Little Hiatus

To all my readers! I am taking a short hiatus, I will be back to full force August 15, 2013. I will start blogging about my daily life as a math teacher!

Classroom Management Tool: Group Points - Introduction

It has been a long hiatus since my last post for a LOT of reasons.
1. SUMMER FINALLY ARRIVED! It only rains at night (on a good day.)
2. I've been reading books I bought from Second Hand Book Stores! (Going to read "A Beautiful Mind" Next!!!)
3. And most of all, I've had Writer's Block! (Even now, as I am on the 3 bullet of my list. I do not have a title)

So hopefully this post will end my writer's block for a while.

Every year, we undergo the same problems. If we compiled a list of teacher problems, I bet the following would make an appearance.

1. Classroom Management
2. Organization
3. Syllabii
4. Seating Charts
5. Rewards
The List goes on and on!

Today, I am going to describe a classroom management tool that rewards a group of students, instead of a single student. I got the idea while reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for like the two millionth time.

          "'Welcome to Hogwarts,' said Professor McGonagall. 'The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory and spend free time in your house common room.
           'The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rule-breaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honour. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours."

So, my grand scheme is to break my students into four groups. Every class I teach will have students that belong to each group. I am currently thinking that the students will be broke into their class status ... Seniors, Juniors, Sophmores, and Freshmen. 

Students will be broken into the four "Houses," Senior Maroons, Maroon Juniors, Sophmore Maroons (Still Working on It), and New Maroons (Still Working on It). 

Each group will be given a colored banner (It will be made by me using felt and will display the class colors.)

Seniors -- Maroon and Gray Banner with Maroon wording 

Juniors -- Maroon and Gray Banner with Gray Wording

Sophmores -- Maroon Banner with Gray Wording 

Freshmen -- Gray Banner with Maroon Wording

I will change these the banner to the group who has the most Group Points every Friday to display until the following week. 

How will the points be displayed? In the book, points were displayed with giant hourglasses that were filled with precious stones of the house color. My point system will be displayed proudly on a poster I plan to make soon! This poster will be displayed where students can see it as they walk in the classroom (to get the added effect, OH LOOK WE'RE IN THE LEAD or WHO LOST ALL THOSE POINTS!)

The most difficult part is how to award points fairly? 

Right now, I have the following organized and prepared to use

EARNED POINTS

1. When I do a homework check, every student who turns in their homework on the day it is due, will earn their group 5 Points. 

2. When I give a test, I will average the students scores in each group and award the group 2 times the averaged score of the test (rounded up). 

3. When I give a quiz, I will average the students scores in each group and award the group the average score of the quiz (rounded up).

LOSE POINTS

1. If I send a student to the office, his/her group will lose 20 points. 

2. If a student is late to class, they will recieve a tardy and lost 10 points from their group.

 

3. If a student is given a verbal warning, they also lose 10 points from their group. 

These are what I have so far, If you have more ideas let me know in the comments. 

At the end of the six weeks, the group with the most points recieves a "Group Code." The group code is a mystery and there are only 6 in existance. Once the class has been informed they are the winner for the six weeks, I will have them vote for their award, which is a MYSTERY, but are VERY nice rewards (Still thinking about it!) 

If you have any suggestions, Please leave a comment below! 

Favorite Things #3: QR Codes

I have found an idea that I hope works for the future of my classroom management, QR Codes. I have taken the advice of several pinners on Pinterest and made reward tickets that can only be read with a QR reader. This way I can keep tract of the rewards I am giving and the students will not know what they earned.

The rewards I've made tickets for so far are ....

1. A pencil in your time of need. No penalty on your participation grade.
2. An Extra Restroom/Locker Pass
3. Candy Rewards (1 piece and 2 piece)
4. Extra Credit on My Rigorous Assessments ( 3 pts on Quizzes and 5 pts on Test)

Here are my reward tickets....

The student will choose one of the reward tickets (which will be lamenated!) and I will scan the code with my iPad and then I will give the student the reward. 

You can make QR codes for free and I love using them to randomly give out rewards and point values in games. Here is the website in which you can make QR Codes here.

My Top 10 Hates about Mathematics - #7 - #6

This is a continuous series! You can see the first post here. 

#7 - Textbooks 

I hate textbooks! Why! 

1. They are BIG! 

2. They are BULKY! 

3. They are HEAVY! 

4. Some are not made to the best quality! 

5. The REAL reason why I hate them ... They provide enough problem sets, but NOT enough examples. (At least our textbooks and ALL of my college textbooks.) 

#6 - Trigonometry

Okay now it is my first concept I dislike!  I understand the concept, I understand the process, and I am blessed with identity charts. What do I hate about "Trig". Let's consider the following ... 

Let's suppose Q equals pi/2.    

Well using my table it tells me the answers is 1! Easy enough, BUT pretend I am a naive high school student to lazy to look up my chart that I carelessly "forgot" to write down....

......and I use my calculator. I type in sin(pi/2) just like the teacher told me to and press enter. 

The answer! Sin(pi/2)=0.027.... Next, problem! Sadly, there is a problem! Do you see that little DEG in the corner? No! Nor did the student! Why do I hate trig? You have to remember to do one of the smallest calculator Switch-a-Roos know to humankind! Change it to radian mode! 

Once you change the calculator's mode .... 

You get the correct answer! Do you see why I hate Trig? 

Pinterest Creation #1: Phone Jail

I got this idea from this pin on Pinterest, Phone Jail.

What do you need? 

1. a container - DOLLAR TREE

2. electrical tape - DOLLAR TREE

3. adhesive letters (phone jail) - DOLLAR TREE

4. scissors - ON HAND

5. sharpie -ON HAND

Estimated Cost: $3.00

Step 1: Gather your materials. 

Step 2: Put a band of electrical tape around the top and bottom of your container. 

Step 3: Put strips of electrical tape vertically all around the container.  

Step 4: Place your letters on the container. This can be done anyway you see fit. I had to color my letters with the sharpie. 

If you are like me, phones are the bane of civilization! So, now when I get one I will take it and put in my nifty new phone jail!

 

 

Favorite Things # 2: The Dollar Tree

Admit it, you love the dollar tree as much as the next person and I am not an exception! Why do I love the dollar tree? Well, can I be blunt? EVERYTHING IS A DOLLAR! Such things are a rare treat in this world. Really what brings me back is I can preform pins from Pinterest and my brain without paying to much for them. 

  

Mini shopping spree .... I have 8 dollars in my wallet, right now! So what will I make using the thing I bought? 

Here is what I bought .... a Mini Trash Can, a pack of Stress Balls, two packs of Foam Letters, a pack of Activity Pads, rolls of Electrical Tape, and a storage container. I know you've only counted 7 items, I also bought a pack of filler paper to donate to the locate school supply for students who may need the extra help to buy school supplies. 

I bought each of the following items because of pins I want to create or ideas from my brain or others brains.

The Dollar Tree can turn your ideas into reality! Its cheap and you can stretch your teacher dollars further! 

My Top 10 Hates about MATHEMATICS - #10 - #8

My mentor once said, " No one will like history as much as me." My friend said, " No one will like your subject more than you." So, the same saying said different ways. It's true ... I love mathematics! But I do have a few things I dislike about it and I will always dislike about it. Here is my top 10 hates about mathematics!

#10 - Calculators - The bane of the mathematics classroom is the calculator. I have to admit it, I once was dependent on the bane of civilization. Societies have gone thousands of years of doing math without the calculator. When did this horrible invention start taking over the way teachers and students do math today? in my research of this question, I found this nifty article, The Role Calculators have in Mathematical Education. It is a little dated, but it tells you all the myths and rebuttals to EVERYTHING I hate about calculators. However, it is out-dated and the myths have became reality. Check out this myth.... 

Myth #1: Calculators are a crutch! Students use them because they can't compute answers without them! They can not even start the problem without the silly machine and once you take it away from them, they instantly become .... Lack of better words.... Dumb! 

Which is actually brings up the funniest myth of them all.

The calculator started becoming a crutch in the year ... 1985! Where are you Doc Brown! 

#9 - Multiplication Tricks - I was taught this by ALL of my students! There is two tricks that's they teach students today to be able to multiply two two or more digit numbers. I must say I am a fan of the old way of multiplying 115 times 12.

But the new way comes in twos - Lattice Method and Line Method. (The tricks) 

The Lattice Method.... 

Okay ... Real world check. "Tom, what is 115 times 12? Quickly!" Reality check! Pssst.... 

The next method is even worst (I had to go research how to do it properly!) 

The Line Method....

To make life easier, suppose we had 25 times 12, 

Once again .... "Tom, what is 25 times 12? Quickly!" Reality check! 

#8 - The American Measurements - This includes the inch, foot, yard, mile, cup, pint, quart, and gallon. How many nations use these measurements? Guess! You can count them on one hand! FOUR! The United States, The United Kingdom, Liberia, and Myanmar (where in the world is Myanmar?)

Geography 101: Myanmar is also known as Burma, which is what I know it as, Cool huh...

This is why I hate the Imperial method! We are are one world, we need one measurement system! P.S. try converting inches to centimeter (rather having students do it!) YIKES! 

Budget for Tomorrow: Budget 1

Admit it, as teachers, we have to budget accordingly. Most of us get paid once a month and have to keep constant tabs on our funding! This month is the trial month. Because there is a lot I don't know and I dread finding out to be honest. I borrowed this from the blog, Live Half Full.

                                

10 steps, easy enough! The first thing I need to do this month is gather all my documents in one place and determine where my money goes. In turn, I will also determine my deadlines. (Which I know in my brain, but I'll write them down!) I will start doing this now. Any advice you can give me, let me know, in the comments.

The Little People

One can appreciate the students we have once one has tried to teach a group of kids who (you do not have the degree to teach.) in my case, I got to teach kindergarten to second grade. What a different experience. I can not say I really enjoy the little little people! It is a whole new world when it comes to little little people. They are fascinated by the oddest things like a green markers and paper airplanes! I have little patience for the immaturity of high school students ... So the young minds of 5 - 7 year olds. Save me, please!! They also lose interest very very very very very very very very very very very quickly!! Even my amazing Moses and the burning bush picture ....

           

... Didn't interest them. Oh well. Little people ... are ... a ... whole ... different ... BALLPARK! I like high schoolers! Enough said! 

The Problem Fix: Hoarding

As I said in my post, Teacher Vice 1: Hoarding, teachers like to hoard. I found a friend who has enlighten me that hoarding is unnecessary and I am going to enlighten you on how I started to fix the problem.

1) The first thing I had to decide is if I could downgrade my furniture. Currently, I have a giant desk that houses 5 years of teacher junk, my 24'' flatscreen TV, my X-Box 360, my Wii, and Zeus knows what else. I have a twin size bed, which includes mattress, box spring, and metal toe smasher. I have a set of drawers (I need to learn to use!) and finally THREE bookshelves FULL of books, movies, and video games. So, downgrading! Ultimately, the only thing I could downgrade is the GIANT desk (I don't even remember getting. It just appeared one day.) At the Dollar General, I found a small, but functional 2 tier shelf. I has all the space I need to put my X-Box and TV.

2) Remember how I said my desk has 5 years of teacher junk? What is teacher junk? Well to me it includes the massive amount of materials I obtained in college, student teaching, and my first year of teaching. My friend (whose blog can be found here) enlightened me about teacher junk. If I haven't used it in several years throw it away, if I use it e-file it and throw it away, and e-file everything and don't keep a filing cabinet full of papers you (I) won't ever look at again. So the spiral bound copy of "Regulations Establishing Standards for Accrediting Public Schools in Virginia" that I received when I student taught and have hoarded for nearly two years is going to the waste bin, because who needs it and it is online if I ever need it (and when would I?)

3) Downgrading the number of clothes I own. We all have that shirt we do not wear. Why keep it? I am going through all my clothes and sorting them, TEACHER CLOTHES, Civilian Clothes, Donations, and throw away.

My problem starts at home. If I clean up my act at home, I will be able to clean up my hoarding in my classroom. I will keep you posted. Thanks goes to M of M* Print for aiding me in my problem of hoarding teacher stuff. Her blog can be seen here.

True/False: Students always bring their materials to class?

False! We all have that one student would drives us up the walk because they never bring a pencil, pen, paper, or textbook to class. Admit it, you got frustrated because Tommy did not bring a pencil 12 days in a row. I always have a pencil to spare for students, but I get rather annoyed when they begin to abuse my "generosity."

                         

I always have something there, behind my ear! Anyway, I did finally give up the pencil war before the end of the year, my first year I supplied my students with 9 boxes of 24 count pencils, 2 boxes of 144 count pencils, and 9 boxes of 36 count pens. that is over 800 pencils and pens. I must also say this does not include the large box of pencils and pens my dad collect for me over the years while working as a janitor at a local high school. So, in all, i supplied over 1500 pencils and pens this year alone! That is CRAZY!!!! So, this battle ... can it be won? Everyday students "forget" to bring their pencils, pens, paper, binders, textbooks, calculators, and homework to class and we do the single most stupid thing! we either give it to them or allow them to go get it with little to no consequence, thus creating a more epic problem later! I have thought long and hard about this problem and how I hope to fix it! (or crawl in a corner and cry cause it failed!) so what do I plan to do? 

1) In the syllabus, I am going to put the following statement in the grading section. " Each student is expected to bring to class everyday the following materials -- a pencil, their binder filled with loose-leaf paper, their textbook, their textbook and their calculator. If they do not bring each of their materials daily, 3 points will be deducted from their daily homework grade for EACH item they do not bring to class.

Altogether that is five items and if they do not bring them they will loose 15 points from their homework grade. Which could result in a very low grade if it is an assignment, I decide to grade for correctness. 

2) If a student does not bring their homework to class or does not do their homework, I will make them fill out the "Why did I not do my homework?" report. Since I value my time in the classroom, I will check student homework as they walk into the door. This way I can do 2 things, take roll quickly and check to see if they did their homework. If they did not do their homework, I will give them the  "Why did I not do my homework?" report, which I will take up and put in their student file. 

3) I will use an idea my mentor teacher taught me, if I loan out a pencil it will have a little duct tape flag at the top, so I can keep track of each pencil i have loaned out. also the idea has surfaced on Pinterest. 

                              

how do you coax your students to bring their materials? Suggestions?

Teacher Vice 1: Hoarding

Alright let's all agree teachers have a single common problem, we hoard. I don't care of you are the most organized teacher in the world, you still have a stash of hoarded materials squirrel away somewhere. We all collect ideas from other teachers, the beginning of the school year is like Christmas to teacher we have to buy the cheap school supplies, and we keep everything (student work to administration paperwork). But we can hoard our materials in a organized matter (at least some). My first vice is I am a compulsive collector. I collect everything from ald text books to the coolest pencils and much much more. I fall under the category of a hoarder. What ever you think a hoarder is keep it to your self, but to me I find security of having a hoard of stuff around me. Sadly, I have to change my ways! Why must I you ask? Well look at the following picture.

                                   

 


Do you see I have a problem? If I am like this at home, can you imagine my classroom. I thrive in disorganization, but it stresses me out and forces me to freak out at the wrong times (can not find a test. Noooooooooooooooooooo! Worst feeling ever!). I have 5 step program, I am going to follow to clean up my dirty little problem.

1) Categorize all my books, video games, and movies
2) Sort my clothes into teacher clothes, civilian clothes, and Salvation Army clothes
3) Bag up all trash. The only papers I will keep are important papers like bills, official school papers, and awards.
4) Put all the money I find in a jar and count it as I go.
5) Organize book cases, drawers, closet, and storage bins in an organized manner.

How do you keep from hoarding? How do you keep organized? Comments will be appreciated.

Favorite Things #1: Thrift Stores

Okay, I cannot take full credit for this post! I have a friend and colleague that started posting her favorite things, so I too jumped on the bandwagon! Check her blog out as well, M* Print.

As with her favorite things, will cost no more than $20 and most are free.

Well I like to get a GREAT DEAL. Ever once in a while, I will go to the local thrift stores and go through their book section. Most, if not all, thrift stores have a cheap book section. Now I do not always find a book that I can use or want, but some times I get lucky and find the deal of the week or month.

Today is Friday, June 21, 2013 and I went to the local thrift store in Chilhowie. It is a Goodwill (I am currently humming the song, you know that song). If you are lucky, you can find a lot of good deals. This week anything that had a red dot on it was half off. So, I found a Trig book that cost 1.47 and it was red dot special, 77 cents! Today was a good day for thrift shopping in the book section.

We as teachers should have a small collection of books at our disposable to give students some thing to read once they are finished with their assignments or extra resources for when the internet, supplied books and materials, and other teachers can no longer provide examples and problems.

ESTIMATED COST: $0.45 to $1.47 at my local Goodwill

Adventures of a Math Teacher

This past week I got to enjoy a well deserved trip to Orlando, Florida. I have in theory tried to go to Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure again since the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but with the marriage of two friends, countless hours of planning with other friends and then getting mildly disappointed because the friends backed out. FINALLY, I got to go! I did highly enjoy the trip and I just want to share a few pictures with you.

I really enjoyed the Butterbeer. It was a mixture of Cream Soda and a really frothy butterscotch-flavored whip cream. I enjoyed frozen and non-frozen cup of each. I got a really nice cup, too. 

There is something satisfying about seeing a castle that has been a major part of my childhood for over a decade. The castle was amazing and I wish I could have climbed the rock and sit near the castle.

Of course you can not have Hogwarts without Hogsmeade. It had all kinds of shops and eateries for one to enjoy the full experience of the wizarding world. 

The final location that needed the to be shown is non other than Hagrid's Hut. IT WAS AWESOME! Fang was barking at me! 

Budgeting for Tomorrow

For the past two years, I've taken off on a night trip to Charlotte, NC/SC (it is on the line of the two states) in October. In October, Carowinds holds its yearly Scarowinds. They turn the theme park into a haunted play land for wimps like me (ask my friends Steven, Shy, and Jonathan, I am a wimp). However, it has grown to be repetitive and no new haunted houses from year to year. So this year I've set my sights a little bigger. As a teacher, I am given three personal days! I am going to use two of them for this trip in October. Why would I waste your time to tell you this? Well our students have three problems with their education:

One) we give them a calculator
Two) we force them to take high stakes tests
Three) we don't teacher consumer mathematics

Since we don't teach consumer mathematics any more I am going to write my students a guide to consumer mathematics that I hope to give to them as seniors. The first topic is budgeting. Since my trip is in three months I can sample three budgeting techniques. Here is the criteria I will follow:

One) On the first day of July, August, and September I will explain the technique I am planning to use for the month.
Two) On the fifteenth of each month, I will give a mid-month review. This review will tell you where I am in my budgeting for my trip and how I feel about the technique.
Three) On the last day of each month, I will detail the pros and cons of the technique and give my full blown opinion of the technique

Now you should wonder...
Where am I going?
Who am I going with?
How much money do I need to save?
When am I leaving?

All answers are simple, No Idea!

Okay, do have answers, but you'll have to wait!  

Relating Math to the World

The plague of today's math classroom is the idea that a "word problem" is a "real-world application." Students are given a problem and then find some formula or method that will enable them to "solve" the problem. Do we see the problem with what I just said? Applications today are full of pointless and meaningless problems, Sally has 8 apples and she sales them for $0.82. If Sally only sold 6 apples, how much did she make? This problem is a pointless and meaningless! Pointless because it does it is simple multiplication. It also does not introduce the new big thing, rigor! We as educators are expected to teach students how complete basic problems with increased rigor! Our apple problem does not support the new challenges that are expected of our students. This problem is meaningless! It has no true real world application and it is merely a problem we introduce to allow to students to use simple multiplication. So, how do we increase rigor and make it more of a real-world application?

We need to look at two factors:
1) Find an article that details some thing to do with the problem you are creating.
2) Ask yourself three questions
     A) Does the article have mathematical significants?
     B) Can you formulate a question from the information given?
     C) Is your problem multi-step and solvable?

I am going to use this article I found from www.nytimes.com, Cheetahs’ Secret Weapon: A Tight Turning Radius.

Does the article have mathematical significants? This article talks about the speed of cheetahs.

Can you formulate a question from the information given? Yes, let's make one.

The average speed of a cheetah is 33 mph with a standard deviation of 8 mph. What percentage of cheetahs can run faster than 58 percent?

Is your problem multi-step and solvable? Yes and yes!

In conclusion, the first thing you need to see is we need to make problems that have meaning to the student. This can be done by determine the likes and dislikes of the student. We also need to make the problem truly have some point to today's world. If we find an article that has mathematical significance and relate it to the concepts we are teaching, then the student will begin to understand math is a governing force in today's world.

Fatal Flaws

The problem with today's youth in my experience is we five them to much! We give them the knowledge they need and then more! We leave no room for personal growth. A day did not go by when a student did not come to me and asking me "Mr. Powers I can't do this!" I would always respond "Did you try?" And they would nearly always respond "No." We are ultimately creating a generation who cannot think for itself! The funny thing is it is not entirely our fault! There is an EOC test in which we are expected to give the students the knowledge to pass! In a way, this test determines if we are good or bad teachers. A teacher can give his or her passion and love for the subject everything they got and daily give 200% to their students and still only obtain 60% pass rate on the EOC. We are hindering our students by taking away creativity and problem solving from our students. In which hinders them in the future, who wants to hire an uncreative "I don't know how to do it" person. Let's consider creativity and problem solving as two entities.

Creativity is the ability to express oneself in a way that is unique. This includes the ability to write, draw, and create ideas that express ones individuality. With the EOC, activities I did when I was in grade school can not be done effectively and the learning process is slowly hindered. In my non-EOC class I ran into several problems in which the students did not want to create a creative poster for thier project. It could've been the lack of interest or pure laziness, but we as teachers know our students and these students could not do the math unless they had STEP-by-STEP instruction. It wasn't their laziness that prevented the to create an appeasing poster, it was the ingrainment of years of lost creativity!

What scares me more than lack of creativity is the lack of problem solving. Students are presented a problem in which has many solutions. However, they failed to find even one solution because they could not derive the four steps to problem solving. As they traveled through the grades they are forces to solve problems by the methods of books and teachers who have found that they have found the next best thing (I.E. LATTICE MULTIPLICATION AND MULTIPLY WITH LINES.) what happen to old fashion letting the student figure it out? Tricks and methods are good and necessary, but there needs to be some form of problem solving going on for something to truely stick in the minds of our students.

Implementing creativity and problem solving is hard, I know! I hope as I get into this blog I will be able to show you how I implement both, even in the slightest.

Introductions to J.P.

My name is Jonathan Powers. I am from a small town located in the heart of Southwest Virginia. I currently hold a Bachelors of Science in mathematics through a small liberal arts college known as Emory and Henry. I currently teach mathematics at the high school level and I overly enjoy every moment of my teaching career. I have three dogs whose company I enjoy daily and a loving and supporting family who enjoys my extreme ideas and constant pursuit of mathematical knowledge.

I am a weird math person! I enjoy reading and writing ( even though I don't care to much about grammar and spelling). We as humanity are only as good as our words. We may come up with amazing mathematics and concepts, but with words we can express our knowledge to the world. So, in my classroom, my students write and express the concepts I have taught the in their own words for two major reasons: a way for me to check for their understanding and a way for me to use the ability of the students to express concepts in a way that all students will understand. Concluding, I have decided since I make my students write. I have decided that I too should begin to write and express my ideas to the world.

I got this idea from a really close friend of mine. She, too, harps the idea students should write (she's an English teacher) but does not write enough herself. I invoke her to force me to do this on a regular basis. I desire to transform my ideas into reality and they start with motivation and the friends, I hope I have!