Chapter 3: Stories Categorical Data Tell, Continued (Day 14)
Let's get to today's Blaugust topic.
Since today's the 30th, here's the thirtieth topic from Shelli's old 2019 list:
- A Day in the LIfe (#DITL)
Ah ha -- and so we're suddenly doing yet another "A Day in the Life" topic. Yes, it seems as if I'm doing "A Day in the Life" every week this month. I can't help it that so many special days have occurred -- the first day of school, monthly minimum day, Back to School night, now Blaugust 30th. I don't mind -- I definitely want to reflect on my teaching a lot during these early days of the school year.
"A Day in the Life" will definitely fade next month. There are no more special days coming up, and the monthly minimum day isn't until the third Monday of September. (I don't know yet whether it will always be the third Monday of the month, but so far it is in August and September.)
This is an all-classes Monday.
8:00 -- First period begins. This is the first of two general Stats classes.
This class still has only one guy in it. In case you haven't noticed by now, I don't write much about this class due to privacy issues with the lone student -- unless he does something worth noting in general, I'd rather wait to describe my fifth period Stats class on the blog.
8:55 -- First period leaves and second period begins. This is the first of two Ethnostats class.
I still have yet to hear from my predecessor and counterpart teachers at the main high school regarding how to teach Ethnostats. But I'm not waiting for them any longer -- once again, I figure that they're too busy with their own classes to help me out.
And so I've decided that this week, I'll follow Sarah Carter's suggestion from Twitter:
And notice that Carter herself hasn't tweeted much about her idea since. This means that I've truly on my own for this project.
Here's what I'm thinking so far -- on Wednesday, I'll teach a regular Stats lesson, but near the end, I'll ask the students to suggest data about the class that might be worth putting in a bar chart or pie chart for the class. Then on Friday, I hand out spiral notebooks and they begin their scrapbooks -- in them, the students will include both their own personal data and the entire class data.
I want the students to include their own ideas for the class data charts. Since this is Ethnostats, surely ethnic and gender identity should be included in the data. Notice that out Stats texts gives examples such as eye color -- but this won't work in our class. The vast majority of students at our school are Hispanic and thus have brown eyes, so it would be a boring chart. (This might have worked back at my long-term school in Orange County, where there were more white students who might have different eye colors.)
Since my second period class has only six students, I'll likely combine the data for this class with my larger fourth period, which has fifteen students.
Recall that my general Stats classes (especially fifth period) are the focus for this blog, rather than the Ethnostats classes. So indeed, most of my discussion of this project and how well it's going will be posted on Twitter. My plan is to quote Carter's tweet to show that I'm implementing her scrapbook idea.
9:55 -- Second period leaves for nutrition.
10:15 -- Third period arrives. This is the AP Calculus AB class.
On the old blog, I wrote about a Great Courses DVD that I purchased for $1 at a library book sale back in October 2019. It is called Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear and taught by Professor Michael Starbird. At the time, I watched every episode and blogged about it -- and I suggested that if I ever taught a Calculus class, this DVD would come in handy.
And, lo and behold, I suddenly find myself teaching a Calc class. Thus I'm trying to find ways to incorporate Starbird lessons into my class. Days like today -- regular all-classes Mondays that aren't minimum days -- are excellent days to play such videos. I can surround each half-hour lecture with a Warm-Up, homework discussion, and Exit Pass to fill a 55-minute period.
Today I show the students Lecture 1, "Two Ideas, Vast Implications." Here's a link to a description of this episode from my old blog:
https://commoncoregeometry.blogspot.com/2020/01/first-post-of-new-decade.html
(Note: That was a lengthy post and I wrote about a whole bunch of other stuff -- most notably my resolutions -- before finally getting to Starbird's lecture.)
There are 24 lectures, but Starbird introduces the integral in Lectures 3 and 4, then expands upon the integral starting in Lecture 10. Thus my plans are to show them the first two lectures and then 5-9 during this first semester, when I focus on differential calculus only.
The timing, though, will be tricky. In September there are four Mondays, but the first Monday is Labor Day and the third Monday is a minimum day. This leaves me with two Mondays to show the students Lectures 2 and 5. On September 13th, I will play Lecture 2, where the derivative is introduced. But my current pacing plan doesn't have me reach Lesson 2-5 on derivatives until the week of September 20th.
The problem with pushing back the lectures is that I don't know what October will bring. There might be an October surprise (such as PSAT week) messing with the schedule. I want to reach Lecture 7 (where derivative formulas are mentioned) before the end of Chapter 3. And so to be safe, I do Lecture 1 today and will do Lecture 2 on September 13th.
11:10 -- Third period leaves and fourth period arrives. This is the second of two Ethnostats classes.
As expected, this class goes much like second period.
12:10 -- Fourth period leaves for lunch.
12:45 -- Fifth period arrives. This is the second of two general Stats classes.
There is a new student, a girl, in this class. Technically, she's been enrolled since the start of the year, but due to (unbloggable, of course) family issues, she doesn't attend school until today. Thus today is her first day of in-person learning since before the pandemic. She still has yet to pick up the textbook, and so she was unable to do much work during independent study. There are now a total of four students in this class.
Since today is an all-classes Monday, I cover three pages of the book, 27-29. These pages are part of Chapter 3, "Stories Categorical Data Tell." The students learn about contingency tables, marginal distributions, and conditional distributions.
I'm also making plans to give tests in both general Stats and Calculus classes (as opposed to Ethnostats, where I plan on giving the project instead). To me, it makes sense to give the tests before Labor Day weekend (thus giving me more time to grade them). For Calculus, it will be the Chapter 1 test, while for Stats, the test will cover Chapters 2-3.
The timing of the first test of the year is always a bit tricky. Recall that back at the old charter school (and yes, I can bring up the old school during "A Day in the Life"), there was some controversy when I pushed the first test on my eighth grade students during the third week of school.
This year, I waited until this week, the fourth week of school, to give the first tests. Once again, my worry is how well the students will do on their first in-person test after having spent so much time online due to the pandemic.
Perhaps I should have given a quiz first. The problem is that if the test is the fourth week, the best time for a quiz would have been the second week -- but at that point, I was still trying to get situated with my email account and Google Classroom. It would have been awkward to spring a quiz on the students the instant I set up Classroom.
Of course, my old charter school also had Benchmark tests. Perhaps I could have done something similar for these students, just to assess what they did and didn't learn during distance learning -- and again, maybe I would have if I'd already had all my technology set up. So instead, I'm giving the first tests this week.
1:40 -- Fifth period leaves. Sixth period is conference period, and so my teaching day ends here.
During the prep period, I start thinking about how I'll set up the tests. I notice that my teacher's edition of the Stats text contains an CD containing an online test bank. So I could base my first Stats text on one of the tests given here.
There's one more thing about the bell schedule to note here -- the final dismissal bell at the end of sixth period rings 20 minutes earlier on Mondays than on block days. This means that technically, there can be short afterschool meetings on Mondays. The principal sends us an email directing us to meet in departments today. For me, this means that I meet with the lone other math teacher at our school.
My partner teacher decides to use the time to show me some more websites. One of these is DeltaMath, which I've heard of before as some MTBoS teachers use the site as well. She shows me how to log into DeltaMath, and that I can use it for online assessments -- including the tests that I plan on giving the students this week.
She explains that online assessments are better than written tests not only to minimize paperwork during the pandemic, but also for more data-based accountability for the district. As a Stats teacher, I, more than anyone else at this school, should appreciate the need for more data!
My partner teacher also mentions another website, Illuminate, even though she doesn't have time to show me this site in full today. She explains that it's possible to upload tests into Illuminate. It could be that my best option is to upload an assessment from the online test bank onto Illuminate for Stats, while sticking to DeltaMath for Calculus (as I have no teacher's edition -- and hence no CD with any online test bank -- for Calc).
Still, it will take some getting used to for all of this technology. At my long-term sub position, all of these technology (APEX and other websites) were already set up for me, so I didn't have to think that much about it. Now I'm the regular teacher, so I'm the one who must make sure that Google Classroom, DeltaMath, Illuminate, and so on, are working properly. And I have only until the end of the week to figure it out if I want to keep the tests this week.
By the way, my partner teacher explains that there's no harm in delaying the Stats test next week if the students aren't ready, or if I can't figure out Illuminate. It's not as if there's a strict pacing guide for this class or anything like that. On the other hand, I can't delay Calculus much, since there's an AP exam coming up in May.
3:30 -- The department meeting ends, thus completing my day.
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