I had the wonderful opportunity to think during winter break, think hard about what I wanted to do in the classroom differently. I've recently been meeting more regularly with a mentor (the resident principal at my school) who has given me a lot of helpful and thoughtful ideas for change. I also chatted with Kyle, a dear friend from my masters program, who gave me insight into his own classroom. With these people in my life combined, I made some interesting changes after winter break. 1. No paper. (kind of). Kyle told me he didn't give out worksheets. Instead he has kids continually working on white boards. So I tried it. I put up three questions to help students find distance between two points and a 30 minute timer. I never gave them the distance formula and instead asked them to apply the Pythagorean theorem. Students were generally engaged, able to show their work better to peers, and I was able to evaluate their work easier. I was able to pinpoint misconceptions quickly and some common errors. Afterward, I had students present the problems to the rest of the class. 2. BEFORE I just handed students boards and markers, I wrote on the board two sections: Questions I will answer & Questions I WONT answer. (This idea came through my mentor who came from another teacher Bill who may have gotten it somewhere else but that's as far as my trail leads). Questions I'll answer Questions I won't answer Does our reasoning make sense? Is this right? Here's what we've got so far, but we're not Where do I start? sure where to go next I don't understand why this is the answer I don't get it. Then we had a short (3 min) discussion about why I wouldn't answer the questions on the right. This helped them understand where I was coming from and gave them some rationale. Providing prompts also gave them tools to ask better questions and to see the kinds of thinking I valued. 3. Take-Aways. This was another suggestion by my mentor. I usually end class by letting the time run out. Oh okay! well, see you next time. This hasn't really been the best way to end class. Instead, at the last 10 minutes, we took out our notebooks and we wrote down the two main takeaways (about distance between two points and finding a midpoint). I was listening for students who had figured these out during class and asked them to share them at the end of class. I would write word for word what the student said. Afterward I would circle portions or add blanks to show that our takeaway wasn't complete. I asked students from the class to make our sentence more specific or more complete. Then I had them make a small drawing next to it that represented the sentence. It was a quick way for me to check student understanding (at least conceptually). A lot to learn, but it was... really an enjoyable class experience for me. Different ways students found the distance between two points. On the bottom right is an example of a common misconceptions students have. They see two points and automatically think they should plug it into the slope formula. On the top left, students use -18 and then square it (but keep it negative). This is a common mistake that they make.
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