Chapter 3 Test (Days 17-18)
And now Blaugust is over -- or is it? Notice that Shelli's husband -- the only person who's really leading Blaugust this year since Shelli herself is skipping it -- has declared a full five-week blogging period. So according to him, the official leader, this challenge extends into the first days of September.
It's strange thinking of Labor Day as the first big milestone of the school year, since back in the old days, school didn't even start until after the September holiday. Now I work at a district with nearly a full month of school before Labor Day. Ten percent of the year will be completed by tomorrow.
On my old blog, I once referred to the first few weeks of school as the Willis unit -- named for Paul Willis, a British education theorist. Another name is the Wong unit -- named for Harry Wong, an author who wrote extensively about the first days of school. Or we can just call it Blaugust. At any rate, now is a good time to reflect upon the start of my school year.
OK, so I guess I will do one last Blaugust post (even though I do like the idea of the letter to my first-year self being my final Blaugust post). Today is the 33rd day of Blaugust, and so let's look at the 33rd topic on Shelli's list:
- How do you develop a positive classroom culture?
Indeed, this is what Paul Willis wrote about -- establishing a positive classroom culture and shutting down the anti-school subculture. It's also what Harry Wong seeks to do in his book. And so it was definitely one of my goals during the Willis unit.
And so, how did I develop a positive culture? Well, one way that I tried to do it was by singing songs -- but that only led to parent complaints.
Indeed, today's topic reminds me of a tweet I read earlier today:
And look at that second item -- building a "+ve culture," or positive culture, using the mathematicians' abbreviation for "positive." Notice that Rob Garden here isn't American (What's 3M/3U math?) -- in fact, it appears that he's Canadian. But what matters here is that he's "unprepared for the curriculum," just as I was unprepared to teach Stats. So how do we know that Garden isn't being criticized by parents, just as I was for trying to build a positive culture (via music) in a class that's new to me too?
Well, I reckon that Garden is doing two things that I failed to do. The first is that Garden is probably careful enough to avoid saying in front of the students that he's never taught 3M/3U math before. Yes, he's posted it on Twitter, and he likely tells his colleagues that he needs more help. But once he's in front of his students, he proceeds as if he's been teaching 3M/3U for decades.
As for the second reason, we think back to the Sara(h) activities. Suppose a parent were to ask me, what is the purpose of doing these activities? If a parent asked me on the spot, I'd likely stumble, unable to give a definite answer other than "because Sara(h) told me to." But if a parent were to ask Garden this question, well, we'd already know what his answer is. The activities are for "getting to know [students], building a [positive] culture, establishing a thinking classroom, and building SEL skills."
And because of that, Garden sounds more like a teacher who knows what he's doing. I, on the other hand, sounded like a teacher who was stalling for time by giving the Sara(h) activities and playing songs because I'd never taught Stats before.
If I recall correctly, it was Wong (or possibly Fred Jones) who wrote about an elementary teacher who once squeezed the main curriculum into four days, Mondays through Thursdays, leaving Fridays for enrichment activities that are fun, yet educational. A parent complained after hearing her excited children bragging that they only had to do work four days a week, until the teacher explained to her that they still do work on Fridays, just a different type of work.
This usually isn't a problem at high schools, since parents aren't as likely to hear about the school days of their teens as they would with their younger children. But of course, I know of at least one.
Another problem is that what's heard is that I "play the guitar" in class. The verb is "play," and the object is "guitar," and a guitar seemingly has nothing to do with math. Notice that if I had been singing without an instrument, the verb would have been "sing," and the object "a song." And if my first song had been, say, "Quadratic Weasel," the object of "sing" wouldn't have been "song," but "formula" -- "The teacher was singing the Quadratic Formula." So instead of a "guitar" that has nothing to do with math, what's heard is a "formula" that has everything to do with math.
Then again, I wouldn't sing "Quadratic Weasel" on the first day of school, since students don't learn the Quadratic Formula on the first day, even if this were an Algebra class (or an Integrated Math II class where the formula would be eventually taught). I suppose the equivalent for a Stats class would be the "Measures of Center" song ("Mode, Mode, Mode the Most," sung to "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."), but central tendency isn't taught the first week of school either.
I'm considering rewriting my old first day of school song from five years ago. The tune will be the same, but the lyrics will now be about a sample of the formulas to be taught through the year. That way, I establish from the start that the songs are used to teach math. Next year, if I return to having a music break, I might even sing the first few songs vocally so that the emphasis is on the lyrics rather than the instrument, and bring my guitar only after the Willis unit ends.
The other Square One TV songs ("Count on It") can still be performed during the Willis unit, but only after the opening song establishing music break as a time for singing formulas. These early songs about the importance of learning math still establish a positive, pro-school culture.
I place the first tests today, at the end of the Willis unit. I used the Illuminate software for both of these tests today. For Stats I took two Chapter 3 Tests from the textbook online test bank (as there are no Chapter 2 Tests, just quizzes, and Chapter 1 is only an intro, not a real chapter) and combined them, since each has only five questions. With each question being worth ten points, that takes me to 100 points, which is what I want the test to be worth.
As for Calculus, I found on Illuminate about ten Precalc questions about functions and graphs that fit with the introductory chapter. I then added eight questions of my own and uploaded these to Illuminate as a separate (that is, part 2) test, for a grand total of 18 questions. These problems have no graphs, since I had trouble adding graphs to my questions. The tricky part is to figure out how to make 18 questions be worth 100 points.
I'm not quite sure how my Calculus students fared on this test yet. Some of them definitely appear to struggle with some of the questions today. While missing over a year of in-person instruction is partly to blame, there are a few problems on my end as well. One, of course, is setting up the test late since I was trying to figure out Illuminate, and choosing questions from different sources. I'm hoping to find more Calculus questions on DeltaMath once we hit Chapter 2.
Well, this concludes Blaugust for the year. Labor Day is on Monday, and so my next blogpost is scheduled for Tuesday. I'll definitely tweet tomorrow about the Ethnostats project.
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