Reflection

Help us Make the Awesome Assessment Tool We All Need!

by Jon Orr

Our semester is now half over and the use of our spreadsheet and mastery learning has been amazing. I didn’t think that the spreadsheet system Kyle and I created back in January,  based on Alice Keeler’s Google Sheet’s and Gamifying the classroom, would have had this much of an impact on student learning. But it did!

We want to take our Assessment spreadsheet for growth learning to the next level!

Students are empowered! They are taking learning into their own hands. They can see on their student view each learning goal (expectation) and their achievement on that goal. They have specific feedback on what to do next! They can access the customized questions based on their skill level and improve! More than before they can see exactly what to do next to get better. Screen Shot 2015-04-16 at 4.20.29 PMHowever, we know that the Master View of the spreadsheet looks intimidating to set up and edit. Screen Shot 2015-04-16 at 4.34.56 PM We have shared this spreadsheet with many educators from all different subjects, and we get the same response “This looks awesome! but…..it’s scary ….what if I delete a cell here or there by accident? Would it mess it all up?”

Answer: It could!

We love this tool….we want to make it better and so much easier to use. That’s where we need help!

We are just regular’ ol’ math teachers.

We imagine this on the web.

We need the help of web programmers.

In the web version:

Students, parents, can log in access and view their achievement. Share it even! A place to capture their learning!

Teachers can log in, track marks, provide feedback, award mastery badges, give next steps, reveal new questions for mastery, point to extra help resources all in one place. They could capture and store student work. Teachers could share learning goals (even whole courses) and the activities/resources they have with other teacher users.

So many tools are out there for assessment. None of them are a complete system. This one is!

We have so many ideas on where this could go….but we are stuck. We need it to be more user friendly.

Please share this out! If you know of anyone who wants to partner up, share our passion and help make this happen as much as we do….show this post to them!

Kyle over on Tap Into Teen Minds has also written a post. Go on over there are read his too!

If you yourself are interested in partnering up with us fill out the form below Let’s make that assessment tool we ALL Need!

Interested in learning how we assess these days?

Learn how to assess for growth through our self-paced online assessment course for math educators.

Error Analysis & Explain Everything

by Jon Orr

IMG_3146If you have read my previous posts(here, here, and here) on Explain Everything ….you’ll know  I love it, and know that I love it because it’s so versatile!

Last year I created/used a series of warm ups or openers or minds on activities (or any other name) in my Advanced Functions class that used iPads:

  1. Daily Desmos – Matching
  2. Sorting/Matching functions to equations activities in Explain Everything
  3. Whiteboard Share – Complete a problem in Explain Everything and AirPlay to Apple TV. Discuss.
  4. Complete a new problem in Explain Everything with a video Hint built in.
  5. Video Critique – Find the Error – Error Analysis.

This last one I want to discuss here.

That opener was a way for me to check homework ….really, a way for me to check understanding of the previous day’s work.

I used Explain Everything and created a file with videos of solutions with errors in them. Instructions were built in to the file that asked students to identify if the solution had an error or not, and if an error existed they were to record themselves fixing the error.

After using this for quick checks last year I decided to make it a full peer editing lesson this year in my Function class (3U).

Students grab the pre made EE file from a shared folder in Google Drive, watch videos of solutions to the previous day’s content, decide which, or if any have errors, then fix them. After recording their new solution right in the EE file they can play their new solution for the whole class to see via Apple TV or upload the EE file to our shared Google Drive folder for peers to download, view and critique.

IMG_3147

Since we are always exporting as an .xpl file students will import those same files and then be able to edit/critique (record) over top of the existing work.

It was awesome to see students recognize common mistakes and yell out “nope that’s wrong!” Or “I think that one’s OK”. It was equally great to see them watch eachothers “new” solutions and critique them the same way they critiqued mine.

Definitely a type of lesson I’ll repeat, probably on next review day.

Read more awesome ways to use EE.

Kyle Pearce’s —- Explain Everything Math Learning Journey 1 & 2

MathyCathy’s —- Hands On Digital Puzzles

Let’s Find a Good Math Lesson Online with #MTBOS

by Jon Orr
I may be preaching to the choir here….

Planning great math lessons is sometimes pretty hard, but we don’t have to do this alone. Use the power of the #MTbos (Math Twitter Blogosphere) and some tech tips to sweeten lesson creation.

Here’s the process I take when thinking about upcoming lessons:
I start with the lesson goal. For example, I want my students to be able to say after our lesson “I can solve systems of linear equations“
So cue up the Internet and jump in.

Twitter & Evernote a Powerful Combo.

I’m on Twitter because a ton of sharing of great math lessons happen there…. Follow #MTBoS and get ready to swipe some of those lessons and save them for the future… Here’s how I do that:
On Twitter if you click a link that leads to a blog post or lesson and you loved it, save it! 
Let’s say while I was looking for a lesson on my Phone I saw this tweet and wanted to save it.

Saving is so important….you don’t want to lose it. I have Evernote, and a sweet feature is that you can email stuff to your Evernote account!
Screen Shot 2015-04-03 at 9.00.53 PM
Save your Evernote email address to your email contacts.
Back on Twitter mail that link you liked to your Evernote email.
Screen Shot 2015-04-03 at 9.22.19 PM
then voila it’s in your Evernote account saved to search for later!
On a desktop you can just copy the link to the tweet then paste in a new Evernote note, add a few keyword tags to help with searching later.
Screen Shot 2015-04-03 at 9.31.16 PM
I have created a folder named Class Ideas… All my emailed and saved links go there. When I’m planning a lesson  I go to that folder first and do a search. Type in a few keywords around your topic and your saved lessons will pop up!

RSS Reader & Blogs

If I don’t already have a lesson saved in my Evernote account I then check blogs.
An RSS reader is a must have! While on Twitter and see that lesson I like, most likely that teacher/blog author will share something in the future. I don’t want to miss it! Get an RSS reader and have all those lessons come directly to you!
I use Feedly. Just copy and paste that blog URL into Feedly and Feedly will save it.
Screen Shot 2015-04-03 at 9.40.44 PM Now I can check Feedly and see all the posts from all the blogs I like and I won’t miss a post.
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The searching part is a tad easier now. If I see a post/lesson I like here I can email it out to my Evernote account! Saved again.
Now that that is all set up I should be good! But what if missed a tweet on Twitter or don’t follow the blog with the lesson I’m looking for?
Head on over to the MTBoS Search Engine and type in those keywords for your lesson and you’ll see a ton of great lessons. See a post from a blog? Don’t forget to send that link to Evernote and save that blog to your RSS reader.
Looking for a problem based lesson like a 3- act math task? Search Robert Kaplinsky’s Problem Based Lesson Search Engine.
Want some blogs to add to your RSS reader? Head over to MTBoS Directory add em all! Looking for something To start your lesson or improve a lesson?
Check
If all of that failed to yield something (doubt it) then you’ll be right where you started. I bet some of you have tips and suggestions to improve my workflow. Would love to hear about them!

Ready for round 2?

by Jon Orr

Second semester is starting tomorrow and I just wanted to get down my ideas on things I will be changing and things I will be keeping…..

New things…

I’ll be using the spreadsheet I modified from @alicekeeler. Although I plan on using Kyle Pearce’s further modified version.

I have slightly modified old my assessment approach (again). I’ll share later.

Kyle and I have been Tweeting back and forth all weekend about spiralling our grade 9 applied classes. We have been teaching using an inquiry based approach (4 part math lesson) and thought that spiralling would fit right in. We’ll keep you posted. Here is my day-to-day plan by topic and task, so far .

I’ll Continue….

a ton of stuff….but here are a few

Keeping my students curious.

Strengthening the connection between algebraic representations and graphical representations using Desmos! 

Documenting my class by taking a picture/tweet for every school day.

Warm ups – To start every class we do a warm up / starter. Most of these starters are math related but for me the most important part is that the starters allow our class to “Gel”. My buddy @Regan_bio is an advocate for always saying we should show our students that we are human and remember they are human too. Take the first 5 minutes of class and be a good human with your kids…..maybe they will be more ready to do some math!

Recently Mary Bourassa has shared her great list of daily warm ups for her grade 10 applied class. Check out her warm ups.

Here’s what we have been doing…

Monday’s – Estimation180 – As a class we complete one of these great challenges (10 minutes). We track our progress on Andrew’s / Michael Fenton’s provided handout.

Tuesday’s – Visual Patterns. I choose a pattern for us to determine the equation.

Wednesday’s – Pictionary – Our class is split into two teams. They take turns drawing and guessing objects, sayings, math ideas that I have picked out. Most of the time this is a non math game. (10 minutes)

Thursday’s – Throw Back Thursday — I choose a question / skill that my class has been exposed to in the past and we work on our whiteboards on this as a review question.

Friday’s – 20 Questions. — I pick something and the class has 20 yes or no questions to try and guess what I have picked. We then play a second round where the class together picks something and I try to guess. (10 minutes).

Have an exciting second semester everybody!