Nings

Nings are online platforms that are created for people to make their own social networks. They create a community for educators to stay in contact with other educators and learn from one another. Classroom 2.0 is the ning I found most interesting. Classroom 2.0 has a forum section which I particularly like. Here educators are able to post questions they have, ideas they have used in their classrooms, and different tools and technology they use. One post I found interesting was by Karen Cameron titled "10 Engaging Activities for Students Who Finish Work Early". Karen remarks on how as a student herself, she would never had in work early for the fear of being "rewarded with more work". She presents us with ten activities for students who finish their work early.

1. Newspaper Blackout - Give the student any newspaper article and a sharpie and ask them to say something about themselves by blacking out the words.
2. Write a Six-Word Story - Using Hemingway as an inspiration, write a story in six words.
3. Read Whatever You Want - Allow the student to grab any book, comic, magazine, or newspaper to read.
4. Wikipedia - Allow student to pick an article about anything that interests them. Then ask them to find a link on the page to a different website where they learn something that they never knew about the topic.
5. Reviews - Have the student read a review about a movie, game, music or book they like and summarize it.
6. Another Middle School - Have the student look up the website of another middle school that they don't know about. Talk about what they learned from their website.
7. World News - Have the student use Google news to find a current world news event and summarize what they have learned.
8. Found Poem -Have the student find any webpage they want and create a poem from it.
9. Suggestion for Class - Ask the student to find a website, game, or online program they would like to seen used in the classroom.
10. Make a Timeline - Have the student create a timeline with at least 6 events starting from the time of their birth.

I think that Nings are a great way for educators to communicate with one another and share ideas. It is definitely a valuable tool for all educators, both new and old.


10 Engaging Activities for Student Who Finish Work Early

Math of Khan

Matholicious tweeted this week about the Math of Khan. Khan Academy has created "Math Missions" which are Common Core-aligned, adaptive math exercises. Khan created these new features to facilitate teachers in Common Core integration.

Math missions consist of interactive math problems that are aligned with the Common Core standard. Every problem has a step by step solution. When students first log into Khan Academy, they will be given a test to determine their level of skills in math. The levels range from kindergarten math to calculus. Once their level is decided, students must answer three to five exercises in a row correctly to gain energy points and helps them move closer to finishing a mission. When students finish missions, they are reported for parents, teachers, etc. The Common Core Map feature allows teachers to "assign material that is most appropriate for each student's needs without spending countless hours developing and grading different classroom and homework assignments," according to the Khan Academy's Manager of External Relations Charlotte Koeniger.

The Khan Academy has always helped students. This new feature introduces new concepts to students and allows them to practice. The incorporation of the Common Core Map is an excellent tool for teachers to use and it is definitely something that I will look further into.

Math of Khan

Stations

This week Joe Schwartz created a post about visiting Nicole Rocha's first grade class. In her classroom, the students are broken up into stations to work on their math skills. Stations in classrooms has been around for a while, but it takes a lot of work and patience to get it right, especially with young students. Nicole Rocha did a great job. She begins her math section everyday by having the students count the days they have been in school.

Rocha has her students add a straw to the pocket each day of school. Once there are ten straws in the ones place, the students remove them and place one in the tens. The same is done in the tens place to the hundreds place.

Rocha also has her students count the number of days in school by using coins. She then breaks her students up into what she calls "exploration" centers.

Rocha has the students place blocks into a number egg container. The students then close and shake the container up. When they open it, they are to added up the numbers where the blocks lye.

Another station used geoboards and rubber bands to create different types of triangles.

In this station, students used shaped blocks to create other shapes. They were then asked to write the numbers of blocks used to recreate the shape.

The final station consisted of students working in their workbook.

The Perfect Bracket

I am following Mathalicious on Twitter, where I found an interesting tweet about an article from the New York Times. This article is titled Mathematicians Are Hoping Their Calculations Add Up to the Perfect Bracket. According to this article, 50 mathematicians got together at the National Museum of Mathematics in Manhattan, where they used linear algebra and computer codes to predict the outcome of all 67 games of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. They estimated that the odds of picking every winner were one in nine quintillion. Tim Chartier, a math professor at Davidson College, gave a presentation of the mathematical models he uses for choosing winners. People were willing to pay as much as $100 to get in. Chartier has been developing his bracket program since 2009. Several of his students have finished in the 90th percentile of ESPN's annual contest and three students finished in the 96th to 99th percentiles. I found this article extremely interesting. With such absurd probability of every getting a perfect bracket, it is amazing how well Chartier and his students have done. I think it is great for him to pass along his methods and ideas with others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/sports/ncaabasketball/mathematicians-are-hoping-their-calculations-add-up-to-the-perfect-bracket.html?_r=0

Math and Basketball

With March Madness upon us, I found a post from Joe Schwartz's blog , Exit 10A, very interesting. The post is titled Factors, Primes, Composites, and some NBA action. Schwartz talks about how him and a colleague tried a game called Factor Captor earlier in the year with football. The students were given the New York Giants roster and then asked some questions.

Schwartz realized that with such a large roster and too many questions, this game did not work for all students. Only the ones he considered "high achievers" really understood the game.

So Schwartz decided to try this game with basketball, but with a twist. This was his game, "My idea was to play off the rules for "Factor Captor" and have the kids take each player's jersey number, find its factors, identify the number as prime or composite, and then add the factors together to come up with a "score" for that player.  The player with the highest score would be the team MVP.  Then all the scores would be added, giving the team one final, total team score.  Then we'd set up a tournament where you would match up against another team, and the team with the highest total score would win and advance."

The edit the game a little and change total score vs. total score to player vs. player. By doing this, the game became more strategic. One team may have more total points over all, but you could still win if you put your players against the correct players. Or so Schwartz thought..

Upon further evaluation, Schwartz and his colleague realized that the order did not matter. The only thing the order changed was the total points scored by each team, but the same team would each time by the same number of points. So Schwartz set up his own Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference All Stars game for the students to figure out that no matter the order, one team would always win by the same number of points.

Schwartz and his colleague created a great game that ended up turning into an even better game for their students. They were able to teach their students about factors, primes and composites while adding the fun of the NBA to it.

Flipped Classrooms

When looking at the flipped classroom from the perspective of a teacher, my first thought was it seems like a lot of work. The "Algebros" mentioned in one of Rosenberg's articles said it took them 40 to 60 hours to complete only one unit. You have to record all your lessons. You need to make individual assessments when taking the mastery approach. It can become very time consuming; however, it does have its positives. There would be less papers to grade at home because you are going over the work with your students in class. Once you record those lessons, you can use them over and over again for all different students. From a teacher's perspective, I feel as though it may be a lot of work and overwhelming in the beginning. But, I think it is worth it in the long run. Rosenberg mentions a teacher who taught the same material to two of his classes; however, he taught one how he normally would and he taught the other one flipped. She writes, "No student in the flipped class received a grade lower than a C+. The previous semester 13 percent had failed. This semester, none did. In the traditional classroom, there was no change in achievement." What educator wouldn't want to see all their student's excel?

When looking at the flipped classroom from the parent's perspective, the first thought might be confusion. Parents might feel like sending the student's home to learn a lesson leaves the "teaching" to them. When will my kid find time to do all that? What if we don't have the technology at home? As Rosenberg mentions in her articles, students can have access to computers at school during lunch, after school etc. They are even able to access the videos from their smartphones. Students will not be doing the traditional homework at home. The video lessons will take their place. When a student does not understand a lesson at home, they can come in with questions for the teacher and get individual help. The students would not move on until they understand each lesson. For a parent, this can seem like a big change at first. However, once again in the long run I think it is beneficial. It would prevent our children from falling behind and ultimately setting them up for failure down the road.

When looking at the flipped classroom from the student's perspective, they will most likely think it is too much work. Students have to realize how much better it will be to watch the lesson at home and do the application in class. This allows for more fun and interactive class time. Students are able to work in groups to complete work and help one another. When they are having trouble, they can receive individual help from the teacher.

Taking problems apart

This week Dan Meyer suggested we visit one of his subscribers blogs, Exit 10A by Joe Schwartz. Using one of Meyer's ideas, Schwartz wrote a blog about taking apart a problem to put it back together. Him and a colleague took a question and removed a bunch of the information before they gave it to their fourth grade math students.


This is the information they were given. The students were then asked to imagine what the question could have possibly been.


These are the responses the students came up with. The students were then given more information about the problem.


And they continued to guess what the question could be...

          

And after being given a little bit more information, they were able to come up with really interesting questions. Schwartz hung the students question all around the room. The questions ranged from easy to hard. Students wanted to solve the problems, some wanting to solve their own and some wanting to solve a friends. Some students realized they did not include enough information to solve their question so they had to make adjustments. The students really enjoyed this activity and it stimulated critical thinking. It helped students to realize the components of a problem and what information you would need to give for a problem to be solved. This is a wonderful activity for the classroom.