Ultimate Tryouts

Ultimate Tryouts

For the first time, I will be alone as the only coach.  My other co-coach has too many new responsibilities after moving departments, so it will just be me.  For the past 7 years, I was blessed to have tremendous co-coaches; they have supported me and changed the way I look at this role.  The kids benefit from having that second coach there – it’s evident in their crestfallen faces as I tell them they will no longer be coaching.

I will certainly miss them. 

Tryouts started on the first week of December.  I knew there was going to be quite the interest in trying out for the team; so I made the announcement one day before the first try-out to hopefully limit the numbers.  There was no way I could remember and learn all the students’ names.

I had 4 tryouts and over 70 students, boys and girls come out.  Fortunately, I have two student managers, a willing captain, and four alumni come out.  They helped enormously through the process of modelling and running the tryouts; they had some input into the selection of the team as well.

That last statement alone could cause a stir among traditional coaches who usually shoulder the authority of cutting the team alone.  But I have been a part of too many clubs and have seen the power of involving student executives.  They know it’s their team and have more of a responsibility, and thus buy-in from the start.  It’s helpful to have that sort of buy-in for a ‘season’ of 1 day/week practices for the next 6 months. 

Again – should other students have the influence over choosing other students?  Can they be unbiased from their friends?  I remember when I first did this 2 years ago, my grade 11 execs were quite unbiased, and my ‘exec’ team cut their friends.  They received quite a bit of ‘flack’ from that and apparently they couldn’t handle the aftermath of cutting their friends; the following year when they were grade 12s, they didn’t want any part of the team making process. 

This year, I certainly needed this year’s execs to help out.  Bias is better than missing out on potential talent I guess. We’ll see where this goes – but I believe that since empowering students is the latest in educational trends, I should be ok. 

There is an exceptional group of grade 9 students that came out.  It is rare to see grade 9s already with the basic ability to throw and catch.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the only two things that I look for.  Students don’t seem to understand that when there’s one disc on the field, there are 13 other players on the field without the disc. 

The majority of time, you do NOT have the disc.   I am evaluating what you DO without the disc.  I am evaluating whether or not a player has a growth mindset.  I evaluate how they deal with mistakes. Like this guy here...

      

This is the second year in which I’ve taken a student that has tried out for the past 3 years and has been cut.  They have tried extremely hard to work on their craft and their skill and their physical abilities.  Three years is a long time to keep trying and these two players have stuck out in my mind, even though I will only have coached them for their grade 12 year.  Their perseverance and determination to make the team is absolutely commendable. 

Throwing and catching can be taught as this is an explicit skill that seems to attract most people to throw the disc.  As a result, the majority of my players will work on that skill on their own throughout the year. 

I’d rather work on teamwork and chemistry through offensive and defensive schema. 

Except right now, I am running two teams on my own.  I wasn’t willing to run a team on my own before and would always want someone there with me.  Why am I running two indoor teams when I am the only coach? 

I have an extremely willing student manager named Crystal and another student manager, Stephanie, who just wants to help out.  (names have been changed to protect identity of students) 

What’s interesting is that Crystal has also been cut from the team for the past few years.  She loves the game and has found a way to contribute.  She is now manager and putting to use her administrative and organization skill. 

Our school is filled with spectacular students. 

We will see what happens after the three practices we have in January before the exams.   

Practices are going to be quite interesting with 36 players.

Inquiring the Surface Area of a Sphere Through the Peeling of Oranges!

It's getting closer to the winter break, so it was great to have some hands-on activities to add some spice to the classroom for my academics.

It seems like my applied class is getting all the engaging and interesting approaches to math, so this was quite refreshing for myself (and especially these academic kids) to have this tangerine activity to explore the surface area of a sphere.

First thing we did was take a good look at the tangerines and noted its differences from a perfect sphere.  We then went on to talk about how perfect mathematical spheres don't exist in the real world since once one gets into the atomic level, things just aren't continuous.  This sort of statement really bothered some of my students  that one went home and told their parents.

Nevertheless, upon noting the clementines' (lack of) sphere-like properties, we proceeded to take a guess as to its surface area in terms of its radius, and thus area of its 2D ('projection'?)  version.   Each partner made their guess:

Looks like they their estimation skills are almost en par with my applied students' skills which has been honed through the Dan Meyer's 3-act process.  That...or they looked at the formula sheet or remembered the answer from their elementary school days.

Let's see how they did:

 I guess they couldn't be bothered to peel that other portion there to get its true surface area?  I guess I should have done more teaching and less snapping of pictures here, as I could have demonstrated that by peeling the skin into smaller pieces would more accurately depict the surface area.  Right now, much of the 'surface' area is used for the third dimension of height severely downplaying the true surface area of this orange. 

 That clementine there looks quite tasty.  I must mark these students' self regulation skills to be excellent in their ability to stay on task without eating some juicy fruit.

 Now that clementine looks quite symmetrical...and tasty.

Ahh, "four" circles!  The 'true' answer.

Now this group featured a student who made the best notes ever and another student drew some of the best art on evaluations.  The illustrations left behind were both profound and thoughtful.  It's no small wonder that they took the time to rip the orange peels into symmetrical sizes to create the above work of art.

Anyways, this activity proved to be quite memorable.  It's a good one and one that I'll continue to do every time I teach grade 9 as it somewhat demonstrates how the surface area of a sphere is 4πr^2 or the equivalent of the area of four circles.   

Capitalizing on the Hour of Code: An Alternative Assessment for Solving Equations

So last week was the Hour of Code.  Our wondrous computer science teachers have decided to involve all the grade 9s and organized a tremendous time in the cafeteria involving 500 students.  I had quite the fun myself as I tackled some good old HTML coding as well as some Star Wars programming.    

I heard from a few of my 9 academic students that they've done this before, but they got a lot more out of this session than in previous years.  They don't realize that maybe perhaps last year's experience set up today's success.  

I wanted to integrate programming into the course.  So I assigned some homework:  

For homework the night before, I had given each student a different set of four numbers.  With each of their four numbers, they were required to create their own 1 step, 2 step, and 2 step equations involving distributive property.

I then introduced my scratch assignment to my 9 applied math class using the previous week's Hour of Code as a springboard.  Students are to make a multiple choice quiz on Scratch with the four questions they did as homework the night before.  I had them start off with a template.  

Some had a little hard time with this because 1) I didn't give them that much time to play with it (one official period only...and 2 other mini periods where they had a choice to study or do this assignment)  and 2) it was introduced in the last week of before holidays when a few other assignments from other classes were due and 3) their reception for learning something completely new wasn't quite in this last week.  

About a third of my class got it done perfectly.  Take a look at this example.    

Others don't know to check and debug.  I know she can solve equations and build equations as I've assessed her separately on a previous test means that she hasn't debugged program properly:  

  

Here's one student who went above and beyond by using the 30 minutes of introduction and probably previous programming experience to add some bells and whistles to the template I introduced to them:  
There are some that have yet to hand it in.  

I'm going to have to do some work after the break;  I'll probably introduce some peer assessment process to help them go through the debugging process and then help the other 30% that didn't hand it in a little push.   Should I add it to the rubric?  Next semester.

I gave them a template, and they had to follow the instructions.  It was mostly an exercise in creating their own equation, and then a matter of some data entry.  However, the program's template isn't that intuitive, so inevitably, they have to learn the process of debugging and trying again.  They experienced the confusion and pain associated with "programming" - and if they persisted, the joy of "programming" in a microcosm of one period.  

I guess I can give myself a point for integrate programming into the math curriculum without having it take up more time than necessary.  At the same time, it can be argued that they learned more about data entry than programming.  I'll live with that - I've rarely been able to cover the curriculum well in an applied environment and to be able to do something new like this is quite a luxury - especially with the EQAO test next month.  

Alternative assessment of the year?  Done.  Will I try it next semester?  Let's see what my colleague says.

Anyways, here's the rubric (also attached) that I used:    
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxWy_f8Du24JSDJkUVJqZTg1ZGs

A Student Teacher, Teaching the Teacher

A Lesson on Felicia

I have ALMOST given the full reins to my student teacher lately every Thursday when she comes to volunteer. 

I use the word ‘almost’ because a student teacher never truly has their classroom management tested as they’re walking into a classroom with established norms and systems in place that hopefully protect supply/student teachers. 

I’m also in the room while she teaches, which affects the management of the classroom.  

On a separate note, for the first time in eight years, I can say that my applied classroom norms extend strongly even when I have a supply teacher (given the comments they leave behind).  That’s how receptive my students are this year. 

That just means that next year, my students will be wild and out of control, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, my student teacher is incredibly talented and is in her final year of teachers’ college.  I have learnt much from her style, approach and her creativity; case in point, take a look at her lesson on Felicia that she made up:

The question, I could see, resonated with the girls in my classroom.  I guess after questions involving video games, Usain bolt, etc. this was something new. 

My student teacher and I coordinated through my spiral curriculum well as the question was just a touch out of their comfort zone as they just finished learning solving equations and we’ve been through perimeter and area about two times before in previous spirals. 

The question was challenging as they got into groups of two or their ‘rate of change’ partners.  This question demanded the large whiteboards.   

For some reason, the students have been naturally lately looking to group their pairs into group of 4s and 6s.  I immediately broke up the group of 6 as I know that group was just too large.  I let the group of 4 stay as I knew that particular group of 4 worked well.  I still, prefer pairs, so I'll probably split them up next time.  

However, I wanted to see how well they worked and learnt; the next day, I went over it briefly and summarized positives and negatives of each group in terms of their process work, communication, without stating the answer. 

To truly assess how well they worked, I put up the question again.  Now, usually I am not a fan of re-doing a question, or re-assessing the same question, giving multiple opportunities, and doing it in groups…but I’ve been reading so many positive reviews of it that I decided to truly try it again.

It actually worked.

For thinking style type questions, putting the students in groups and allowing multiple opportunities created an environment of learning.  The majority of students actually tried it on their own (except the bottom 5% of the class where collaboration occurred immediately..) before starting to compare answers.  Upon finding differences, these students went through learning conversations where they justified each other’s work. 

For a question that we did yesterday and that I took up earlier, it took almost 20 minutes to get it done.  Some students didn’t even finish.  I guarantee you, as I walked around the classroom listening to their conversations, none of them were fooling around. 

Mind you, I still hesitate at the thought of doing summative thinking questions in groups with my academic students because I know the ‘Mr. Shin caught your mistake’ current environment I’ve set up would cause more of my students to copy off other students as opposed to learning it. 

I am really going to have to rethink my teaching as I found that those rich discussions that the students had with each other is worth designing the curriculum for.    

What’s hilarious is that the education world made this discovery about math education about 5 years ago when Dan Meyer first landed in a TedX talk.  Education has already moved on from this to the next phase – but at this point, the latest stuff is too progressive and far left reaching for me. I've never been an innovator; I've always been a late adopter myself to make sure the 'latest' trend actually sticks around and works with the common teacher.

Maybe if I was an elementary school teacher, I would make the jump ASAP to the latest educational trend; but as a secondary school teacher where post secondary institutions require a certain level of standardized skill, I don’t think I could ever make that jump.  

Maybe in another 5 years I’ll make the switch if it has proven to be more than the latest trend.

Things just move so fast. 

Anyways, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my student teacher for using her beautiful question as a springboard into student learning as well as mine.  

Success! Students Create, Solve, and Assess Equations all on Their Own

I just marked the students' test on spiral #9 which included a) volume of pyramids and b) solving equations.

Volumes of Pyramids
16/22 members of this applied math class achieved level 4 or higher on this multi-step pyramid that involved using the pythagorean theorem first.  Since this is the third time spiraling through pythagorean theorem, this high success rate is not surprising.


Solving Equations
Regarding the solving of equations - take a look at what they produced on the test:

Needless to say, they aced the other questions where they had to solve my equations.  However, their formal LS and RS checks needed a little work, and during their reassessment next week, they hope to capture that portion of the test. 

It shows that the formative peer work they did the day before worked.  I didn't have to do any marking to provide the feedback that they needed.  This community that the students have created in the past 3 months have allowed them to embrace their mistakes.  The amount of learning was exponential as the students were making their own questions on their whiteboards and discussing with each other their own individual problems.  They found each others' mistakes and they would justify to each other why it was a mistake.

Some students thought that a decimal/fraction answer was a "mistake"; they went back and "corrected" the question that they created so that the solution was an integer.  The process of critical thinking necessary to justify and correct it was fun to watch; however, I have put in a mental note for the students' need that a real number (non-integer) is a number too.

I'm glad that none of my students have stated any racist or sexist or any other inappropriate comments; but they certainly are 'fractionists'.  I have to figure out a way to expand their thinking on this one.  

The whiteboards' non permanent surface is a boon for students as there is no eraser mark, white-out, or need for an official eraser.  It encourages students to just write out their thoughts, display their thinking, and promote discussion. 
 
I wish I had employed the spiral curriculum since my first year of teaching with these applied students, as this success rate has been absolutely unbelievable.

At the same time, I have a couple factors that are exaggerating the spiral curriculum's success:

1.  I have motivated kids.  My level of engagement is even higher than that of my academic classes.  Dan Meyer's 3 act math had something to do with that.

2.  I have students with extremely strong learning skills this year.  My classroom management micromanaging at the beginning has paid off continual dividends that the students reap every day. 

Hooking Students into Solving Equations

As I approached this topic - it scared me.  Typically, my 9 applied students don't take this concept of solving equations very well.

However, it went extremely well.  Better than I thought.

All my work emulating Dan Meyer has paid off, as they gobbled up this math lesson with such focus and creativity that amazed even me.

The community of openness, willingness to make mistakes, and the growth mindset was on full display.

I started off with the typical Pearson textbook problem on a Powerpoint, and had them figure out in any method how many spheres are in the bag, assuming that this was a balance.  It's my attempt at having them recall some prior knowledge:  

 Then, I had them try out this question:

I asked them - "What is the difference between this question, and the previous question?"

Student: "It's more complicated."

Mr. Shin:  "Yes it is more complicated.  There are many ways that this question is more complicated.  Can someone elaborate on why the second question is much more complicated?"

Students:  "Uhh...more spheres, more items, and more bags on both sides."

I then went on to explain that there's a method to "simplify" (bad term to use, I'll admit.  I have to ask my colleagues for the proper term.  They're much smarter than I on the formal aspects of mathematics) complicated equations like the second picture  to become simpler equations like the first picture above.

A little bit of a hook was made to some students, but as usual - not all.  Well, at least I got some without having to use any symbols or use of any math.

At this point, though, I had to introduce the use of symbols to solving simple equations on solving equations.  I made sure though, that they as a class were able to predict  each math line that would pop up on the Powerpoint before I flashed each line on the screen.

Continuing on to use think pair share and whiteboards for the next two questions makes sure that at least half of my 22 students are able to get some portions of this concept.

On day two, we built equations.  They made up their own equations using cups and cubes.   I also encouraged them  to draw out questions for their partners.

Talk about students being leaders in their learning - giving them the responsibility to create their own questions.  Fractions and decimals came out as partners answers others' questions - it was very interesting that they would take it back and try to 'fix' it as if there are problems with fractions.

However, going through that exercise of integer answers only really made them think creatively.

This is why I like the applied classroom - they take liberties on things like the money bags up top and even this:

Bunny rabbits and money bags are so much more interesting than spheres.  Money bags is better conceptually though, than the rabbits who have eaten candies, but at least they're taking their artistic liberties.

And...they're really into it - a few of them started on their homework from Knowledge Hook right away on Friday night, and there is NO red square so far.  One video was watched for clarification so far...good news good news.

 I guess the real test is:  how many more 9 applieds will they even attempt their homework by Monday? 

 
Stay tuned! 

Defeat Breast Cancer!

Teaching is something that I absolutely love; its rewards are sometimes tangible, often instantaneous, and can be endless.

Coaching is also immediately gratifying, and its results are endless AND tangible.  I started tryouts for ultimate frisbee yesterday morning at 7am - 8am, just before class started.  One of my former students came back to help organize tryouts and more are on their way as they finish off their exams. 

Dancing - I enjoy in itself.  I danced yesterday, sacrificing 20 minutes of period 2,3, and 4 to raise awareness and money vs breast cancer.  This is the 6th year in a row I've done it.  Although the stage was closed, it was better we performed on the floor as we were closer to the crowd.  I was able to feed off the crowd a lot more.  Even my mistakes, I was able to laugh them off this year as opposed to years past. 

We have been practicing this dance for 4 weeks now and as always, it was worth it in the dancing itself, but also to help Trudeau's STRUT club promote awareness and raise money against breast cancer.

The best thing about this dance was that it was organized, choreographed by a couple of students.  It's a small portion of what happened this whole week as they've been selling popcorn, cookies, and raising awareness throughout this Pink Week.  Anyways, if you'd like to see the fruits of our students' work, here it is: 

 

Old Style Education vs the New Style Education

We are at a crossroads for learning. Students are very good at informal learning;  their interests lead them to finding resources on the internet to learn more about their interest.   This is in contrast to the formalized learning that happens in school sometimes.  Some students can bridge these two styles of learning; other students aren't successful at formal education or don't see the point in school.

Many teachers prefer the traditional method of education with the teacher at the front leading the classroom.  Students don't know what they don't know and it's important that the teacher impart some of the perspective, experience and knowledge through interesting media.

However, there are more and more voices from the progressive teachers (which are mostly online) with this view that I found on flickr:

Others prefer student lead learning with teachers as facilitators.  The epitome of student led learning and teacher facilitation is depicted in the makerspace below:

Content doesn't matter as much, as we now have access to knowledge all the time with the internet.

Skills matter more.  With the makerspace, students are creating things.  With this higher engagement, the important skills of initiative, collaboration, and perseverence are all practiced at a much higher level.  Developing these soft skills will enable them to succeed at whatever job they are placed in.

It essentially boils down to this: do we try and give students a base knowledge to start with or do we just let them lead their own education?

The answer is always the same to these new initiatives: mix i the old with the new.   I will do both because students will benefit from both.  I just hope I know how to balance it and if the time allocation is done correctly.

Very often, students don't know what they want to learn because they haven't discovered it yet.  For these students, it is my job as a teacher to show them the amazing parts of this world.  Once their interest has been captured, then it's my turn to facilitate and lead from behind and let the students lead the way.

Today's PD - Michele Milan on Leadership and Mindfulness

The following are just snippets of Michele Milan's presentation intermingled with my own personal experiences.  I hope to just jot these down to reflect on my learning.  Well, here it goes!

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As an educator, I am the leader in the classroom.  Every mood, move, action I make will affect my students whether I mean to or not.

It's important to practice mindfulness to give us the conscious one second buffer time between our action and stimulus.  It will allow us to respond (not react) appropriately to the numerous stimuli in the class.  Being present in the moment will allow me to be fully in the classroom, and not bring out any of the frustrations I may have had with my car problems in the morning onto some poor student in the class.

The neuroplasticity of the brain emphasized the importance of being careful of what I actually practice and deliberately set a new default mode of 'being in the zone' like so many athletes can do during their performance.  Unlike what I currently have practiced - I have something similar to ADHD - I have an attention deficit trait which mimics much of ADHD's effects but the source is different.  My attention deficit is caused by my HABITS.  I have PRACTICED "multi-tasking" and not "single-tasking".  This is why I have over 20 tabs open at the same time in my browser.  Excuse my while I close these tabs.

Michele Milan mentioned how Dan Harris, who believes that mindfulness should be on the same level of importance as brushing ones teeth, exercising, and eating healthily.

Attention - choose your focus, and focus on what you choose.  Mindfulness is attending to attention.  It's the meta attention.

Integrate micro practices of mindfulness into your workday - lookup Maria Gonzales if you have time.  The one we practiced in her session today was taking two minutes to just breath and focusing your mind on nothing else bu breathing.

Talked to Keystone and she illuminated another thing to take away:  if you're not living in the present moment, then you're either worrying about the future (what if this..or what if that?) or ruminating on the past (if this didn't happen...or if that didn't...etc)  We have 50% attention span and if the other 50% is spent on worry or rumination, then this wandering mind is the cause of a lot of unhappiness.

EDIT:  Speaking of being mindful, I was busy preparing my facilitation session on MBTI breakout session in the afternoon that I wasn't really paying full attention to Michele's presentation; in the end, however, the MBTI portion of the day has been moved to another day.  Mind full vs mindful.  I paid the price and didn't get to extract her presentation in its entirety.  Good thing I read about this stuff on my own time.

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"How smart are teachers" vs "How do my teachers learn?"  Are we modelling this process of learning properly? 

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And, now time to plan out the numeracy course, prepare for a new unit for 9s, make their test and start working on exams.  I have to talk to numerous teachers about a few other students - their guidance counsellor and their student services (formerly known as special education)  December is good times.  Good, busy, times.

Wellness Day - OCR Pursuit

Today is our 3rd year doing wellness day.  It really has improved with its iterations although I still think the administration of it needs to be improved as its organizers are not very well from stress and worry.  There must be a Google solution out there to give individualized permission forms and signatures.

Which is what I experienced today - we took two busloads of students ranging from grade 9 to grade 12 and this Obstacle Course OCR Pursuit had online forms where I was signing with my finger!

We all had a heck of a workout.  It was a high end workout place with lots of ropes, spaces, and an insanely well thought out obstacle course.  I couldn't make it through without suffering penalties (I fell into a pool of soft plastic balls).

BUT - I did make it up this! (along with many other students..I was very impressed!)

My grade 12 student showed his parkour skills and went through the obstacle course in 1 minute and 30 seconds!  Super impressive!  He was invited to go back to do it when he turns 18 with OXYGEN DEPRIVATION MASKS as well as doing it while CARRYING TIRES with the option of using the CRYOCHAMBER OF NITROGEN gas.

To top it all off, the supervisors leading all of the sessions were all hipsters.  

High end, I tell you.  High end.

York Region's Biggest Conference - QUEST - My Reflections as a Presenter and Delegate

Well.  Here I am, after I delivered a workshop last Friday  and spent some time on the playground, exhorting the importance of blogging -  and... I'm blogging.  Sounds very hypocritical doesn't it?

Except, I was mostly presenting "STUDENT" blogging.  I was trying to encourage other educators, even myself, to continue on this journey of student blogging so that my students wouldn't just be writing for me or for marks, but rather write for a global, authentic audience.

And yes, even my workshop contained a global audience.  I always 'heard' that QUEST was becoming quite an international conference.  I could see that it was from the keynote speakers that were invited, but how about the participants?  Well, I used something called pear deck, which allowed me to interact with my audience members as they moved their red dot on their device to where they lived - now granted, I had 41 responses out of 60, and some of those responses were apparently from off the coast of Antarctica and the north pole, but I would hazard that most of these responses were accurate:

I then outlined a few ways to guarantee student and/or adult comments and views.  This would then encourage some intrinsic motivation to write.  Here's the handout:

I went to George Couros' session at the beginning of the QUEST conference on blogging to see if my presentation would overlap and it didn't.  However, as he was speaking, I realized, I probably should present his point of view. 

You see, I'm an introvert.  And he's like an extrovert.

He's convinced me to blog about my teaching and to create a portfolio of my progress as a teacher.  I am now, putting on my mask of extroversion, as Susan Cain would put it so that I can champion the things that I value the most - education.

As I was presenting my workshop, I started to convince myself of George Couros' words and here I am executing it.  I am now blogging.  My own workshop transformed me.

I hope it changed others as well. 

EDIT:  I just received a general congratulatory note from the organizer of Quest:  "Numerous congratulatory emails sent to me internationally, nationally and locally confirm the excellent planning, preparation, and delivery of Deep Learning in a Digital World. Keynote Speakers share with me their ‘WOW’!!! "  It makes me a little happy to be a part of this conference.

EDIT2:  Here is my QUEST workshop description to save it in my portfolio

Grade 8 Parents' Night

Hundreds of parents and students descended at our school just to see what Pierre Elliott Trudeau has to offer.  They want to compare our school with the other options out there - the Catholic board or private schools.

I found a few helpful students and we spent most of the time just preparing a room for that would show the parents and students the different math pathways.  Presenting the different math pathways available would benefit the parents and students no matter which school they chose.

We decided to set up the classroom in a way that they could 'walk' the different math pathways available and see where each pathway ends.

As a result, our school has run the transfer course for the first time.  The principal spent some efforts advertising this course at the grade 8 parents night 11 months ago.  She advertised the applied and transfer course pathway as an option for any students that scored a level 2 or below in their grade 8 math scores.  

With the applied + transfer course pathway, the students are exposed to 1.5 credits of math rather than just the 1.0 credits in the academic grade 9 pathway.

There's no way to tell if this applied + transfer course of 1.5 credits is enough to prepare them for grade 10 academic.

This scares me more than their EQAO scores.

Which I guess, in many ways, a good thing.  I'm more concerned about their transition than their EQAO scores.

In my younger years, I'd care too much about their EQAO scores .   I've now realized that if I take care of them as students, the EQAO scores will take care of themselves.  EQAO is subset of what and how they should learn.

I'll be sure to track their success next year.

PS:  The best part of the night was watching a few students explain to the parents what the math clubs and math education is all about.  It's interesting to hear of their experiences.

Causality vs Causation and an Intro to Graphing

The second spiral was a short introduction to relations.  I started off with the concept of a rate, and created my own version of the "pumping gas" problem from Mr. Orr's "tap into teen minds". 

One of the best things that Mr. Dan Meyer stated about this was how the video can be used as a 'hook'.  Boy, did I underestimate the power of this hook.  Combine this hook with open ended questions, and Dan Meyer was absolutely correct - all sorts of learners participated, even the weaker math students.

The video even out the playing field and it was magical to have such engagement in an applied classroom.  In all of my eight years of teaching (I know, I'm young), I have never, ever seen this.

Another thing that has me pleasantly surprised - were the questions being asked.

"What car is it?"
"How many litres can your car hold?"
"How many litres did you put in?"
"How big is your car?"


"How much did you pay?"


It is so intriguing as some of these questions did not come to my mind, yet each of them are indeed connected to math.  In many ways, my converging mindset could only think of the one question I really wanted (ie:  what is the price of gas per litre?)  I must work on my divergent thinking.

After a day of rates, we went on to the topic of scatterplots.  Now understanding the importance of a hook, I started the students off with a 30 second paragraph of Tyler Vigen's graphs of spurious correlations

The causality vs correlation issue is often a huge source of consternation for those who frequent the forums online, and I just wanted to introduce this common pitfall. 

Hence, my Friday assessment of scatterplots and rates was chicken and crude oil related, much to the delight of some of my students.  Or chagrin.  I'm still learning to read some of them one month through.

On a side note, a few of my students were trying to force a connection in this above relationship depicted by the line graph to make sense and ventured a hypothesis thinking that the chicken was being cooked in the crude oil. 

My mind is still blown that I have such a high engagement level. 

I'm proud of the students.  Let's see how long we can keep this up.

Look ahead:  I'm spiraling back to the Pythagorean theorem by starting off week 4 with  perimeter of composite shapes.  Now that we've completed an initial assessment and a reassessment of week 1, I know exactly who to target tomorrow for individual help.  This is an incredible advantage of the spiral curriculum. 

Assessment of the First Spiral

Even though I've been teaching for eight years now, I turned everything absolutely upside down.  I'm now working with a spiral curriculum, performing Dan Meyer's 3-act math on a regular basis and implementing some serious classroom management techniques that was recommended to me from my last year's mentee.

My first spiral which consisted of Pythagorean theorem, perimeter, collecting like terms, polynomials, area and distributive property was a success by my books thus far.  They did well on certain portions of their assessment, but other not so well.  I crunched a lot of material in 1.5 weeks, and they struggled with the last portion - distributive property.  Or rather, I didn't give enough time to allow for the students to work with it.

Nonetheless - I borrowed some growing success initiatives from my science department, my wife, and another math colleague.

1)  An adaptation of my science department's concurrent credit recovery policy,:  if the students failed the assessment overall, they could get a second hack at the assessment.  They must perform at a level 3 (~70%) for me to bring their marks (all of K, A, T, C) up to 50%.

2)  Wife:  Since I was devoting class time for students to have a second hack at the assessment, I allowed the other students to try to upgrade one question.  My one page double sided assessment had a couple of thinking questions - one from homework which I took up and another one that was a little extension.  As a result, all of my students had 'something' to work on.

3)  After going through the whole assessment, students can choose to look in their binder to help them with any question that they may have trouble with.  I've been trying to give students incentive to keep an organized binder, and especially with this spiral curriculum, we have topics everywhere.  Well, armed with their organized binders, students can now use their binder (at the cost of 50% of the mark for the particular question), students can now and try to get the remaining 50% of the question.

Intro to Pythagorean Theorem

Today, I have officially decided to follow and jump on the Dan Meyer bandwagon by introducing a problem using his 3-acts.  However, I have more specifically jumped on Mr. Orr's bandwagon, as he seems to be the Canadian version of Dan Meyer from what I've read on his blog.

To start myself off on this 3-act business, I have copied Mr. Orr's video on "Corner 2 corner" with this video below:

I requested that the students write down any questions that come to mind - even non-mathematical ones.  I had some trouble amalgamating their questions as well as leading them to the question that did matter - but I have tremendous students that eventually got to the question I wanted:  what's the length of the room from the top corner to bottom corner? 

My favourite part of the whole exercise is the estimation portion.  As per Dan Meyer, it's best to ask students to answer the following:

•  What's a number that's too low? 
•  What's a number that's too high?  
•  What's the exact measurement?

Take a look:

We then discussed a plan of how to find the length of the string.  With some guidance, a couple got the concept.  Reinforcement is definitely necessary tomorrow.  

Instead of giving all the measurements, I felt that my 9s needed some movement - so I split them up into groups and they went about counting the tiles on the ground to calculate the width and length of the class.

We finished it off with some calculations and got the answer.  We have two people who guessed very close to the answer!

I'd say my first 3-act execution was somewhat of a success.  Let's hope I improve on the next one!