Weekly App Practical- The Inclusive Classroom

Through my years I have used the audio enhancer numerous times for students. But other than that, I could not think of an assistive technology that I have used in my class. This year though I have a student who is on an IEP who is allowed to use a laptop for notes, assignments, and even assessments. For a history and english class, this may be fairly normal, but for a math class, this can pose quite a problem. We use a language all our own.

This year my student writes his answers in a google doc and shares it with me. He is able to use math type so he can express answers with exponents, fractions, etc. when needed.

In a Google Doc, you can select insert, and then Equation in order to use a special math font. Right above the document you now have a new menu for math options.

Options are Greek letters, math notation (division, the plus/minus symbol, infinity), inequality signs, radicals, sigma notation, exponents, and fractions.

My student who has a difficult time writing can easily submit his assignments to me by google docs. The equation editor makes it easy to read.

My student also uses these features to take his notes on.

Weekly App Practical- Assessment

For this week we had to look into assessment. I decided to look into Socrative. Socrative is an assessment tool from Mastery Connect. I chose to look at Socrative for this reason, because I am familiar with MasteryConnect and I wanted to see what else they had to offer.

You must open an account with Socrative. There is a free version and a paid version. The free version gives you enough to use, but obviously the paid version gives you more features. One feature is the paid version gives you more "rooms". The unpaid version only allows one "room", so you will want to clear the room at the end of every class to allow your next group of kids to enter.

As a 9th grade math teacher I am aware I should do more quick formatives, not just my homework assignments. I was hoping Socrative could offer this to me.

Once you log in, your website looks like this, where you can "launch" your formative. IF you are launching a quiz, space race, or exit ticket, it must be prepared in advance. Also notice at the top there is a class code, this is the code your students will enter when they log in.

When you create a quiz, you do have the option to format for math, which is imperative for me!

Socrative also gives you the option to add a picture, perhaps a graph, if you need to. 

The space race seems cool as students join teams to compete against each other. 

For the Quick Question though, there is NOT an option for formatting which means you can not do  quick formative on the "fly" if you are doing quadratics or any other math that needs formatting.

When I first logged in and played with this earlier in the week, I was able to create Multiple Choice, True False, or Short answer easily. As I am playing around now, Socrative is not allowing me too.

Teachers need software this is consistent and reliable. For this reason, and the formatting, are reasons I would probably NOT use this in class. I would prefer to be able to do a quick question in class on the fly to make sure students are understanding, but if the software is going to be "buggy", I am not interested.

Troubleshooting

Mrs. Woodcocks Common TI84 Troubleshoot Guide

Issue	Try…
My calculator is “not working”…	·      Check the batteries. Are they in correctly? Are they dead? ·      Check the screen setting. Press 2nd up or down to adjust. Having the screen to light or dark can make it appear to not be on, when it is.
My calculator is giving “weird answers”	·      Reset your calculator so it is working just like Christmas Day when you opened it! Press 2nd, +, 7, 1, 2
My calculator is not showing the correlation coefficient.	·      Turn your Diagnostics ON! Press 2nd, 0, scroll to DiagnosticOn, press enter.
My calculator says ERR:SYNTAX	·      Press Quit if you know what you did, or press Goto, and calculator will find the error. ·      Most common error? Using the negative sign and subtraction sign incorrectly.
My calculator says a negative number squared is a negative. Why is it lying to me??	·      Order of Operations my friends! Put ( ) around your negative numbers!
Help! I deleted my L1, L2, etc…	·      To prevent this, when your List is highlighted, click CLEAR, NOT DELETE. ·      To fix, press STAT, 5, ENTER. Your missing Lists will reappear

Weekly App Practical- Students as Global Citizens

This reading and discussion hit me hard because I always felt I was a good teacher, but doing the reading I realized I am in my little bubble. When November brought up the American Revolution and how England has a completely different point of view, I realized I have never questioned what my teachers have presented to me. I just take things for fact and do not consider another's point of view!

To be a global citizen students need to understand the world outside their little bubble. They need to see what is not familiar to them. This is what I want for my students.

Although I present different ways to solve the same problem, I do not present different point of views, such as for word problems. When first reading this section, I myself, was stuck in my little bubble and thought, "There is no way to incorporate being a global citizen into a 9th Grade Algebra Class. Of course I have proved myself wrong by doing a quick search and being open minded.

Why should students be global citizens in math class?

Students will...

• Be more likely to accept diversity.
• Have a greater understanding of how the world works and what their role is in it.
• Take responsibility for their actions.
• Participate more within the community.
• Work to make the world more equitable.

How can it being a global citizen be incorporated into a math class?

• Use data in word problems such as a populations access to water, education, electricity, life expectancy, mortality rate, etc. and compare it to your community.
• Compare wages and populations.
• Look at country's sizes and populations. (population density)
• Compare government spending on different things--military, education, health care, etc.

What can go wrong?

I actually do not forsee any major issues with changing how I teach. The hardest part will be to go back and change word problems to incorporate these ideas and researching to find accurate data. I suppose some students may say "I don't care about other people" or "This doesn't apply to me", but those are the students I am hoping to reach.

Weekly App Practical- Student Researchers

For this weeks WAP, we are writing about how students can research in our class and how we would support them.

I currently do not do much, if any, research in class. The extent of research that we do in class is when there are times when students may ask a question (sometimes not even related to math) I do not know the answer to and someone (myself included) may use google and do a search to find the answer.

For this project, I envision that I would assign the students an assignment where they must find a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem and present it to the class. There are hundreds of ways to prove this theorem so this would be a fun assignment to see all the variations of the proof. Students can prove it algebraically or visually.

To guide my students, I would create a custom google search, provided below, to help them sift through all the possibilities.

Weekly App Practical- Student Scribe

Student Scribe...
This week we had to investigate the idea of having a student scribe in the classroom. I have actually never heard of, or thought of this idea. I am very intrigued by this as I require notes to be taken in class. I see two reasons why this would be beneficial for my class. The first being some students may not be great note takers. By publishing notes, students can look at the published notes if they are stuck on the math, but they can also see how other students organize their notes and could learn note taking skills and strategies from them. Also, if a student is absent, they very easily can refer to the class notes to see what they have missed.

The App...
For this assignment, I played with the app seesaw. Seesaw is an app that runs almost like a blog. The teacher will create a class (or many!). Students will create accounts to log into the class. The teacher can also can parents access to seesaw. My daughter's teacher uses seesaw for her first grade class so I have used this app from the parent side of things.

How will this work?...
How I envision this working in my class is that students will take notes as always in class. I am not sure if I will have students volunteer to be a scribe, or assign the role on a daily or weekly basis so that everyone contributes. Once done with the notes, at school or at home, the scribe will take a picture of their notes. Seesaw is great because you can take a picture, but then do a voice recording with the picture. So the scribe can walk through the notes giving more precise instructions, or making comments on things that came up in class (such as things to be careful for, reminders, etc.). The scribe will then click the green check mark and the notes are then uploaded. The teacher must approve all posts! This will guarantee accuracy for the notes! At this point the teacher has the option to make these notes available for everyone, or just certain people (remember my daughter? Her teacher only allows us to see work relevant to our own child!) The teacher also has the ability to create folders, so they can group units together, so it is not a full long stream of notes, like on a traditional blog!


What does the app look like?...

This is the screen a student sees on the iPad. Lots of choices!

Once the student takes the picture, they can draw on it, and/or do the voice recording over to explain. Again, when done, the student will click the green check mark.

The teacher is alerted when material needs to be approved to be posted.

Super easy to approve!

Overall impression?...

I actually really like seesaw from the teacher, parent, and student perspective! The interface is very user friendly and easy to figure out. I would recommend this app for teachers to use in their classroom.

What problems do I forsee?...
I have used seesaw as a parent because my daughter's teacher uses it for her class. When creating these accounts so I could explore the teacher and student side, the app was weird since I already have an account I could not then be the teacher. I had to create different accounts for each of my roles using different email addresses. There may be a way around this, or a way to toggle between accounts under the same email, but if so, it is not very easy or obvious to do so.

The voice recording has a maximum time of 5 minutes. Hopefully notes don't need a voice over for longer than that, so if they do, the notes might need to be uploaded into two sections.

Parent Communication

Algebra 1

Instructor: Mrs. Woodcock

Email: lwoodcock@beverlyschools.org      

Room: A448

After-school availability: Tuesday and Thursday after school. I am available most days after school, just ask!     

Course Description: This course studies the properties and structure of the real number system. Topics include solving, graphing and writing linear equations, radicals, quadratic equations, polynomials, exponents, systems of linear equations, and linear inequalities.

Honors Courses: These courses contain highly challenging material, presented at an accelerated and more intense pace than the typical college preparatory courses taken by a majority of four-year college-bound students. They require advanced reading, writing, verbal, conceptual, mathematical, and study abilities, as well as extensive outside preparation.

Daily Required Materials:

   •     Notebook – binder with notebook paper and dividers OR notebook

   •     Pen or pencil

   •     Scientific Calculator

How to Succeed:

·           Take complete notes. Actively listen. Ask questions when you don’t understand.

·           Math concepts build on each other. Missing several clases is difficult to overcome. Go to class.

·           DO THE HOMEWORK. Math is learned by doing.

·           Don’t be embarassed by mistakes—learn from them!

·           Come before or after school if you are still confused.

  

Class Procedures:

   •     Class will begin with review of the homework and/or a formative assessment (practice problems on topics from previous class) or problem solving activity

   •     Introduce new concept for the day (take notes)

   •     Guided Practice / Class assignment

   •     10-15 minutes at the end of every class will be available to start homework

   •     A summative assessment will be given at the end of each unit

Grading Policy:

•    All formatives are available for retake.

•    All summatives are available for ONE retake provided student can provide evidence that they have completed all class and homework assignments.

•    Midterms, and finals may not be re-taken.

•    All retakes have a 2 week time limit for completion.

•    Summatives are worth 90% and formatives are worth 10% of your overall grade.

SBG	Rubric Scale	Letter Grade	Percentage
Advanced	4.0	A+	100 - 97
	3.9	A	96 - 93
	3.7	A-	92 -90
Proficient	3.4	B+	89 - 87
	3.0	B	86 - 83
	2.7	B-	82 -80
Basic	2.4	C+	79 - 77
	2.0	C	76 - 73
	1.7	C-	72 - 70
Working Towards	1.0	D	69 - 63
Low Evidence No Evidence	0.9 0.0	F	62 - 50 0.0

Classroom Expectations:

   •     All students will be RESPECTFUL of one another. No student will be made fun of, laughed at, or teased for asking a question. Being disrespectful to a teacher or a classmate will result in after-school detention.

   •     NO laptops, cellphones, ipods, or electronic devices are to be used during instruction. Laptops will be used only for online assignments and class projects. First offense will receive a warning. Second offense and the device will be put on my desk till the end of the period; refusal to comply will result in reporting to Assistant Principal’s office.

   •     No food or drink except water allowed in the classroom.

   •     No more than one male and/or one female out of the room at a time. You need to sign out and in using the Sign Out Sheet. Be sure to take a pass with you.

   •     Unless it is an emergency, I ask that you do not leave class during instruction. If you do need to leave the room for any reason, it is your responsibility to get the information you miss.

   •     Work will need to be shown on all homework assignments to receive credit. A list of numbered problems and answers, or circling of multiple choice answers WILL NOT be accepted as assignments completed. All assignments are due the next class period unless otherwise specified. 

   •     Before the end of class you need to put away any items you borrowed, clean up any mess you made and be sure you take all your belongings with you.

Attendance:

     It is your responsibility to make up all work missed due to absences. All assignments will be posted on the course Moodle page. Per BHS policy, students with more than 3 absences in one quarter will receive a failing grade (FA) for that quarter. Three class tardies equals one absence.