As many of the students in the classes I usually teach are students who spend considerable time trying to avoid doing math (or any kind of work, really!), it was an interesting experience to be surrounded by people who actually wanted to do math.  It made me realise how important these sorts of opportunities are for some students:  We seem to spend so much time supporting the academically "needy" students that there is little time for enrichment/extension.  And when we celebrate success, it is usually athletic or musical/artistic.  

Tonight's introduction offered a neat vibe in my classroom.  I'm looking forward to the next two sessions.

In an effort to manage the tangle of cords and incorrectly plugged-in (or not plugged in at all!) devices in my room, I decided to name and label each laptop, tablet, etc I have (6 in total now, about 3 working consistently)... and it's working!  Not once since I've implemented the new system have I found a stray laptop or missing cord in my room!

Each classroom device in my room now has a prominent, red name tag attached to it.  The corresponding charger is assigned to a dedicated outlet (several of the outlets in my room aren't working right now... but that's a whole other story), and the outlet and charger are labeled with the same name as the name tag.

Attended Making the Most of an iPad in the Elementary Classroom with Susan Watt & Trish online through OTF Connects this evening.  I've shared a few key takeaways below; some are directly from the workshop, whereas others were inspired by ideas from this evening's session.

The session began with an overview of the iPad as a specific tool as opposed to a digital alternative to a paper product -- what can be created and consumed on an iPad is qualitatively different from a paper and pencil task and/or a text book.  Further, we need not teach students how to use the tool (they can figure this out on their own faster than we can!) but rather we need to give them a purpose for using the device that aligns with our learning goals.

Additionally, we should remember to teach digital citizenship:  For example, a first lesson might include using the camera to take a photo of and introduce a partner in the class... Students are taught to ask, "May I take your picture?" Once permission has been granted by the 'model', and the photo taken, the 'photographer' shows the model the photo and asks, "May I use this photo for...?" (If done in the late junior or intermediate grades, students can then share this learning with younger learning buddies.)
 

Another comment during the workshop was that some creations can happen "in the moment", and we can share and teach from them, and then delete them afterwards; no need to archive everything!  (This changes the way we do business in classrooms... some of us -- both teachers and parents -- will have trouble with this... not everything students make and do needs to be sent home!)

Done, and desperate for chocolate to sustain myself after four consecutive days of 5 hours of sleep per night, I scavenged the kitchen for treats.  The last of the seven boxes of "pot-of-gold" (definitely not my most favourite chocolate, but it'll do in a pinch, and there's plenty of it around Christmas time if you're a teacher!!!) had long been consumed, and the cupboards were bare.

I was beginning to panic.  

Suddenly, I remembered a small box of three little Lindt chocolate bears one of my students had given me along with a Starbucks card.  The latter was in my wallet; the former was tucked away with a bag of toys in my closet, intended for a set of 7-year-old triplets I know -- we'd intended to get together with them over the holidays, but schedules did not align, and the visit had never come to fruition, so I'd buried the bag at the back of my closet somewhere until we had a chance to meet up later on some time.

So to my closet I went, dove into the back corner, and started ransacking.

I managed to reserve a little more dignity for the other two Lindt bears, and consumed them alongside some rye toast and peach jam.  A glass of milk rounded out the post dinner, end-of-report card celebratory snack.

For the record, here are some of the things I'd do with those 40 hours if I had them back:

• read another chapter in the informative but dense Marian Small Math book for teachers I've been working my way through
  
• develop a more user-friendly assessment/reporting template for my classroom, that I would serve as both an assessment recording tool and an end-of-unit report to families in terms of how their child is doing in math
  
• teach myself Learn 360, Edmodo or some other online platform that enables more effective communication with students/families using technology
  
• make phone calls to several parents to touch base about how their child is doing in my class
  
• meet with families and students to report progress and next steps in person!!!
  

But I can't get 'em back.  The powers that be -- determined to engage teachers across the province in meaningless busywork -- stole them from me, and they're gone forever.  So all those things will have to wait.  

Pity, that.

From September to June, I am an apartment dweller.

My apartment is on the top floor of an 8-storey building, and overlooks Lake Ontario and the city skyline here in Toronto.

Usually, it's the colours I notice when I stand at the door to the balcony in the morning, ritualistically sipping my lemon water with chlorophyll... but the colour scheme in winter here on the lake becomes pretty monochromatic, and this morning, it was the movement along the shoreline which captivated me for so long, and which aided in my procrastination from working on report cards...

The first little bay was mostly frozen, but behind the island, the water rippled in the wind, and a little further down a spray of waves lapped gently up against the shore.  Between the first island and the shore, a cluster of ducks huddled together in the half-ice/half water, a flurry of wings occasionally disturbing the peace as one or more birds either joined the huddle or departed it to get on with the business of their ducky day.

Further out, the movement was more vigorous in the water, and I observed the waves pushing determinedly towards the shores out behind the landfill park.  Even the steady, silent city in the background had its moving accents: The blades of the large windmill downtown could be seen turning in the distance, a small plane flew overhead en route to CYTZ, and white puffs drifted silently from so many smokestacks, creating little white streams of "cloud" in front of the taller buildings behind.

The upper winds were relatively strong, too, and the real clouds overhead moved in large foreboding clusters across the grey winter skies.

Closer to home, a little brown dog is running along the snow-covered path, an enormous stick trailing from her mouth.  Her owner lags behind but catches up as Dawg drops her treasure and stops to sniff a nearby bush.  Even barren vegetation in winter offers a plethora of meaningful scent to the discerning canine!

I am drawn back into my apartment, and over to my desk, where my laptop sits calling to me amid stacks of neatly ordered piles of student work samples... "Report cards, Ms. Teschow... " I hear it calling gently... and then, a little louder and considerably more firmly:  "Come on, lady, you only have two hours before you have to get your kids, get started already!"

I harbour a strong dislike for Coke on a number of levels, and would most certainly not promote its consumption, so I was somewhat hesitant to post a giant photo of said product on my blog.  But when one of the Marias (herself a Coca-cola addict, let it be known!) sent me a pic of this "Vera Coke", how could I resist?! ;-P

Whereas my Grade 7 students have been working through our Patterning and Algebra Unit via a series of learning centers, my instructional coach and I cooked up a different plan for my Grade 8 class.

My Grade 8s, you see (or rather, some of their families), have not been quite as enthusiastic about my unconventional-yet-research-based approach to teaching and learning math as I was when I began this school year.  And rather than presuming positive intentions, and probing to find out more, some of said families went directly to the boss to complain -- they did not pass GO, they did not collect $200 (or information from their child's teacher/classroom) -- and so my success some areas has been more limited than in others.

However, Growing Success calls on us to develop and deliver "creative and judicious differentiation in instruction and assessment to meet the needs of all students" (page 2), and no less than 47 references are made in that document alone to "differentiation".  And besides, I've been teaching long enough to know that despite being a know-it-all, judgmental parent myself, parents actually don't always know better.

So -- despite considerable damage to my admittedly fragile ego -- I was not ready to throw in the towel just yet.  :)

I enlisted the support of our Board's instructional coach in developing a slightly modified and yet still differentiated approach for this next unit.  (I also demanded a little one:one tutoring and guidance from both my math genius girlfriend and a retired math professor friend of ours to review the relevant mathematical concepts, so that I had them down cold!) 

Rather than full-on math centers for the Grade 8 Patterning and Algebra Unit, we developed a series of lessons using a partnered learning approach, and integrating technology.

Assessment Informs Instruction

After writing a formative test on expressions, equations and variables that match the curriculum-linked learning goals we had set for the unit, and submitting a proposal for who might make a good learning partner for the next two weeks, students were partnered up (mostly with someone working at a similar level of mathematical understanding and demonstrated ability, and almost exclusively with someone they had elected to work with) and assigned a laptop from the semi-functioning computer cart for the subsequent 6-8 math periods to work through a series of patterning-related, online learning activities developed by the Ministry of Education in conjunction with OAME, Math Clips.

Precision Teaching 

As partners began working through the cluster of learning activities on linear growing patterns on the Math Clips website, my instructional coach and I were freed up to meet with individual and small groups of students to either teach mini-lessons on concepts that we had identified as gaps from the pre-assessment, or suggest extension activities and assign "stretch your thinking" problems to students we had identified as ready to move ahead in their learning.

Although a few of the students continue to struggle with the small group meeting/teaching format (some of them seem to be of the mindset that group work and teacher conferences are "primary" or babyish), many of the students were really demonstrating growth in their algebraic understanding once removed from the pressure of having to "perform" in front of a large group of their peers.  And because they were partnered with a "near partner", mathematically, for the CLIPS activities, most of them were really focused on and engaged in their work!

Differentiated Assessment

At the end of each of the two CLIPS activity clusters, students were given two options to demonstrate their learning:  At the end of the first cluster (CLIPS 2), students could either complete a series of problems from the math textbook, or they could sort and group a series of linear patterns expressed algebraically, graphically, descriptively and in a t-table and create a poster of their pattern groups.  The second activity (CLIPS 3) had students choosing to apply their knowledge and understand either through more mix and match practice, or by building, describing and photographing a series of geometric patterns.

Since students were completing their work at different times depending on when they finished each of the learning activities, there was never a giant stack of marking to do for the teacher.  My coach and I just marked a few assessments at a time as they came in, and provided feedback using the learning maps below:

Traditional vs. Differentiated Approach

Although a more traditional, full-class approach to teaching math is most certainly easier in terms of teacher workload (and I am planning to teach at least one of the next two math units in that fashion!), I am excited by the great learning leaps I see being made by some (though admittedly not yet all) previously struggling students in the class.

I am also appeased to see some of the more math-competent students beginning to rise to the challenge of extending their learning by engaging in some of the rich problems we had prepared for them to work through if and when they had completed the CLIPS learning activities expeditiously.

I'm participating in another OTF Connects online PD session this evening.  It's Part Three to a series I've been participating in, called "Working the Math Processes", and shares a variety of technology for learning.

Although I am still VERY new to using these in any concrete and comfortable capacity in my own classroom, I can see the potential for many of these.  Below, I've shared a few from the session:

Our session facilitator went on to talk about Google drive or docs or something, with equations, which sounded REALLY cool for math class... but I started to get glazed over at this point.  Too many options, and not enough time to really fiddle with them. I want to integrate technology into my program more (indeed it is part of my OTF TLC  project mandate), but I feel so clued out!  And it seems like there is never enough TIME to get clued in!  I need a week to just play and fiddle with this stuff and think about how it connects to the curriculum, followed by a day or two with the students to try it out in class, followed by a other week to refine it!!!

I am thinking I might use some of my computer lab periods to experiment with a few of these apps, and consider how they might be integrated into various subject areas and classes.  And maybe next summer, instead of signing up for a million PD sessions, just choose two or three, and teach them to myself, and create a few lessons with them.

Riding in the cold is okay, as long as you've got equipment.  Which, mostly, I have got.  But even the most die-hard winter riders can get caught off guard...

The morning started out okay... just after 6 a.m., I set out on my trusty steed, lights on and music set to shuffle.  From the waist up, I was pretty warm: Four layers, including a down-filled vest, and a full balaclava and ski mask (the latter being a recent and very welcome addition to my winter gear) formed a pretty much impenetrable barrier between me and the -32 degrees Celsius (with windchill) outdoor early morning temperatures.

My lower legs were okay, too, as I had remembered to wear my 80s throwback leg warmers over my warm winter boots and two pairs of pants.

No, the initial troubles were not with the rider, but rather with the ride.

It would appear my bike was not built to withstand these subarctic Toronto-Mississauga temperatures: By Evans and Royal York, halfway through a Beethoven concerto, my derailleur stopped cooperating, and I could not downshift.  My bike, essentially, became single speed, stuck for the rest of the 14-km ride thankfully somewhere in a middle gear.

The unexpected extra cardio was admittedly an unwelcome addition to my morning ride, and neither Corey Hart nor Elton John, nor even Rush's New World Man could ease the pain of the the various laborious traffic light starts and surprisingly and suddenly ubiquitous little inclines enroute.

By the time I reached the East Mall and Queensway, however, a more pressing matter had begun to dominate my mind:  My butt and upper thighs were FREEZING!!!!  My second pair of pants was -- foolishly -- not a pair of snowpants, but rather my trusty waterproof pants that I generally wear more as protection against the rain rather than as a layer of warmth.  Though my upper body and my shins (thanks to the legwarmers) were quite toasty, the parts in the middle were... well, ...  not so much!

By the time I turned north on Dixie and pushed my way uphill through whatever godforsaken gear the stupid bike was stuck on, my middle parts had warmed up considerably from the extra workout.  But now my expensive but somewhat very old (circa 1998, I think) winter/hiking boots were starting to show their age, and my one-sock-layer-ensconced toes were FREEZING!!!!

To be honest, I was not convinced that I would make it to school alive.  But what else could I do?

I thought of the words of my wise (and much more bike-savvy and considerably more stamina-endowed) girlfriend, who once told me, "the good thing about biking is you know if you just keep pedalling, no matter how slowly, eventually you'll reach your destination".

I kept pedalling.

Very. Very. Slowly.

And, miracle of miracles, I eventually arrived at school!  Exhausted... starving... parts of my ass possibly frostbitten... but I was there, and with time to spare, even.

I got off my bike, wheeled it into the building, unlocked my classroom door, and sat down to thaw out.  Weakly, I dragged myself back out into the hall to my bike to unpack my oatmeal and half grapefruit from one of the panniers, and my work clothes from the other.

20 minutes later, I was defrosted, fed and sitting at a before-school meeting with two colleagues, doing some long-overdue planning a project we've been working on.  

My bike is still in my classroom -- I took the bus home tonight.