IMP Training Day 2 - Confirming my AHA moment

Today we went through more of Overland Trail and part of The Pit and the Pendulum and the experience going through the units as a students were great! Having Jim Delawder there sharing his experiences with the curriculum provided invaluable knowledge. I loved being able to "pepper" him with questions about how to approach the lessons with our students. He also offered some practical advice on dealing with students working in groups. Ideas like using a folder for each group in which they put their papers that need to be turned in so that you have 7 people turning in work instead of 28. He also put the "group roles" on a piece of paper in their group folder. There would be times that he would tell the students that they could change roles as long as they wrote them down and put them in the folder. Materials, scribe, presenter, and questioner....??  Well, I may be emailing Jim and asking 1 more question. I have never been good at assigning group roles and sticking with them.

One of the things I enjoyed most today were some of the conversations we had bouncing ideas off of other math teachers. I have just recently come to the realization that for YEARS I have been teaching my students like I want to be taught. I was that student that loved math and just wanted you to show me an example so I could do my work. The problem is that the majority of students don't learn math the way I did. Sadly, the majority of students do not consider math their favorite subject. There are students that are just not going to "buy in" to learning math if they can not see how the math can be applied. Also, since math teachers have "math brains" it is very difficult for us to relate to students who do not. One of the hardest lessons I had to learn as a new teacher was that all of my students are not like me. What I mean by that is that they do not all do their homework or give their best. (They also didn't grow up in Mayberry...which is my joke for admitting that I grew up in an awesome home with no worries to speak of.) Anyway...my new realization is that I have to change the way I teach to reach the majority of my students instead of the minority. The IMP Meaningful Math program is providing me with the tools to reach ALL students. My "math brains" can soar and find deeper meanings while my struggling students will have a context in which to operate which will hopefully help them to connect with the math.

IMP PD - Day 1

I can honestly say that a "textbook company" has never given us such meaningful and useful professional development before. It's About Time does not only provide you with a textbook that meets all the algebra standards and literacy standards in the course of study; they provide you with teacher PD that would benefit any algebra teachers because best teaching practices are modeled by the trainer. Jim Delawder is such an incredible, experienced teacher. He is very patient with all of our questions and very passionate and knowledgeable of IMP math.

Takeaways from today:

• Divide the work and if there are more problems than there are groups you can have every group do the "leftover" problems
• When I did Creating Families I could have used playing cards to group students by numbers and then regrouped them using the suits. For instance, I was a 2 of clubs. Originally all the 2s were grouped together. When we did creating families we were told that the clubs were doing the nonfamily. Then we regrouped by the type of family (or suit). That way the students all got to work with someone else who was creating the same type of family.
• Ask a struggling student to just attempt to draw you a picture.
• We can trust the curriculum...we can trust the curriculum...we can trust the curriculum.
• Around the Horn POW is confusing and you will need manipulatives to model the situation!

I know that I learned so much more than what is listed above...I am just so tired right now I can't remember! It was very cool for Tom Laster to be visiting with us today also. He even took part in the PD. It is contagious to be around someone who is so passionate about STEM education. He has so many stories and examples of successful implementation of IMP. 

And...by the way. The state of Alabama (and its math and science teachers) have been taking our AMSTI program for granted. The PD we receive at AMSTI is so similar to the PD provided today by It's About Time. WOW! 

IMP Math Day 13 - Family Constraints and Planning for the Long Journey

I forgot to mention yesterday that I had a student come up to me and tell me that he had a solution to the Haybaler POW. I could tell that the handwriting was VERY neat for him so I asked him if someone else wrote it. He told me that he spent 3 and a half hours working on it and that his Mom finally helped him. It looked like they got the correct answer and they had also shown their work. I told him it was GREAT. It is cool to me that we have some math activities where I can tell them that it is okay to get help from someone as long as they explain their reasoning. I told him that when he does the POW Write-Up he will just include in there that his Mom helped him figure it out and explain how she helped. The greatest part of this is that I DID NOT tell them to complete the problem at home. The only thing I had told them to think about was whether or not 2 bales could have the same weight. I thought that they could at first but soon realized that they couldn't because there are 10 different weights. If there were 2 bales with the same weight there would have to be 2 sums that were the same.

Today we discussed the Family Constraints activity. I love the way the teacher's guide recommends you ask the students to create their own equations for the ages that they came up with for 2 and 3. We spent several minutes on discussing and extending this activity according to the activities recommended. I also added vocabulary terms to their notes (which again were recommended in the guide).

We also started work on the Planning for the Long Journey group activity. They were asked to brainstorm all the materials they need for the trip. It is odd to me that the price list is very limited. I'm not sure if this means that the students need to do research to be more accurate or if the activity is just meant to get students thinking about what it would take to make a 30-day trip on a wagon train. I may give the students the opportunity to extend this activity for bonus points...

**edit 9/2/15- when I did this activity this year Sonya New pointed out to me to MAKE SURE the students chose amounts for beans, gunpowder, and sugar because later we will calculate the amount their family needed.

I am excited today because It's About Time has sent Jim Delawder from New York City down to good ole Alabama to do some professional development for our new Meaningful Math Algebra books. I hope that he does not experience any culture shock. I also hope that he can understand my rather distinct Southern accent. Tom Laster is also here to meet our team of teachers, our instructional partner, and our principal. It is crazy that all of this has come about because Tom and I happened to get on the same elevator in Atlanta while attending the ISTE conference! We are very excited and somewhat nervous about piloting this curriculum. We want to do well and we want our students to excel.

IMP Math Day 12 - Hats and Family Constraints

Today we finished up with Hats for the Families and then started working in Family Constraints. I have not been assigning much homework so far. I realize that I am going to have to in order to "catch up" since we started the book late. My struggle with that idea is that VERY FEW of my students usually complete their homework. Today Tom Laster from It's About Time sent me a brochure entitled "How to Help with Math Homework When the Answers Aren't in the Book" by William Blatner. This was such an awesome read. I loved that in the brochure it mentioned that students will be asked to spend 25 minutes on math homework. 25 minutes is not that long! I hope that if I do a good job communicating my homework expectations and stress to the students not to spend any more than 25 minutes on any one assignment that I can motivate my students to actually DO the homework. I believe the nature of the work, which is not a group of 20-25 problems, will help. When a student is asked to spend 25 minutes brainstorming ideas or documenting the things they have tried to solve a problem. Something that I have told my students over and over again since starting the new curriculum is DON'T ERASE! Because the curriculum is so focused on being able to discuss the process of approaching each problem and the different strategies you have used I have encouraged the students to only strike through or put an 'x' over any parts that they think are wrong. I wish I had thought of this before now. I have often told a student who has erased a problem and then asked for help that they should have left their work on their paper so I could help identify where they went wrong. However, my new favorite thing to say is DON'T ERASE!

Tonight as I was trying to prepare for the lessons I would like to do tomorrow I have again realized something VERY important. If you don't refer to the teacher's guides you will miss out on some really important teaching points for the lessons. Thankfully I looked before we finished discussing the Family Constraints activity. The students completed 2 and 3 on their own in class today. You will not find definitions in the lessons. There is a glossary in the back of the book; the important terms to go over are mentioned in the teacher's guides. So far this is the 2nd lesson which asks you to specifically review vocabulary.

Also, we had PD on formative assessment today. My new term for the day is 'descriptive feedback.' It really struck me when it was said that students need descriptive feedback AND the opportunity to revise after the feedback.

IMP Math Day 11...I think...Hats for the Family

Today is actually the day that I introduced the Haybaler POW. I explained to the students that it took me a couple of tries before I figured it out. I had to stop and retry the problem later with a different approach. I told my students today that there was not a teacher's edition for these new textbooks - there is only a teacher's guide. When I told them that I had to work through the problems myself I asked them if they liked that and most of them seemed to.

We also started working on the Hats for the Family activity. I found it very difficult to help "guide" the students without just working through it for them. I actually took a girl's pencil from her and showed her how to find the minimum number of people in the large family. Took her pencil!!  I didn't know how to tell her without showing her. But then I took that opportunity away from her and her group. Bad teacher! In the next class I did give them hints without completely working it out for them. I glanced at this activity without working through it myself. I understand why it is so important to work through the material yourself. It is difficult to guide them through the activity without just telling them how to find the answers if you didn't have to think through it yourself. I am excited that we are going to have our first PD on the curriculum this week. I think that we will feel much better about presenting the material after having a veteran IMP teacher go through some of it with us.

My 5th period working on Pulling Out Rules today. It was cool to see them arrive at the fact that to say the input was doubled was the same as saying to multiply the input by 2 AND to add the input to itself.

IMP Day 10 - Quiz on Patterns and rewrites

Today I gave my classes their POW write-ups on The Broken Eggs back. I found and altered a rubric for grading the write-up but my students didn't have it before they wrote. I did stress to them to address all parts in the write-up explanation in the book. I had some students write the 5 parts on chart paper and hang them in the room for easy reference. It would have been "better practice" for my students to have the rubrics before they wrote. I was sharing this with our Instructional Partner and she gave me the idea to just give them a completion grade on the first writing and give them the rubrics and allow them to "rewrite" their first write-up to make sure they have met all the pieces listed in the rubric. I hope that improvements were made.

I created a quiz that was similar to the questions in the What's Next and Pulling Out Rules activities. I am overall pleased with the results. I am also happy to report that Mr. Webb who is also new to this curriculum told me today that he can really see an increase in students' engagement. Mrs. New was also telling me today that she gave a quiz on exponents today and not one student in 2 classes missed the questions concerning what any number to the zero power equals. She was saying that she does not remember that ever happening before. She also pointed out that she has probably never spent this much time on exponent rules before. If they retain the information it will be worth it!

Day 9 of IMP - Creating Families - working with constraints

When I first looked at this activity I kind of thought it was just to do something a little different and have some cross-curricular work too. However, after helping the students work through the process of creating their families I appreciate more how this is intended to give a real-life context to working with inequalities. Making sense of words and phrases like at least, at most, between, less than, etc...

Sonya and I had created the charts for them to keep up with their family members easier and we also printed off a picture of a covered wagon that the students were able to decorate after they completed their work. This worked very well since some students finished much faster than others. However, I wish I had done a better job of making each group help each other after they finished created their own family. The group members who were responsible for the large families were (of course) always the last ones finished. I need to do a better job of reminding the group to help each other once they finish with the family that they were assigned.

I have also noticed that doing these types of problems make it so easy to talk about a real-life situation. For instance, before they left today I asked the students if anyone was interested in architecture or carpentry. I asked them if they were aware of the building codes that one must follow when building a new structure. I told them that they are constraints similar to the ones they had to follow today.

Above are some of the wagons where the students wrote the names and ages of their family members. Tomorrow I will be introducing the haybaler problem and I am a little concerned because I personally have not figured out the best way to approach the problem. Good thing it is a POW so I have some time to decide the best way to solve the problem (in my opinion). The students will probably figure out a much easier way on their own anyway!