So this Thursday grades close for term 3 at our school. That means the semester is half way over, so my math students should have learned half of what they are supposed to learn in Math 3 by now. Eek! I guess what's scary is that I have no idea if they have! I don't have a strong enough understanding of the Math 3 curriculum in order to see the bigger picture. I'm not sure what the end goal is, so I'm not sure if I'm being successful with them. No wonder the kids don't find purpose in their math homework!
I'm also curious about my grades at this point. I've been doing a lot to help my students at the bottom of the class, and their grades have gone up a fair amount. By a fair amount, I mean from 40% to 60%. So I guess my question is, if a D- is passing for our school, is it a good thing that I'm being lenient to help them get their grades up, or is it harming them by teaching them that I can bend the rules? I guess there are two layers here: 1) Are their grades going up because I'm being nice or because they're actually learning and improving their math skills? 2) Is it more important for me to push them to learn their math skills, or should I be teaching them more student skill lessons about turning in work by the correct deadlines and such?
I guess I'm just still not convinced that their grades properly reflect how much they understand of Math 3, and I'm not sure how to better evaluate that. I guess it comes back to the fact that no matter what you do, grades will always be somewhat subjective because they are always somewhat based on human judgment. So I guess I'll try not to get to down on myself about it. I give gradekeepers to my students every week, so they should be aware of their grades at all times. It takes some of the responsibility off of me by placing the grades in their hands.
Also, last week was an odd week because my sophomores weren't in class because they were taking the ELA MCAS, but my juniors still had class. So I had to find activities to do with the juniors that were still productive but that didn't get them ahead of the rest of the class. Now I need to find a way to sync them back up again and keeping chugging ahead.
We've done some interesting things this past week. I stole the Broken Calculator game from a website/ the brilliance of a professor from my school. It's a computer activity where the students are given a calculator with many broken buttons. For instance, only the "2," "3," "+," "x," and "=" work, and the students are given 8 or so numbers that they have to make using only those buttons. For example, using the buttons listed above, make the number 6. That one is easy: 2x3=6. Now make 50 using those buttons. It's a little trickier, so it causes the students to really think about the most efficient methods of making different numbers besides just doing 2+3+2+3... They had a lot of fun with it too! Now I'd like to find a way to weave this back into their study of graphing inequalities with multiple constraints. We are starting a business project soon, and they need to be pretty adept at manipulating inequalities with graphing and word problems, etc. So I hope last week wasn't a waste, and I hope we can move forward effectively!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Blatant Lying
So I've been working with one of my students a lot in the past week to get him caught up. He's failing my course, and he's behind on a lot of his work. So he's been seeing me before and after school to get back on track.
I'm mostly really proud of him, except we've had a few unfortunate moments of lying/cheating. One of the first things he did to try and catch up was refine one of his quizzes. I always encourage refining quizzes, so I was happy that he wanted to do it. However, I also always give out two versions of the quiz, so they have slightly different numbers, and presumably my students won't cheat. Unfortunately, this student failed to realize that there were two different versions when he copied another students' quiz responses for his quiz refinement. I was so disappointed. I only looked at the first two questions and saw the numbers were entirely copied from the second version, and I didn't give him any credit. I told him that if he expected to get caught up in this class, copying another students answers wasn't going to do him any good.
Then about a week later, I was supposed to meet him before school at 7:15am to go over some work. My mentor teacher was running late, and I didn't have a key, so I sat outside the classroom until about 7:30am until she let me in. I waited and waited, and my student finally showed up at 7:55am (right before class started at 8am). I asked, "Where have you been?" And he said, "I was here on time, but [my mentor teacher] said you weren't here yet." And I just chuckled and said, "You've got to be kidding me. You just blatantly lied to my face. I was here before her today." I don't know why I was so shocked by this, but I just couldn't believe that my student was going to tell me such an obvious lie, especially one that I could easily verify with my mentor teacher. I mean, I'm happy that he's still been coming to see me after school and everything, but I also don't understand how he scatters these little falsehoods into his makeup work. I really truly want him to do well, but it's really discouraging to me when these things happen. It makes me think he doesn't really want it. On the other hand, maybe he's just so overwhelmed by how far behind he is that he's just trying to cut some corners.
Anyway, I just hope that we can both get him caught up AND show him that honesty is always the best policy.
I'm mostly really proud of him, except we've had a few unfortunate moments of lying/cheating. One of the first things he did to try and catch up was refine one of his quizzes. I always encourage refining quizzes, so I was happy that he wanted to do it. However, I also always give out two versions of the quiz, so they have slightly different numbers, and presumably my students won't cheat. Unfortunately, this student failed to realize that there were two different versions when he copied another students' quiz responses for his quiz refinement. I was so disappointed. I only looked at the first two questions and saw the numbers were entirely copied from the second version, and I didn't give him any credit. I told him that if he expected to get caught up in this class, copying another students answers wasn't going to do him any good.
Then about a week later, I was supposed to meet him before school at 7:15am to go over some work. My mentor teacher was running late, and I didn't have a key, so I sat outside the classroom until about 7:30am until she let me in. I waited and waited, and my student finally showed up at 7:55am (right before class started at 8am). I asked, "Where have you been?" And he said, "I was here on time, but [my mentor teacher] said you weren't here yet." And I just chuckled and said, "You've got to be kidding me. You just blatantly lied to my face. I was here before her today." I don't know why I was so shocked by this, but I just couldn't believe that my student was going to tell me such an obvious lie, especially one that I could easily verify with my mentor teacher. I mean, I'm happy that he's still been coming to see me after school and everything, but I also don't understand how he scatters these little falsehoods into his makeup work. I really truly want him to do well, but it's really discouraging to me when these things happen. It makes me think he doesn't really want it. On the other hand, maybe he's just so overwhelmed by how far behind he is that he's just trying to cut some corners.
Anyway, I just hope that we can both get him caught up AND show him that honesty is always the best policy.
Why Don't They Understand?!?
So one of the things I've been most frustrated by in recent weeks is that my students who are in an Algebra II class don't seem to understand the basics of algebra. Most of my students failed the last quiz, and I was really upset by that. But upon further investigation of their quizzes, I realized that most of them were failing not because they didn't understand the concepts of substitution and elimination but because they didn't now how to manipulate equations. Most of them did not understand why you have to do the same operation to both sides of the equation. It was such a depressing moment for me, because I realized that I don't even know how to proceed with this course if they don't understand things they should have mastered at least a year ago. It would be different if it were only 5-7 students in my class in this position, but it appears to be at least half of them. I think I'm going to require that a group of students come to a review session after school this week because they will never progress or pass the MCAS without understanding algebraic manipulation. It's very good that I chose to do my semester project for my math/science teaching class on the concept of the equals sign. I hope it sheds some light on the matter for when I teach this in the future.
Fairness?
So I've been grappling with the issue of fairness for a few weeks now. My 6th period class is a very mixed bag in terms of students' skill levels, which makes sense when you work in a full-inclusion school with no tracking whatsoever. I have a few students who rarely need any explanations from me and do all the work ridiculously quickly, and I can never give them enough challenging work. On the other hand, I have several students who need serious one-on-one tutoring and who cannot possibly follow along during class. It can create quite a frustrating atmosphere for both me and the students.
I'll be honest, I haven't really been worrying too much about the students who are doing well. Part of me feels bad that I'm not taking enough time to make sure I challenge them, but I'm really just much more worried about my students who have no clue as to what's going on. Since I have this group of students whose grades range from 30-60%, I've been trying to find anything to motivate them to do their work. So one of my ideas is to give them significantly smaller assignments so they can feel better about at least accomplishing something. While I usually think this choice is justified, sometimes I feel weird knowing that I expect someone students to complete all the work for a perfect score and other students only have to complete some of it for a perfect score. I know it's definitely not equal, but is it fair?
Let me give you a summary of a couple of those students that I'm targeting with this plan.
I have one student who sits in the back of class every day and does barely any work. He usually doesn't even take out his assignments or even a pencil during class. So I've asked him a couple of times about why he doesn't do anything during class. He told me honestly that he was just lazy, which I appreciated, but I also wanted to change that. So I first wanted to know if he understood the material, so I asked him how to do the first problem on one of the assignments, and he explained it perfectly! So I said, "Write that down," and he said, "I don't want to." I said, "Excuse me?" He said, "I have a lot of trouble writing things down." So in order to get him to do his work, I've started asking him to at least complete the first page of the assignment. I figure something is better than nothing, right? But is that fair?
I have another student is actually extremely motivated to learn the math and not at all by his grade. However, on a daily basis, he goes through this frustration cycle that can sometimes be impossible to break through. Every single day, he gets really frustrated and angry with new material, and he always claims, "I don't get it. I don't want to do it. I can't do it." And he totally shuts down until he gets one-on-one help (which is hard to give to him every day with such a big and diverse class). And as soon as he gets 10 minutes of help, he gets excited and says, "Oh, I get it. I can do this. That's easy." And it baffles my mind every single day how he goes through this roller coaster of emotions in every single class. So again, I've been giving him smaller assignments because I simply want him to be able to stay on top of his work when he can't get individual tutoring sessions with me. So is that fair?
I have other students in other situations, and I'm trying to make different accommodations and modifications for each student. However, sometimes it's really difficult for me to keep track of, and I'm still so conflicted about fairness. I just desperately want my students to learn, and even as I give them all these accommodations, it doesn't seem to help all that much. Their grades go from a D+ to a C-, and they feel successful for about a day before they fail the next quiz. Anyway, I'm just so frustrated, I would love to hear any suggestions or thoughts!
I'll be honest, I haven't really been worrying too much about the students who are doing well. Part of me feels bad that I'm not taking enough time to make sure I challenge them, but I'm really just much more worried about my students who have no clue as to what's going on. Since I have this group of students whose grades range from 30-60%, I've been trying to find anything to motivate them to do their work. So one of my ideas is to give them significantly smaller assignments so they can feel better about at least accomplishing something. While I usually think this choice is justified, sometimes I feel weird knowing that I expect someone students to complete all the work for a perfect score and other students only have to complete some of it for a perfect score. I know it's definitely not equal, but is it fair?
Let me give you a summary of a couple of those students that I'm targeting with this plan.
I have one student who sits in the back of class every day and does barely any work. He usually doesn't even take out his assignments or even a pencil during class. So I've asked him a couple of times about why he doesn't do anything during class. He told me honestly that he was just lazy, which I appreciated, but I also wanted to change that. So I first wanted to know if he understood the material, so I asked him how to do the first problem on one of the assignments, and he explained it perfectly! So I said, "Write that down," and he said, "I don't want to." I said, "Excuse me?" He said, "I have a lot of trouble writing things down." So in order to get him to do his work, I've started asking him to at least complete the first page of the assignment. I figure something is better than nothing, right? But is that fair?
I have another student is actually extremely motivated to learn the math and not at all by his grade. However, on a daily basis, he goes through this frustration cycle that can sometimes be impossible to break through. Every single day, he gets really frustrated and angry with new material, and he always claims, "I don't get it. I don't want to do it. I can't do it." And he totally shuts down until he gets one-on-one help (which is hard to give to him every day with such a big and diverse class). And as soon as he gets 10 minutes of help, he gets excited and says, "Oh, I get it. I can do this. That's easy." And it baffles my mind every single day how he goes through this roller coaster of emotions in every single class. So again, I've been giving him smaller assignments because I simply want him to be able to stay on top of his work when he can't get individual tutoring sessions with me. So is that fair?
I have other students in other situations, and I'm trying to make different accommodations and modifications for each student. However, sometimes it's really difficult for me to keep track of, and I'm still so conflicted about fairness. I just desperately want my students to learn, and even as I give them all these accommodations, it doesn't seem to help all that much. Their grades go from a D+ to a C-, and they feel successful for about a day before they fail the next quiz. Anyway, I'm just so frustrated, I would love to hear any suggestions or thoughts!
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