Sara(h) Week Activities (Day 4)

I'll begin with a description of today, in "A Day in the Life" format. This is my monthly posting day -- my school has a minimum day on one Monday per month. By the way, the dates of these monthly minimum days aren't announced in advance (so it isn't something simple like "the third Monday of each month").

8:00 -- First period arrives. This is the first of two general Statistics classes.

Last week, this class had only one student. Today, a second guy finally transfers in, so at least this class has two students.

Last week, I heard a rumor that this class might be dropped and replaced with something else. The fact that the counselor is transferring in a new student suggests that she's committed to keeping this class as Stats, but who knows? A class of two students isn't much more efficient than a class of one -- but then again, it could be that my fifth period Stats doesn't fit into these two guys' schedules, and so this tiny class must remain when it is.

I'll continue to keep watch on what will happen to my smallest class.

8:40 -- First period leaves and second period arrives. This is the first of two Ethnostats classes.

A new girl transfers in from my fourth period class. This is good, as fourth period is my largest class.

I decide to continue the Sara Vanderwerf name tents into this week. Today's topic is "What are you most interested in?" I admit that I got this topic from the following website, by Megan Heine:

https://peacelovemath.wordpress.com/2018/08/10/first-days-individual-and-group-activities/

For some students, it might be possible to tie what they're interested in to math and stats.

I follow this with a discussion of my fifth and sixth resolutions: "We treat people who are great at math as heroes" and "We ask, what would our heroes do?" All along, when I first came up with these resolutions, I'd been planning on using this to implement a strict cell policy -- you see, "our heroes" refer to the two geniuses born in 1955, Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee -- the creators of Apple and the Internet. They invented technology, but when they were in high school before their inventions, they were focused on learning in their math and science classes. So my idea was to declared certain days as "Technology 1955" when cell phones (and even calculators) would be forbidden. On other days calculators would be allowed but not phones, and finally phones would be allowed after the students complete tests.

But calculators are much more important in Stats (and Calc) classes as opposed to, say Geometry (or Integrated Math I-II). And I'm not sure whether these students have graphing calculators, or whether it is a good idea to require graphing calculators in class.

And so I ask the teacher next door -- the only other math teacher at the school. She tells me that back in 2019-20 (the last year when this district was open in-person), she would have the students download an HP graphing calculator onto their phones. I'm not as familiar with HP as I am with TI -- she lends me her own (non-phone based) HP. I can tell already that unlike TI, this HP allows algebraic manipulation (for example, HP concludes that x + x = 2x, until TI).

Thus she's convinced me to allow the students to use HP on their phones. In other words, the students really are using their phones for class, and so this eliminates my "Technology 1955" idea. I tell the kids today that while I can't tell whether they're really using their phones for class or for entertainment, I will forbid listening to music on earbuds, since that's clearly entertainment. After all, the 55'ers Jobs and Berners-Lee got through math class without a need for music, and so can they. Meanwhile, the school does have some TI-84 calculators for backup (in case a student doesn't have a phone or it's not charged).

But I am a little worried -- not only can students take advantage and just play with their phones all day, but HP's algebraic manipulation capability might result in students using it to pass math tests without knowing the math. If either of these becomes a problem, I have the power to revert to Technology 1955/1999/2022 or whatever.

I move on to some more Sarah Carter activities. One activity from her list is Count to Ten:

https://mathequalslove.net/count-to-ten/

This second period class makes it quite far until two people call out "nine" at the same time. Then the students complete ten on their second attempt. Of course, my classes are small, and so it's easier for these classes to make it to ten without any double-calls.

Since there's still time left after Count to Ten, I follow up with the closely related Thirteen Game:

https://mathequalslove.net/thirteen-game/

For today's Exit Pass, I use today's actual Rebecca Rapoport question:

"LeeAnn uses her 20% student discount to purchase a theater ticket that had a $100 face value. She then sold it at a 20% profit. How much money did she make?"

I inform the students that the answer to each question on this calendar is the date. Thus the students must show their work, or otherwise I'll assume that they simply copied the date.

9:20 -- Second period leaves and third period arrives. This is AP Calculus AB.

I repeat the Carter activities with this class. Since this class is smaller than the others, they are able to Count to Ten without any double-calls.

10:00 -- Third period leaves and fourth period arrives. This is the second of two Ethnostats classes.

Another guy transfers out of this class completely, leaving fifteen students in my largest class. Still, the class manages to Count to Ten without any double-calls -- or do they? The noisy lawnmower is being operated outside, and so it's difficult to hear the students. I suspect that two students call out "eight" together, but I can't prove it due to the lawnmower.

10:40 -- Fourth period leaves and fifth period arrives. This is the second of two general Stats classes.

One new girl arrives. Technically, she's transferred from my first period into fifth period, but she never ever attended first period. (The two students in my first period are both guys -- I never counted this girl as a first period student.) But even though this class is much smaller than fourth period, two students call out "ten" simultaneously during Count to Ten.

Recall that one guy is in both second and fifth periods. He ends up winning the Thirteen Game in fifth period because he remembers what he learned in second period -- if there are two players remaining and one player calls out "eight," he's guaranteed to win because he can call out "twelve" on the next turn.

11:20 -- Fifth period leaves. Sixth period is my conference period, and so my teaching day ends here.

During the teachers' meeting after school, the principal discusses "multi-tiered interventions" -- you know, all that Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 stuff. Yes, you know you're a teacher if you've ever been to a meeting where Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 are mentioned.

Since this is "A Day in the Life," it's time for reflection. Recall that my reflection posts are the only times on the blog when I'll compare this class to previous classes that I've taught.

First of all, notice that Carter posted both her "Ten" and "Thirteen" activities on her blog five years ago, back when I was teaching at the old charter school. At the time, I did only one of her activities -- "Survival in the Desert." I'd tried to come up with my own activities and didn't understand at the time how great her games are. It didn't help that her first day of school that year was more than a week after mine, and so I was done with opening activities by the time she posted "Ten" and "Thirteen." (As for this year, both her school and mine started on the same day.)

The students enjoyed the Carter activities that I chose this year -- "2's Through 9's" on Day 2, "Master Designer" on Day 3, and "Ten"/"Thirteen" today. Perhaps it would have been more fitting if I'd done "Thirteen" on Day 3 (that is, Friday the 13th), but I'd always wanted this quicker game on today's minimum day.

If I'd been hired for this position earlier in the summer and had known that it was Stats, then I would have done "2's Through 9's" on Day 1. Instead, Day 2 would have been "Left Center Right" -- a simple dice game. According to Carter, I might have found this game at Dollar Tree. She writes that this game would have been perfect for Stats and Probability.

The way I do the Exit Pass reveals what I should have done at the old charter school. First of all, the problem whose answer is the date works better as an Exit Pass rather than a Warm-Up. And more importantly, if the answer is always the date, then the emphasis should be on showing the work. At the old charter school, I never required the students to show work, so it ended up being "just write the date" (which led to it falling apart).

That's enough for reflection -- it's time to look ahead. Tomorrow's the first block day of the year, which has several implications. First of all, it means it's time for me to choose which class I'll describe on the blog -- the general Stats classes that meet on odd days (Tuesday/Thursday), or the Ethnostats classes that meet on even days (Wednesday/Friday). This in turn will determine which days I'll blog.

I can see the case for choosing to blog about Ethnostats. These are my largest classes, and so it makes sense for me to blog about the classes with the most students.

But then again, that's exactly why I should blog about general Stats and tweet about Ethnostats. More readers are going to see my Twitter than my blog, and so that's where I should describe the class with the most students. And so I'll save my blog for general Stats -- and I can mention Calc here as well.

Recall that if a block schedule school were to have three blocks and nothing else, each block would be about two hours in length. Therefore most block schedule schedules add something else to the schedule in order to avoid two-hour blocks (such as tutorial, a fourth class, or something like that).

This school has an Advisory period at the start of the day. The main purpose of this period is to prepare students for college -- since mine is all seniors, the emphasis will be on filling out college applications and writing essays. But other tasks will take place during Advisory. In particular, students are supposed to pick up their textbooks for the upcoming year.

I've already seen the Calculus text. It's by Stewart, a well-known author -- in fact, he wrote the old text that I used when I took Calc as a young high school student. Stewart's Calculus texts are large, since not only do they contain AB material, but BC and Multivariable Calc material as well. It appears that the first seven chapters of Stewart correspond to AB, and so my goal is to finish Chapter 7 before May, the month of the AP exam.

But there is much confusion regarding the Stats text. I've seen what appears to be a general Stats text, but the lady in the bookroom tells me that this is really the Ethnostats text (even though I don't see any specific reference to ethnicity at all). She couldn't show me any general Stats text.

And so I'll arrive on campus tomorrow not knowing exactly what I'm going to teach in Stats. My students might pick up a text tomorrow, but they might not. But I don't know what text it is, or how Stats and Ethnostats will differ appreciably from each other.

Of course, I could just do another opening activity. But the teacher next door tells me that as fun as opening activities are, they can't really carry a full block period. And recall that one student is enrolled in both Stats and Ethnostats -- doing yet another opening activity means that he'll be stuck doing the same activity for over three hours.

The best thing I can do is prepare a lesson from the "Ethnostats" text for tomorrow and then pivot to another Stats lesson if I'm given another text to use.

Then again, I'm having the same problem now that I had at the start of my long-term assignment -- my email account hasn't been set up yet. There could be a message about my Stats texts and lessons sitting in my email right now -- but I can't access it. And of course, I can't reach other websites such as Google Classroom (which I really need to set up for the students) until I get that new email and password.

Let's get to today's Blaugust topic.

Since today's the 16th, here's the sixteenth topic from Shelli's old 2019 list:

• How I used something unexpected in my classroom to… 

Oh, I definitely used something unexpected in my classroom last week. One of the Carter activities that I did last week was Master Designer. This activity requires geometric tiles in order for the "master designer" to make designs. But I don't have any geometric tiles.

But on my first day in the classroom, I searched the cabinet and found -- algebra tiles.

Yes, all algebra tiles are rectangular, and so there are no triangles as Carter intended. Nonetheless, the algebra tiles worked well for this activity. And some students already familiar with algebra tiles were more easily able to describe their creations (for example, it uses three "x^2 tiles").

Tomorrow will be my first block day, for better or for worse. And it will mark the start of my new blogging schedule -- Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, to match my general Stats classes.