Memorization

I've written quite a few times about bell ringers in my classroom. Generally, the smartest student in the group does the bell ringer while the rest of them stare blankly in the general direction of the paper.

In the past couple weeks I have tried something new.

It's called the perfect challenge and it tests students on perfect squares 1-20.



I did not create this file but it is an Excel file with seven tabs. Each tab is two half sheets with numbers 1-20 squared on it and they are in a different order on each tab. I added the eighth tab as a chart of how I record my students progress. We start with a goal of the whole class scoring 100% in under two minutes with a calculator. We work down to eventually the whole class scoring 100% in under one minute without a calculator.

The students have liked it a lot better. Everyone is participating, everyone is engaged, and everyone is working on memorization. Also, since I am timing it, the whole process takes less than 3 minutes compared to 10-12 minutes with the bell ringers. We trade and grade with a student reading the answers out loud. I collect them and record the percent of students who made a 100% and that what goes into my chart. Once they reach 100%, we move to the next category. A lot of students have started competing with themselves, trying to beat their own time.

I've liked it so much that I've decided to do perfect cubes next. There is just something about an entire class flipping their papers at the same time and eagerly writing that a math teacher comes to love.

And of course, being the all or nothing person I am, I've already been thinking about doing this all next year instead of bell ringers.

What are some other things high school students should memorize?

• Perfect squares
• Perfect cubes
• Decimal equivalents of fractions
• Common formulas
• Reducing fractions
• LCM and GCF

This is all I've come up with so far and I would love your input!

Interventions

One of my huge weaknesses as a teacher is letting students fall the crack. I'm going to be real vulnerable here and say that my default feeling is that students who don't try or don't show up or do nothing in my class, do not deserve my extra help.

That sounds bad. But part of that comes from the fact that I don't know what to do for those students. I feel like students who consistently try and show up don't fail. So that leaves me with those who don't try and so I solely place the blame on them. It's easy that way, right?


I have two  students who have been failing my class all year. I keep feeling shocked that no one has done anything about this without ever putting the responsibility on my own shoulders. I've talked to both students' parents one time during this year. Somehow I've convinced myself that that is enough.

I always give students the opportunity to come in and retake tests and very few do. And the ones who need to do it never do. They don't come in for help, they don't come in and retake tests, they don't ask questions in class, and therefore I don't know what to do for them.

Obviously you will fail if you don't try. I have to make myself see beyond that and question why they aren't trying.

What kind of interventions can I do in the classroom?

One elementary teacher mentioned working with a small group within the class that are not understanding. Which I don't do. I feel that if they are too lazy to even ask for help, why would I devote my time to them? Bad, I know.

Another teacher mentioned preferential seating which I don't really do either. I rotate each group to a new group of tables each quarter and that's about it.

How do you get past feeling like they don't deserve help?

What do you do for students who put in no effort? What do you do for students who can't even begin problems or are missing middle school skills like reducing fractions or knowing factors of a number?

What interventions do you use in your classroom?

Update: I asked some more teachers about interventions and here's what they said:

• Parent Contact (early and often)
• Recommend for tutoring (narrow down specific areas that need to be worked on) 
• One-on-one
• Small groups
• Modified tests/quizzes
• Test/quiz retakes
• Break students into groups, send group to library to work and work with struggling learners in classroom

I feel like I need a form to fill out to document student behaviors and easy interventions. Does anyone have something simple? Our old forms are pages and pages long. I'd like something easy to use and easy to read that shows a lot of information at once.

Even More Classroom Routines

Somehow this idea turned into three posts...

Make Up Quiz/Test: If students are absent on the day of a quiz/test, I write their name on the board under the heading Quiz/Test. Then I check the attendance to see if their absence if excused or unexcused. If unexcused, I erase their name and give them a 0 (school policy). If excused, I take their quiz/test and write their name on it and hang it on a clipboard. I remind them the next day to come in and make it up. If they don't come in that day, I put a 0 in the grade book. If they never come in, then the 0 stays and I don't have to worry about a missing grade. Some students see it and then it reminds them that they have something to make up.

Hot Dog Style: I only grade quizzes and tests and I have a green basket that all papers are turned in to. The papers are folded vertically with the white side showing and their name written on the outside. Then I can grade it and write their score on the inside. A student can pass out papers to the class while respecting everyone's privacy.

Seating Arrangements: This year I'm attempting survivor games, which is a year long competition among groups of students. I picked the groups at the beginning of the year and they have stayed together all year. Not my best idea I suppose. Each quarter I rotate the students to a new group of desks. Within those four desks, they get to choose where they sit.

Questioning: I feel like this is one of my best teaching strategies. My most used are: "How do you know?" "Because why?" "Are you sure?" "Can you explain?" "Can you be more specific? "Can you give me an example?" "What would happen if..." "What is the easiest part of...?" "What is the hardest part of...?" "What do you think?"

Some questions that I need to use more often: "Can you explain that in another way?" "Can you draw a diagram that explains this idea?" "What is a common error a student might make on this concept?"

What are some of your favorite classroom routines?

Parent Teacher Conference

What do you do for Parent Teacher Conference?

I print out a progress report for the quarter and highlight any low grades and absences. At the bottom, I write negative behaviors and positive behaviors, making sure I never have more negatives than positives.

I should have written recommendations at the bottom but I just said it out loud instead.

I also make a sign up sheet and ask parents how I can contact them, telling them I prefer email.

Out of 53 students, I had 7 parents show up and I've never had more than 10 show up. And usually it's the parents of kids that have good grades. Imagine that.

Does your school require you to do certain things?

More Classroom Routines

I thought of some more routines and decided to write a new post instead of adding to the last one.

End of Day Routine: It probably seems strange to start with the end of day but I am not a morning person so I don't do as much in the morning. At the end of each day, I clean off my desk so it's clutter free and organized. Random papers on hung on these clipboards so that they all are in a safe place that is NOT my desk.

I copy bell ringers and have them in their page protector and laid out on each desk for the next morning. I set up my powerpoint or notebook file on the computer/SMART board and turn the monitor only off so that it's ready for the next day. I change the date, turn off my digital clock, and erase all boards. I make any copies I need and they go into the correct bin for each class period.

 If there are any activities I need, I have them set out and organized to start right away. Before I leave, I check my school mail box and put away accordingly.

Beginning of Day Routine: I get to school right on time so that means I walk in, turn on the monitor, turn on the Smart board, get my copies for each day, and start my laptop up to take attendance and check my e-mail. I turn the clock on and I'm ready to go, standing at the door to greet my students.

Plan Period: My plan period is second period which means I struggle through first hour and then use second hour to get prepared for the rest of the day/week. But since I make copies after school, I can better use my time to plan. First of all, I take this time to use the bathroom and check my school mailbox as well as email. On Monday plan, I print out the bell ringers I need for the week and have them ready to go. I email my lesson plans to my principal and use that as a guide to see what I need to copy, create, or put together. It's very common for me to internal sub for an absent teacher. That means I bring their students to my room and give them their assignment and I sit and work at my desk. Sucks when I need to leave my room, nice when I get my paycheck. :) I've already wrote about how I plan a lesson, but basically, I look and see what I have, what the book has, and what I've saved online, and do a mash-up of whatever seems easy to understand. Always work out an answer key before copying ANYTHING. I don't know how many times I've had to learn this lesson. Almost every time, I find something I need to fix or want to change. It's always better to be prepared.

Saving My Work: I carry a Western Digital Passport External Hard Drive back and forth  to school where I have everything I've ever done in my five years of teaching. I've tried box.com and Sugar Sync and other programs but if the Internet or server goes down at school, I can't access any of those. So this works best for me. I save things by school year, 2013-2014, then create a folder for each prep that I have. Within those, I create a folder for each unit. Everything I use in a unit is labeled with the prep, the unit, the day within the unit, and the concept.

For example, A2 3 D0 Glossary means Algebra II, Unit 3, Day 0, Glossary. Next comes A2 3 D1 Polynomial Graph Investigation- Algebra II Unit 3, Day 1, concept.

This way I know the difference between what I actually used and stuff I just saved.

I like to know exactly where things are.

Desks: Last year my biggest class was 28 and this year my biggest was 14. The first thing I did over the summer was remove a bunch of desks! I kept 16 and grouped them into fours in a way that no one's back is to the SMART board. This is the best picture I have but I no longer use the bags zip tied to the desk. This is easy to walk around and between, to monitor students, to pass out papers, and to give students nearby resources.

Kleenex: As a high school student, all my teachers only had toilet paper and I was so embarrassed at how red and raw my nose would get. I swore I would always have Kleenex in my classroom. I keep one on my desks that mostly for me and one for students to use. I probably don't even go through 10-12 boxes a year so it's not a big deal for me to buy them myself. I also only use an electric pencil sharpener.

Birthday Candy: At the beginning of the year I give students a calendar that they pass around and write their name, birthday, and favorite candy. I give it to them on their birthday and summer birthday's get theirs on the last day of school. This is something I have always done and will continue to do. I really feel that some students get no presents or specialness on their birthday so I do what I can to show them they are noticed and their birthday matters to me. It costs me $50-60 a year since I only have 50ish students so it's not bad.

Survivor Games: If you noticed in my last post, I mentioned this game a lot. This is the tracking sheet I use. The students picked their own team names and at the top are the categories I'm recoding. I shaded the rows so I can easily see the changes between class periods. I just mark check marks if they did it and x's if they didn't. MMM is Mental Math Monday and I write down their table total. For bell ringers, I record how many they get right through the week. At the end of the week, I put a smiley face next to the group that won that category and over to the left, I write down the number of game pieces they receive. I write the week's date in the top left white corner.



And that's all I have to say about that!