gives the rate of change but the second one doesn't. It is so rewarding to see the students work through these problems and figure them out. The odd thing is that my 2nd block class solved the problems using graphs and my 3rd block class mainly used In-Out tables or just reasoned through them.

#2 had to do with a movie theater selling tickets and it gave the amount in the cash register after 20 tickets were sold and then after 60 tickets were sold. This one gave my 2nd block alot of trouble (they didn't have as much time to work on it either) so I asked them how many points does it take to draw a line. I then had a coordinate plane that one of the groups had labeled but hadn't put a scale to it yet or graphed any points...they were frozen. I had talked with all of the groups doing #2 and we pulled out 2 ordered pairs from the information that was given so during the class discussion I showed them that one method of solving the problem would be to simply graph the ordered pairs and draw the line containing them. From this info we could answer the question of how much money was in the cash register to begin with. Then I guided them to find the amount of each ticket (slope) and we were able to write the rule for the graph. They are taking a quiz tomorrow on graphing and I can't wait to see how they do. I am anxious yet optimistic!

My 5th block took a quiz yesterday and I gave them feedback on their papers without assigning grades. Today I went over a similar assignment from the book (again) and then gave them their quizzes (with the feedback) back and told them to make corrections based on the feedback. Understanding variables is a difficult concept for 9th graders for some reason. I expect to have to offer a quiz retake but maybe I won't!

I read another encouraging POW Write-up today. An excerpt is below:

IMP Day 30 - You're the Storyteller and POW writeups

Today I had some fun with my classes. We made a "contest" out of beating Mr. Webb's class on making creative stories for the equations in You're the Storyteller: From Rules to Situations. I had one group do a rap and another do a video depicting a bank robbery. They were really entertaining and the students who were brave enough to do them had fun and were proud! The other groups just wrote the stories on chart paper. The "stories" on the chart paper below were the ones who also did the rap and the skit! It was loud and rowdy in my room today but it was alot of fun!

**My 2nd block class didn't get as much time to "have fun" because they had to finish up the quadratic graphs for From Rules to Graphs. Only a few students completed their homework (which was to graph (Out=In^2). None of them had the "u-shape." I decided to do a graph on chart paper on the board. I only had room to go up to 25 on the y-axis so they they were limited to x-values between -5 and 5. This was an interesting activity. I asked each student (28 total) to share an ordered pair that they got on their homework. It didn't take long for us to use up all the integers. I did have one student who used a decimal even before the integers were taken up so I made the remark that he sure was thinking "outside the box." I also told them numerous times that there were an infinite number of possibilities. When the students started getting the hang of it and we got all 28 points on the chart paper the u-shape was evident. We then discussed the difference in the equation for this u-shaped graph compared to the other equations and they came to realize it was the "squared part." I thought this was a very good investigation and we were able to explore the ideas of continuity and "infinite possibilities."

The most impressive part of my day was when I read the Haybaler POW writeup written by one of my 5th period students. It was AMAZING! Talking about understanding the whole point of a write up in the first place! I was inspired and amused throughout her writing! Here is a piece of her write-up. The sentence on the previous page discussed how she must first make sure she completely understands what the problem is asking.

I have come to the point where the POW write-ups are my favorite part of the IMP book (at least for today!). When reading them it is extremely easy to realize who is comprehending the math and the problem-solving process. Some of them (unfortunately) are so far out in left field I can not figure out why they would write such stuff. However, there are many who are increasing their math and problem-solving fluency just by doing the write-ups and having to think and reflect about their work. The ones who are in left field will hopefully start getting closer as the year goes on!