Starting Lesson Study and Update on Classes

This isn't going to be a very coherent post, but I need to get our current work into writing to better organize my thoughts. Here are the projects that are in progress right now:

• Lesson Study

• We've broken up our Upper School Math teachers into several groups of 3-4 teachers who teach across different grade levels. We considered doing a more traditional lesson study in which teachers plan a lesson centered around specific content, but decided to focus our efforts on developing our practice around a particular instructional routine that would be relevant across many grades and that would help us fine tune a specific pedagogical approach and learn from colleagues with whom we rarely get to work.
• Everyone read this article from KQED to orient themselves to the lesson study process in advance of our first meeting.
• Each group selected an instructional routine to plan out, teach, and refine this cycle. The routines selected were:
• Differentiation for students who learn at different paces
• Guided investigation
• Students giving feedback to each other

• In the next meeting, groups will plan a specific lesson around their instructional routine based on the first teacher who will be modeling it and decide on an observation time and what to look for when observing
• I'm super excited for this initiative to be gaining traction! We got some time to work on this while students were taking the PSAT or doing other activities, but I'm worried that if we don't get specific time off to work on this, people will become significantly less enthusiastic. 

• Parent Math Night
• Our team is working on developing an informational night to help parents better understand our program, available resources, and philosophy. It's just in the planning stages, but I think will be really helpful in getting on the same page with families. Right now, whatever information they receive when applying is the extent of it. 
• This needs to be thoughtful and informative for parents while also clearly conveying our position and getting buy-in and understanding of the program. If you have any resources or ideas to share, would love to have them.

• Math 1 is finishing our unit on Counting, Probability, and Sets, designing a game that has students analyzing probability and expected value to determine best strategy and fair outcomes. Next week, students will be playing each other's game and reflecting on what they've learned. This is a good opportunity to differentiate and identify gaps in understanding linear functions and algebraic manipulation skills as we prepare to move into a functions unit next.
• We're starting each unit with a "preview" assignment to look at prior knowledge and pre-requisite skills and concepts so that those students who have gaps can be identified and given extra support. Here is the preview assignment for linear functions.
• We're also starting the unit with another open investigation, this one more directly related to functions ("Cutting the Pie" task from IMP Year 1). I'm curious to see if students pursue a recursive or closed rule for this function. When we worked with Pascal's triangle patterns, students had a hard time moving from "each row is twice the previous row" to the rule f(x) = 2^(x-1).

• Math 2 is still in the depths of statistics, working through the Central Limit Theorem and connecting probability and the normal and binomial distributions. I'm realizing how much better I understand the material in my third year of teaching it and how much less formulaic and prescriptive my teaching is now that I have deeper content knowledge in this mathematical space. I have known that strong content knowledge is necessary, but it's amazing how much more depth is needed if you want students to explore and create and test their own theories, both in terms of creating those scenarios and in guiding the discussions that ensue. Maybe it's true then that teachers have to first progress through traditional pedagogy as they build up their depth of content knowledge before they can start to incorporate more problem-based or project-based learning. Would love some pushback on this though :)

#DITL Monday, October 10th, 2016

Today is Columbus Day which means we are out of school. We actually have a 3.5 day weekend. On Friday we had our Regional Teachers Institute until noon. I'm always excited for long weekends so I can catch up on the extra stuff I have to do or put off.

Nothing this weekend went as planned. I did not even touch my school stuff until today. Which was not the plan.

8:48 Wake up. Make myself go back to sleep.

11:00 Wake up again. No shame since I average 5 hours of sleep or less during the school week. Eat breakfast, scripture journal, straighten up the house.

11:45 Get to work on my laptop. Update my trig lesson on finding an angle with trig ratios to include text problems where students have to draw their own diagram, Updated notebook file that goes with it. Create solving trigonometric equations interactive notebook pages, a pong review game powerpoint, and a quiz for my senior math class. Next it's on to Geometry- I update the interactive notebook pages I already made for conditional statements with a foldable I made a few years ago since I feel like it is a better fit. Update notebook file to match. Next create new interactive notebook pages for deductive reasoning, a pong review game, and a quiz.

3:00 Eat lunch while watching Jimmy Fallon. When I'm done eating I walk around the house watching tv on my ipad so I can get steps in. My goal is 12,000 a day and when you don't go to work and spend hours on your laptop, it's hard. When my show is over I start walking around with my Bible...gotta get those steps.

5:15 Back to work. I need to make a practice activity for Algebra I inequality word problems. So I google problems and create...you guessed it- a pong review game powerpoint. It's my go to activity. Then I, you guessed it again- made a quiz. It's almost the end of the quarter so I make up a binder check 'quiz'.

6:00 I have more work to do but I'm running low on motivation so I start wasting time on e-mail and social media. Then I realize I haven't read any blogs lately so I catch up on those.

7:30 I remember I need to create and print posters for our Student Council Socktober drive. Cue google images and pinterest.

8:00 Realize I should eat dinner. Eat while watching TV and again finish my show with walking around the house. I'm only up to 7700 steps.

9:00 Spend 30 minutes doing my workout and walking around for a cool down. Pack my lunch and get my breakfast ready for tomorrow. Pick out my outfit.

10:00 Shower.

10:15 Get out the ol ipad and go for another walk. I walk until I reach my 12,000 goal which brings us to

11:15. I sit down to start this blog post and realize that I forgot about the 92 bell ringers I need to respond to plus the 9 trig quizzes, 10 Algebra 2 tests, and 8 geometry quizzes I have to grade. And I wanted to paint my fingernails.

This was an embarrassing post to write- I don't know if it's because I'm bad at managing my time or because I feel like I have to justify how I spend it. Or maybe it's because my job is like a second job on the nights and weekends. I never feel like I've done enough. Not to mention I have a painting project in my downstairs bathroom that I didn't even get to touch this weekend.

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day. Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming. When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of? What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

Zero teacher moves today.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows. Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher. What are you looking forward to? What has been a challenge for you lately?

I spend so much time putting together notes, practice, and quizzes from my curriculum. It's mostly formatting and copying and pasting. As soon as I feel accomplished for having everything prepared, I start questioning if it's the best way to teach it. I can't feel content.

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is. As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students. Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

I've been getting along better with a colleague at school. Although it's been unintentional, I know that it's healthier. I'm still getting better at laughing and sharing things with the students. Although I've always felt like I shared a lot with students but somehow this year seems different.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What is a goal you have for the year?

Keep working on a better work/life balance. My weekends are consumed with school work in an attempt to free up my week nights but I still can't seem to leave school before 5:00. I do know that next year will be a million times better. With my curriculum, I am finally aligning things in a way I am mostly satisfied with. I'm making notes of things to change or fix for next year and even doing some now if they are quick fixes. NO MORE STARTING OVER.

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

I've been teaching trig identities for the first time. I have struggled, actually sat with the kids and worked the problems along with them, and got to the point where I could make up problems for the students to practice.

11:41 Off to do at least another hour of work!