SREB - Another new journey in math curriculum for seniors

I had the opportunity to attend SREB Math Ready training for 3 days recently. I am excited to be piloting this course at Etowah High School this coming school year. It is another problem-based curriculum so I am looking forward to teaching it. I hope to have time to write blog posts about it like I did when I got to pilot the IMP Meaningful Math curriculum (which I am still teaching!!).

Here are the points of interest for the course that were sent to us to share with parents:

Alabama’s Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Readiness Course Pilot Initiative

(Points of Interest)

• In order to decrease the percentage of students entering community college requiring developmental courses, the Alabama Community College System (ACCS), the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE), and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) have partnered together to offer two senior-level, ready-for-college courses: The Essentials of College English and The Essentials of College Mathematics.
• The courses are designed for students scoring below college-and-career-readiness benchmarks. These courses are not dual-enrollment courses.
• To be eligible for the courses, rising seniors must score within the following ACT score range: Math ACT 16-19, English ACT 14-19, Reading ACT 15-19.
• Students who successfully complete the course or courses with a B or above are exempt from taking the highest level of corresponding developmental courses (Math 098, RDG 085 & English 093 or ENR 094) at participating two year community colleges.
• Currently, the following community colleges are participating in the partnership: Wallace (Selma), Wallace State (Hanceville), Wallace (Dothan), Jefferson State, Calhoun, Gadsden State, Northwest Shoals, Lawson State, Snead, Bevill State
• The long-term goal is for all Alabama community colleges to become part of the partnership.
• The Essentials of College English and The Essentials of College Mathematics can replace the fourth year of English Language Arts (ELA) which is English 12 and the fourth year of mathematics.
• Please be aware that this is only a partnership with the two year community colleges, not four-year institutions. Because of the entrance requirements for four year institutions, students planning to attend a four-year institution should not be enrolled in these courses.
• Four year institutions require Algebra II for freshman college entrance and will not accept The Essentials of College Mathematics course as a replacement for Algebra II. However, if a student has 30 plus hours in a community college, then most four-year institutions do not require the Algebra II for admission.
• The Essentials of College English and The Essentials of College Mathematics currently will not meet the requirements of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Clearinghouse (NCAAC). School systems may apply to the NCAAC for acceptance but there is no guarantee that they will approve the courses.
• Although The Essentials of College English can count for English 12, it will not meet the requirements of admission for four year institutions.
• The Essentials of College Mathematics course emphasizes an understanding of math concepts, as opposed to memorizing facts. Students learn the context behind procedures and come to understand the “whys” of using certain formulas or methods to solve a problem. By engaging students in real-world applications, this course develops critical-thinking skills that students will use in college and careers.
• The Essentials of College English course utilizes a disciplinary literacy approach that teaches students strategies for reading and understanding complex texts in different subject areas. Students learn to develop and defend ideas from textbooks and write about them in college-level formats for English, history, and biology.
• Teachers selected to teach The Essentials of College English and The Essentials of College Mathematics were required to attend training specific to the implementation of the courses.
• Successful completion of the The Essentials of College English and/or The Essentials of College Mathematics courses has the potential to save your child time and money at his/her local community college. (Hint: Parents successful completion of the Essentials courses mean you will not have to pay for costly developmental courses that do not count toward a student’s

program of study)

• Students completing The Essentials of College English and/or The Essentials of College Mathematics courses will complete an exemption request form. The form should be submitted to the community colleges registrars’ office.

"Own your answer!"

Today I was collaborating with Mrs. New concerning the next lessons in our algebra class. We actually started discussing how much we have enjoyed starting our classes off the week with Jo Boaler's "week of math" lessons from youcubed.org. We were talking about how the activities really "set the tone" for having our students to explain their reasoning which is a staple in our IMP Meaningful Math curriculum.

Mrs New was telling me how one of her student reacted to the 4 corners activity that we did (using which one doesn't belong). She said that at one point one of her students stood in the middle of the room and said, "Why are we doing this?" Then Mrs. New told her that she is trying to teach them to "own their answers" and be able to explain their reasoning. I just loved the wording she used so I wanted to share it!

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 Fireworks - Using Vertex Form, Crossing the Axis, and Is It a Homer?

In Using Vertex Form, the students have another picture to create with their graphing calculators. Then they are given equations in vertex form and asked to give the vertex. Most of the students could do this without using the graphing calculators but a few still depended on them. I advised them to use the "Trace" feature of the calculator to find the coordinates of the highest point and then compare the coordinates to the equation. This improved their confidence in finding the vertex.

I gave my students a quiz where they had 6 questions in which they matched quadratic equations to their graphs. Then they had a couple where they had the equation and had to list 3 things they know about the equation. The last 2 questions had them describe how to flip a graph so that it was concave down and then sketch a graph with 3 different parabolas and give their equations. I was so excited about the quiz results. I wish I could say that all my students aced it but that is so not true! However, the large majority of my students passed the quiz and many made As and Bs. I have never expected my students to be able to do so much with graphing quadratic equations. The way the activities led the students through the process was so thorough it made the quiz seem easy.

The Crossing the Axis lesson gets students to start thinking about how many x-intercepts the graph of each quadratic equation will have based on the phase shifts. The activity also has students to write the equation given the vertex and another point on the parabola. They have to use the information to solve for the value of a. Numbers 5 and 6 are very important to complete because they give the students the tools they will need to complete the Is It a Homer activity.

Is It a Homer is an awesome activity to me as a former softball player and coach. It was also fun to the students. Mr. Webb shared a link with me of a Youtube video of a "dramatic reading" of a poem about the "Mighty Casey." We watched it before we read the activity. They are challenged to figure out if the ball clears the fence and they must prove it mathematically. I had the students sketch the graph with height on the y-axis and distance from home plate on the x-axis (which was advised in the teacher's guide). I gave the students the hint that they will be using the same process they did on 5 and 6 of the previous activity. After giving the students some time to think I went to the board and sketched the graph and labeled the vertex. I asked the students if there was another time when we knew what the height of the ball was. My 2nd block students chose to use (0,0) and but my 4th block students pointed out that the ball was not hit off the ground so they used (0,3). They struggled some with the computation of this problem but a few students in each class got the answer correct based on the height of the ball at contact. I had one student who told me that he estimated that the ball would fly 400 feet because the maximum height was after the ball flew 200 feet. Even though we have not yet talked about the symmetry of the graphs he had recognized it and used it for his reasoning. Unfortunately he didn't tell me his thoughts until AFTER class. I will be sharing it with my classes tomorrow.

Coteaching with my principal?

Yesterday my 5th period students were working on the Fort Hall Businesses activity from the IMP Meaningful Math Algebra books. Some of the groups in the class had #1 and some had #2. Each of the problems asked students to find the "starting point" for a situation. Anyway, I had "helped" the groups who had #2 first because it was a little more difficult.  I had guided the students through how to take the two sets of data points and think through how to find the "starting point" which was the amount of money that a movie theater had started with in their cash register. We had "deduced" that they started with $10. What I didn't realize is that when I wrote down the two data points out of the problem I had written one of them incorrectly. Therefore although the students' reasoning in how they found the answer to be $10 was correct I had "led them astray" by writing down the wrong value.

So, my principal walks in and sits down for a minute. When he comes in I am working with the students who are doing #1 and writing on the back board. The problem that is still projecting on the front board is problem #2 so he finally asks me if we are doing different problems. He then goes and talks to a couple of the groups doing #2 and starts working on the problem. When I walk back to the front of the room he is telling the students that the starting amount of money in the cash register is $25. In my mind I am thinking, "O bless his heart! He is wrong and he is going to be embarrassed in front of all these students." Thankfully I didn't claim that he was wrong. I just asked him to explain his reasoning. He did a wonderful job explaining his reasoning and he was RIGHT - not bad for a former history teacher. My brain literally had a cramp in it because I was so confused why we had gotten $10 earlier. I KNEW we had used the right reasoning. After a couple of minutes looking back at the values I had written on the board we found the mistake. Needless to say my principal now thinks that he is a math expert!

I had a couple of students to throw their papers away because we had made a mistake. I tell them to never erase or throw away papers because I want to see their thinking on paper. I even had one student who graphed the 2 data points and extended the graph back to the y-axis in order to find the starting amount in the cash register. He had the correct points graphed and had $25 as the starting point until I went and "corrected" him because he hadn't graphed the points I had written down. I felt so bad! I told them to just write down "Owens was wrong" on that page in their notebooks instead of starting all over. I knew that they understood what was going on with the problem. I also used the situation as an "object lesson" about working in groups. I told them that this was an example of why you can't just accept everything that the "smart kid" in the group says. When you have different answers or ideas in the group you need to take time to explain and listen to each other's reasoning. Today they saw the mathematical practice standard #3 (construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others) acted out by me and my principal.

My principal and I are both former coaches and highly competitive individuals. I am sure he will never let me forget about the day he had to "set me straight" in my own algebra class.

AP Teachers - IMP Curriculum might help you!!

For some reason today I was thinking about how the problems in our Meaningful Math Algebra books remind me of the tasks that students have to do on AP exams. I taught AP Calculus for several years and always felt like I had to cover the topics before I could have the students "tackle" the free response style questions. I came to realize that I really needed to practice those free response style questions throughout the year instead of waiting until the end. This reminds me of going to AMSTI training and feeling like I would have to teach the algebra topics before my students could do the activities in the IMP books. I often tell the other teachers at our school that I hope that they will see that our students leaving our algebra classes will be better students in general... More willing to tackle tough tasks... More practiced in explaining their reasoning.

I also think that these students will be much more prepared to tackle the multi-step, multi-concept AP questions they will encounter on AP exams. Many of the activities we are doing in our books combine several of the concepts that have been covered to date. Several of them require students to examine a word problem and then create a table and a graph. Then they are asked to answer questions about the situation AND write the rule or equation AND explain their reasoning. Because the majority of the assignments our algebra students are doing now require them to read a word problem and think through the problem. They have very few tasks where there are multiple problems of the same type that they just "run through." I can tell that many of my students have really grown in their confidence and willingness to tackle word problems. I know that I have never seen a textbook that I would favor as an AP teacher until now.

I'm Calling Bullcrap! - Adventures in teaching IMP

Sonya New is my hero! I'm just saying... If it were not for Sonya I would not be the teacher I am today. She makes me want to be a better teacher. She makes me think! UGH! AND...she cracks me up sometimes.

Yesterday we were looking over some of the Meaningful Math Algebra lessons that we were going to be teaching the next few days. She had her honors algebra students complete the Who Will Make It activity for homework and she told me that they had asked if they could use a "squiggly line" between zero and the first output value so they didn't have to label all of the values in between. She told them no. However, when we were discussing it she said she wished she had let some of them go ahead and do it so that they would be able to talk about the inaccurate conclusions that would be drawn. She decided to do a graph with the "squiggly" and talk to them about it. Her graph is below:

The context of the story is to see who will make it to Green River before the flood that is predicted (by the almanac) to happen in 30 days. The y-axis is distance to the river and as you can see all 3 of her families make it to the river (the x-axis) way before 30 days. After discussing the class's answers she put her answer under the document camera and told the class that she had all of her families to make it before the flood. She said at first they were starting to erase their answers...they assumed she was right and they were wrong. However, she had one girl yell out, "I'm calling bullcrap!" and run up to the board to point at her "squiggly line" to say that Sonya's answer was wrong. I loved this story. I have told Sonya over and over again I wish she would blog about her personal "imp adventure" so that I could read all about it. We talk almost every day but we don't always have alot of time to go into detail. I told her I just had to tell this story. I loved that a student ran from the back of the room to prove that Sonya was wrong and she was right.

P.S. - I hope nobody is offended by the title...it is a renaming of a popular card game that has to do with calling someone's bluff when you think they are not telling the truth about their cards.

Reflections on Week 1 of IMP curriculum

The activities that I have done this week with my students were designed to get them used to the new curriculum and improve their confidence.  I think that more than that I have been able to ease into the curriculum as a teacher. I see that I have already done more of these things in one week than I did in the previous 7 combined:

• Teach problem solving skills but NOT by telling them how to problem solve! The students were given a task and then as they figured out how to get closer to a solution I had them share with the class. I asked them to explain how they came up with the idea. I did often repeat  them and use more technical  math vocab but this was exciting to see them generate their own ways to approach tasks.
• Have students think about the process of solving a problem and write in complete  sentences. They were asked to explain the process and write the solution in a complete sentence. This also helps me to cover literacy standards. 
• Help students realize that math is not just about finding an answer and moving to the next problem. The way the curriculum presents the activities the idea that there can often be more than one valid answer is driven home, especially when the students can explain their reasoning. (We have been working on patterns and finding rules for function tables.)