A Girl Has Many Names

August 9, 2017

A girl has many names. (Reference: GOT) Mom, wife, daughter, TOSA (instructional coach), mathematician, runner, traveler, wine enthusiast, etc.

I learned last year, a TOSA has many names too. Textbook distributor, bag stuffer, event organizer, website maker, PD planner, facilitator, etc. I just got another that I wasn't expecting,

                                                 Co-Teacher

My position is a full time TOSA. However, due to the needs of my district, I have been asked to teach one class per day at one of my 5 high schools.

Today was my first day BACK in the classroom! It is intimidating going into the classroom after being a TOSA (or in my case, while being a TOSA). It feels like the expectation is extremely high. In addition, the course I am teaching is a brand new, SUPER rigorous course.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

So where do we as teachers turn for inspiration? 

TWITTER!

First I found a game from Marilyn Burns (@mburnsmath) 1-10 Cards Investigation where students are challenged to order cards so flipping them over in a particular pattern will put them back in order. Watching her video clarifies the directions immensely, but the idea is you flip over the first card, (Ace) then put the second on the bottom of the pile. Then flip over the third (two) and put the forth on the bottom of the pile. This continues on, Ace-King. Seems easy right?

Well 15 minutes later, my husband and I were still hooked and enjoyed how simple and yet complex it turned out to be. Touche Ms. Burns!

I also knew I needed to sort my students into groups of 4, and I wanted to see how much they remembered (or didn't)! So I created a basic sorting activity (answers were the numbers 1-9<--so creative) with standards from previous courses. The prerequisite for this new course is a C in Integrated Math 3 (or Algebra 2). I gave them exponent rules, polynomial degrees, multiplying trinomials and identifying constants, and using the area of a circle to find the radius. All VERY simple tasks that are forgotten year to year, and this group was no different. BUT, they worked together, saw some patterns and found their seats. On the back of the cards I had them write their name, previous course (so I could check their prerequisites without using our grade book system, goals in life (these are seniors, that's all they want to talk about) and something interesting about them). We didn't spend too long sorting, 15 minutes tops.


I knew I wanted to do Marilyn Burn's card activity, but that was a good closer, so I went back to twitter for more inspiration.

Among the #firstday tweets was a gem from Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) What Do You Do on the First Day of School? where he shared his Personality Coordinates Icebreaker. It was great! Students are asked to put their names on a coordinate first (order is vital), then they are asked to label the axes to make their graph true. They are not allowed to use physical attributes (everyone's first go to). Not only was this incredibly fun (creative thinking, silly conversations, frustrations over placement of names) it also helped me uncover their understanding of coordinates and their relation to the axes scale. I had students only focus on the bottom two points, some only focused on the x-axis, and some wanted to make the x-axis categorical. We shared some ideas, and kept working until everyone found SOMETHING they had in common (and didn't for that matter). By the end, I was able to draw a graph based on love of puppies and love of Disneyland and wherever I put a coordinate, they could describe it! (#WIN)

Finally, I ended with the card activity. Side note, I told students we only had 15 minutes left and one said "Already? That went so fast!". Can I share that my goal as I teacher is to give this feeling to students everyday? I set the bar a little high on day one... :)

Anyway, I showed them her trick and handed a deck of cards to each table. Each team got their suit and started working. This task is not difficult, but it requires problem solving strategies. I would almost guarantee you won't get it on your first try. So I walked around and watched them try, and get stuck after 7. It was great! When I asked them to clean up, they didn't want to.

Did I hook them? I sure hope so! Their homework was to figure out the card trick. Tomorrow we will be debriefing problem solving strategies as a takeaway, and I do not plan on giving them the answer. <Maniacal Laugh> Why do you ask? Because they will know when they have the right answer.