Smith Curriculum and Consulting

Making Geometry Click with Geometiles

August 18, 2017 by Jennifer Smith Jochen Leave a Comment

$Using Geometiles in the classroom to deepen your student's understanding of geometry, fractions and more can be fun and engaging!$ Thinking back to my days in Geometry (and even before) it was always a struggle for me. There were so many concepts to connect together in such a short amount of time and it truly overwhelmed me. I never had a chance to investigate things with manipulatives longer than maybe a 20 minutes time span and never in high school when I truly needed it. Geometry quickly became my least favorite topic and even stayed that way once I became a teacher simply because of my past experiences.

When Geometiles contacted me and asked if I would like to take some time to play and learn with their 96 piece set, I jumped on the chance because I knew that while geometry was struggle for me and my students, that many of you also had this same struggle.

When I first got the box I was excited to open it and check out all that it included as they were brand new to me. Once I opened the box I started getting all kinds of ideas on what I could then build with the different shapes that are included. With the way that the tiles click together they can easily create two-dimensional as well as three-dimensional objects. With these concepts just scratching the surface, Geometiles has also created an online resource library on lessons to use the tiles with learning about angles, ratios, teaching FRACTIONS (yes, fractions), and then also exploring Platonic and Archimedean solids.

$Using Geometiles in the classroom to deepen your student's understanding of geometry, fractions and more can be fun and engaging!$

While starting to play with these I simply just played in the beginning. I allowed myself to create objects of various shapes and sizes to get experience with how the tiles worked together. Once I had my grasp I decided to download the Shape Challenge Workbook for Fourth Grade and up. When I first started looking at it I was quickly reminded of the Lego books that come with all the various sets.

$Using Geometiles in the classroom to deepen your student's understanding of geometry, fractions and more can be fun and engaging!$

The challenges provided in this workbook are each open-ended and would be GREAT for a STEM Bin for your classroom. The questions grow in complexity and begin as simple as “Make a square in four different sizes.” and then it builds up to asking, “Make a quadrilateral that has no lines of symmetry and none of whose sides are parallel to each other.” Both of these require knowledge of geometric vocabulary and thinking beyond just drawing with a pencil.

If you are looking for something to add to your classroom manipulatives, or even maybe in your own home, I would definitely check out the different packages available of Geometiles as they are a component I recommend for all grades!

What is Response to Intervention (RTI)?

July 15, 2017 by Jennifer Smith Jochen Leave a Comment

Our role as Educators is to ensure all students learn and are successful. In a perfect world, this would be easy. We teach our class a skill or topic and all of those smiling faces are able to comprehend and apply it to their daily lives. However, we don’t live in a perfect world, and unfortunately all of our students don’t learn at the same rate and level.

Students struggle for various reasons. There could be a language barrier, a learning disability, or poor attendance. Regardless of the reason, we need to find solutions to help them succeed. That solution is called RTI, or Response To Intervention.

The goal of RTI is for the school to step in, or intervene, and help students before they fall too far behind. It is a proactive approach to measuring students’ skills and using this data to decide which types of targeted teaching to use. (Source)

The RTI process begins with screening the general education population. Struggling learners are provided with interventions at increasing levels of intensity to accelerate their rate of learning. The interventions could be given by the general education teacher, the special education teacher, and/or specialists. Progress is closely monitored for the learning rate and level of performance of the individual student. For the RTI process to work effectively, the following RTI components must be implemented: high-quality classroom instruction, ongoing student assessment, tiered instruction, and parental instruction.

RTI is broken up into different tiers, or levels of intervention that a school can implement. Tier 1 includes the general education population. All students in the general education population are tested at this tier. They are tested to ensure they are responding to the instruction they are receiving before they start to fall behind and struggle. Tier 1 includes positive behavior interventions such as rules, routines and physical arrangements that are developed and taught by school staff to prevent initial occurrences of bad behavior.

Tier 2 of RTI focuses on the students who are not responding well to the Tier 1 interventions. Tier 2 is for a targeted group of students. These students may receive an increase in the time and intensity that they are exposed to the core curriculum. Students may be placed in small groups to work on the specific skills that they are having trouble with.

Tier 3 of RTI is the intensive intervention stage. Students who have been found to be eligible for special education and related services will be placed in a more inclusive setting for more specialized support. Progress monitoring is essential at this stage. More time on a skill and small group instruction are to be expected at this level.

Do you feel some of your students may be at the beginning stages of struggling? Want to catch them before they really fall behind? Check out my RTI Road Block document available in my FREEBIE Resource Library. It’s an easy tool teachers and older students can both use to assess which skills need to be worked on, a plan of how they will work on them, and an evaluation of the process.

And if you are looking for resources for Intervention, I have begun to create a series of creations called Stop, Intervene and Learn. Each of these resources are meant to be done in small groups, are completely interactive and engaging for your students, include practice/assessment for each component, full color photos and more!

The Debate between Warm-Ups and Exit Tickets

July 8, 2017 by Jennifer Smith Jochen 1 Comment

Do you use Warm Ups in your classroom? Come see why I converted to using only Exit Tickets in my classroom and I began to be able to better assess and understand the learning of my students on a regular basis with some tips on new types of Exit Tickets and ways of grading.

I’ve had many conversations over the past few years with teachers about the use of Warm Ups and/or Exit Tickets in the classroom. I always start with asking which of the two, or both, that teachers used but also why they chose that. Time and time again it has become very obvious that most teachers were using only warm-ups in their classrooms while very few, if any, were using exit tickets. Those that gave reasons were mainly that of maintaining a spiral review throughout the school year and assessing on material learned prior.

When it all comes down to it both warm-ups and exit tickets have their benefits and just like many others I have used both in my classroom until 2011 when I converted to only using Exit Tickets.

Why only Exit Tickets?

As a middle school teacher I noticed that my students would get hung up on warm-ups way beyond the time that we had to spend on them. Seriously, I would give them two grade-level appropriate (and sometimes below grade level) word problems and they would want to spend 20+ minutes solving them. They knew their strategies, they knew what the problem was asking but they always got stuck on the computation. Their weak foundation in basic operations continued to kick their tails.

When blessed with a class period that was only 42 minutes long I could not give up more than about 5-7 minutes for this each day never mind counting in time to actually check the warm-ups and go over them together.

In the middle of a school year I started implementing exit tickets after a concept had been covered at least two days. So if I started converting rational numbers on Monday and we created our Interactive Notebook Flippable to demonstrate the steps in converting fractions, decimals and percents and did an output activity and then on Tuesday I tied that concept into Comparing and Ordering Rational Numbers, it was time for an Exit Ticket on Converting Rational Numbers.

When I create Exit Tickets I like them to be an open-ended response so students can truly show me what they know. Open-Ended also allows the students to explain themselves in words when many of them trip over how to accurately compute answers. Being able to describe what they would do builds that confidence in actually applying it towards further computation skills.

One type of Exit Ticket that my students LOVE is Post It, Prove Its. One, they are using Post Its and who doesn’t love using Post Its? Two, they have a small limited space and don’t have to worry about writing a novel of a response. Three, it’s semi-anonymous since their name goes on the back under the sticky part. You can read more about Post It, Prove It in this post.

How do you Assess Exit Tickets?

Assessing Exit Tickets was something that I had to learn over time. Originally I was not grading them in any way. That proved to be the wrong thing to do once my middle schoolers found that out because they started to get lazy.

When choosing to grade Exit Tickets in the classroom, sometimes it is best to use a rubric or point system for easy checking. This Exit Ticket (and others) are available FREE through the Resource Library!

Soon I began to implement a grading policy where I created a checklist for each class. Over a two-three week period I would give 4 to 5 exit tickets and based on the level of completion of each students would receive a participation grade. I always told my students ahead of time if it was going to be 4 or 5 exit tickets during the span of time and they would be graded on a 20 or 25 point scale each which were posted in my classroom for all to see. Based on the compilation of those exit tickets the students would receive one grade.

Want to grab my Exit Ticket Rubrics? Simply sign up for the Newsletter and you get the Editable version for FREE in the Resource Library!

Overtime with all of my students I began to see growth in their confidence of math through using these quick assessments in our classroom. Students understood the role they played in our classroom and how the feedback that I gave them from their answers could assist them in their learning. Feedback on exit tickets is crucial as it is what guides students continued learning of the concept and also allows you to pull small groups or suggest tutoring for students. When you give your exit tickets back to your students they can simply tuck them in a pocket inside their Interactive Notebook to keep or tape them onto the page that you used them on.

Taking time each day to read and respond to the exit tickets even if a simple GREAT JOB or a more detailed message about the process that they took to answer their question and/or explain their process. I know that means spending a few minutes to read through for each student but it is definitely worth it for student’s growth in all subjects.

Looking for a quick and easy Editable Exit Ticket to implement into your classroom? Feel free to grab my Editable Exit Tickets for only $1.50! There are three different versions including 4 per page, 2 per page vertical and 2 per page horizontal. All have at stoplight for self-assessment by students before they submit their exit ticket.

So, will you try Exit Tickets more now?

Creating Reasoning Talks for Your Classroom

June 18, 2017 by Jennifer Smith Jochen 6 Comments

Recently I had Dr. Cory Bennett share with us about Reasoning Talks (Number Talks that focus on Reasoning) and how to use them in the Middle School classroom. So many of your responded asking for more information and I am finally here to share that with you.

Some of the highlights I took from Cory’s session at NCTM Annual in San Antonio are that:

When developing a reasoning talk we must switch from just computational and help our students develop reasoning skills when processing through the problem.
We don’t always want an answer right away. Most of the time with reasoning talks we truly want students to create a conversation about the methods for solving and WHY they think that.

Developing Reasoning Talks

When we as the facilitator of these reasoning talks sit down to plan them out ahead of time (critical step to do) we must ask ourselves, “How am I going to make connections to what my students are already bringing to the table?”

Understanding the prior knowledge of our students will help us create better, and more engaging, reasoning talks with quality probing and clarifying questions. Think ahead to what answer you are wanting from your students and work backwards to determine the question that you need to ask to get that answer.

Using the template that Dr. Bennett has created for us, these guidelines that I have added (see photo) are to help you in your creation.

Examples of Reasoning Talks

As further example for developing reasoning talks in your classroom, I have developed three different examples for you. The first of which is aligned to standards for solving real world problems that involve multiplying fractions by a whole number.

The second example that I have created for you involve solving real world problems that involves using variables to write equations and then solve them based on given information.

And then the final example that I want to show you involves determining area and then finding fractional portions of that area and what is remaining- talk about MULTI-STEP problem!

And with that I hope that these examples can help you implement Reasoning Talks in your classroom. Remember, building communication about what they are learning is one of the goals as that helps them to explain their thinking behind their math. Spend some time this summer to think about how that you can implement these into your classroom for the coming year and if you have any questions, feel free to ask because I’m here and will listen!

Math With a Purpose: Making Students Think Notes and Links

June 7, 2017 by Jennifer Smith Jochen Leave a Comment

Thank you so much for attending my session, “Math with a Purpose: Making Students Think“. I truly am passionate about finding ways to foster creative thinking in my math class and have been since I started teaching in 2003. I have consistently been on a mission to find new and inventive ways to help engage learners no matter their learning style, possible accommodations, etc. and over time I’ve tried, failed and kept on trying and I hope that some of the ideas I shared with you are some things that you can realistically take back to your classroom and implement.

Simply click on the photo above (the title screen) to download the entire presentation that I shared today. Also, if you weren’t able to complete the notes today, click on the notes sheet and you can download the completed notes for you.

Are you interested in having the bookmarks for use in your classroom? You got it! Click here and you will be taken to a page of bookmarks that you can use.

Looking for the Growth Mindset Banner? Check it out from To The Square Inch over on Teachers Pay Teachers. She is an amazing math teacher in New York and she has Growth Mindset down pat! And The Expert Poster… it’s a FREEBIE!

Do you remember seeing me talk about Project Based Learning? The sample I showed you was a project I created called If I Had a Million Dollars and not only did my student’s love it but so have over 50,000 students since 2012. I’ve also gathered some other PBL from some friends you might want to check out as well.

And if you are looking to add the book, “The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes” to your classroom library, go grab it on Amazon (affiliate link- no increase in price for you) today!

Guest Post: Reasoning Talks: Bridging Number Talks by Focusing on Reasoning with Dr. Cory Bennett

May 10, 2017 by Jennifer Smith Jochen 12 Comments

Today, I am so excited to bring to you a guest post that many of you have been begging for! Dr. Cory Bennett of Bennett Educational Consulting and Associate Professor of Education at Idaho State University recently opened my eyes on how to effectively incorporate Number Talks in the Middle School classroom while I was at NCTM Annual Conference. So much so that I almost immediately asked him (I might have begged a little) to come over and share with us his knowledge based on the years that he has been implementing them with teachers that he works with. Thank you, Dr. Bennett, for taking time not only to share this knowledge with me but also with my readers!

What are Number Talks?

Number talks are a highly effective way to help students learn to communicate mathematically, attend to the nuances in strategies, and develop fluency. Essentially, students have opportunities to learn to think and behave like a mathematician, which is central to their short-term and long-term growth in mathematics.

Number talks are often short, five to ten minute, whole-class moments wherein students mentally calculate solutions to computational exercises to develop flexibility in thinking and reasoning. Students then discuss their ideas, attending to the “why” instead of just “how.” The teacher records the student’s thinking in a non-evaluative manner, probing for clarification if specific steps or decisions are unclear. While number talks have tremendous potential to support procedural and conceptual understanding, implementing number talks in the middle grades can be more challenging as the content becomes more advanced and does not always lend itself to simple calculations or computations.

Transitioning Number Talks for Middle School Students

However, most of the benefits of number talks—which include such things as making sense of mathematical contexts or situations, recognizing key elements in relationships, learning to reason about why these key elements matter, and practicing how to listen to their fellow students’ ideas as well as articulate understandings in a clear and logical manner—can still happen by attending to reasoning. Thus, Reasoning Talks might be a better way to describe the nature of number talks in the middle grades.

Reasoning talks can look different and can have different outcomes. For example, a teacher might want students to recognize what is important about a problem/context. Do students understand what matters and how it matters? Or, students might be asked to make meaning of a symbolic representation. When examining a proportion, what do the two ratios mean independently and in relation to each other? Additionally, students might be asked to make connections between relationships. An example of this might include analyzing what is the same or different between a linear and non-linear function who have the same (or different) coefficients and y-intercepts. Other Reasoning Talks might focus on generating a possible solution pathway, developing questions, or developing a conjecture or considering a counter argument.

Implementing Reasoning Talks

As with any strategy that you try, this will take more time than you think it will (or want it to) at first but it will become easier to implement as you become more familiar with it. Also, the underlying success of Reasoning Talks goes beyond just deliberate practice, it begins with deliberate practice. Your planning matters tremendously here. My suggestion is to begin with answering the following questions first (see FREEBIE template for additional structure):

What should they be considering in the task you provide?
How do you want them to consider this task or what do you want them to focus on?
What mathematics will be involved or be the focus?
And what questions will you ask to probe for clarity?

Just as with number talks, Reasoning Talks aim to help students learn to communicate ideas and attend to critical aspects of the mathematics they are learning. This means one of the more critical roles of the teacher is keeping track of ideas in a central place (like on the white board), helping students attend to the key aspects of their thinking (they are not always aware of the importance of their ideas), and helping them make connections between their ideas and the ideas of others. In your practice, remember to attend to these three things and perhaps even add notes to yourself on the planning template to help you keep this focus. Otherwise, you may end up completing a Reasoning Talk and feel unsure your outcomes were accomplished.

And to Wrap Up…

Ultimately, Reasoning Talks are about students learning to think and behave like a mathematician. This takes time and practice and you may not ever get your students where you want them to be with this but they will be in a better place than before you started (next year’s teacher will be grateful for your work!). Also, be patient with yourself. Helping students learn to be sense makers and reason about mathematics is not easy but it is worth your time and effort. Perhaps the best advice I can give for those just starting out is to start small, work with others, and tap into professional communities that are willing to support your efforts. This school year may be winding down but it is not too late to start thinking about how you are going to start this work next year.

So, how could we (Cory and Jennifer) help you with Number Talks in your Middle Grades classroom? What are you looking for? What do you need more information about? Answer us in the comments below because rumor has it, we ARE listening!

Contact Information for Cory

Email: bennett.educational.consulting@gmail.com

Twitter: @Alohacory

Website: www.bennettconsulting.education

NCTM Annual Conference Recap Part Two

May 3, 2017 by Jennifer Smith Jochen Leave a Comment

Here I am now almost a month after NCTM Annual Conference has passed and I am still enjoying all that I learned and did while I was there. It was definitely a conference worth going to if you are ever able.

Thursday continued

So when I left off in the last post I had just wrapped up with my first round of the Exhibit Hall (yes, the first) and was on my way to another session.

The next session that I hit up was on Middle School Math Misconceptions and How to Help Students. I literally walked what felt like a mile for this session because I knew it was one that I wanted to go to and I even showed up an hour early to make sure I had a seat (I just slipped in on the previous session).

The two women who were presenting for this session went through several problems that they gave their students and then then the error that the students came up with for their answer. We as an audience were to engage with those around us and discuss what the error was and how we would remediate to correct this error. Then they had a few people from the crowd share each time. It truly is amazing how so many of the concepts we then related to money (fractions, decimals, percents, etc.) and then even more amazing was some really good teaching strategies that I had not ever heard of before. Definitely a proponent for having time to vertically plan and collaborate with others that teach the same subject!

By the time I had finished that session it was time to trek back down to the exhibit hall and do some learning at a few different exhibitor booths that were having their own mini-sessions as well as those hosted in the exhibit hall. I tried to just engross myself in all that was being said and done during those and didn’t take notes… whoops!

Thursday night I ended up having dinner with a complete stranger. Yep, we math teachers do that kind of thing. We were literally waiting at a cross walk together and she asked a few of us around her where some places were to sit and get a quick bite to eat and the consensus was the mall. I stated that I was planning on going to Margaritaville at that moment for dinner before retiring to bed early and asked if she would like to join me. Off we went and enjoyed our dinner and were able to talk about math and teaching at the same time. Turns out she lives near where I grew up and was a first year teacher after having a previous career. Totally fun to get to hear from someone on the other end of the spectrum of teaching. It has been a long tine since I had chatted with someone during their first year.

Once I got back to my room I emptied my bag that weighed literally a TON and made a video of all the goodies for you to check out! You can see that video here (the giveaway is long since closed).

Friday

First of all, you know you learned a lot when you can’t sleep the night before because your brain is going a million different ways. Yep, that was me and I had plans to meet up with a Texas teacher for coffee at 7:30am. And you betcha, I was there… who needs sleep? Oh yea, I do! Guess that’s why I had to take a nap later on Friday.

The first session I went to on Friday was all about Instruction on Algebra Readiness Topics for Middle School in Tier 2. Yep, a MOUTHFUL! One of the key statements that the presenters (there were three) made was “Middle School students with difficulties struggle with more than just missed content but also the foundational skills of Algebra.”

After a brief synopsis of Response to Intervention and Progress Monitoring (more coming in future blog posts on that), we jumped into the need for Reversibility Questions, Generalization Questions and Flexibility Questions. I was writing notes feverishly during this session and left with my mind blow again! So much of what they were saying was aligning to what Dr. Bennett had said about Reasoning Talks in Middle School the day before (hint: more on that next week).

Reversibility Questions-

Change the way that the task is present to a way that then forces the students to think differently. Example: Find 2 three digit numbers whose sum is 544?

Generalization Questions-

These questions force students to think about patterns and build connections on reasonability. These are the BIG IDEA questions.

Flexibility Questions-

These questions allow students to solve problems in multiple ways or apply multiple solutions. You also give a series of problems where they can use the first to solve the second and so on.

They also made a point about how we need to ditch the Show Your Work mindset and jump on board with the Show Your Thinking mindset. I think I might just make that a poster!

The next session that I went to was another Middle School Number Talks session by the infamous Sherry Parrish. I was first introduced to Sherry’s Number Talks when I was given a copy of her now famous Number Talks book (aff. link) when I was in Georgia to provide a professional development. I have also now purchase the follow up Number Talks for Fractions, Decimals and Percents book (aff. link) to further my knowledge as well. While immersing myself into what Sherry was saying about the computational side of number talks, some of the key takeaways I had were:

“We have to build a bridge from the way we were taught to the way our students are learning.“

“77% of community college students believe math is a set of tips, tricks and procedures.“

and “Students are reluctant to share for many reasons, some which we will probably never know. Turn and Talk allows students to become comfortable by collaborating with one other person and breaking down the fear.“

So… with that being said, after that session it was lunch and a nap time. I was wiped! By the time I woke up from my nap it was around 4pm and the sessions for the day were over. I soon also found out that the major highway that took me from San Antonio back home would be closing that evening for the ENTIRE WEEKEND! Well thanks for telling me ahead of time San Antonio! I decided to go ahead and head back home that night so that I could get ahead of the traffic as that highway is already horrible enough as it is but add onto it being the weekend and being CLOSED, no thank you!

I truly hope that you have enjoyed my recaps of all there was to learn at NCTM Annual Conference. I am sure that many more of the tidbits will find their way into the blog and into my upcoming conference sessions and/or professional development offerings!

Be on the lookout for a GUEST POST next week! It will be one that you won’t want to miss!