DREAM IT Project
By Rosalind Ali
The new school year comes with renewed energy and vitality among the staff at my school. Teachers came back to school ready to share out from their summer learning and happily, one common theme was increasing the use of technology in the classroom. Administrators and teachers, alike, returned ready to implement new (and old) technologies as learning tools in the classroom. We realized quickly one easy win— taking advantage of parents following us on twitter. We discovered that some parents, with whom we were unsuccessful using common communication technologies (cell phone, email, etc.), were following us on Twitter! We immediately implemented the use of twitter to communicate with parents and students school-wide. One of our professional development sessions was solely devoted to creating twitter accounts and using the social media site for educational purposes. By the end of the first couple of teacher planning days in August, all teachers had created a twitter account for instructional purposes and communication with students, families and the community. This was really encouraging and convinced me even more of the critical need jump out of my comfort zone and implement as much of what I learned this summer as possible in my own classroom and convince my coworkers to do the same.
The first few days of school allowed me to see my original Dream It outline from a new perspective and it’s been modified to better align with my school’s goals and expectations from my principal for me, as a teacher leader, mentor and math department chair.
DREAM IT Project:
Developing Number Sense
Reasoning with numbers and understanding how to navigate the world;
How do we use numbers and their representations in our everyday lives?
Recognizing and understanding math in the world around us and increasing computation fluency are examples of desired outcomes in this focus area. While developing number sense has always been important for students’ mathematical development, changes in standardized testing have caused a renewed focus on the development of number sense for students to meet achievement levels on the new PARCC tests. My school’s goals for student attainment in math are 69% (6th grade), 85% (7th grade) and 70% (8th grade). These goals were set based on data trends from prior years, my math team’s knowledge of students, and last year’s resources. My desired outcome for this focus area is that students meet and/or exceed these goals.
The first action of the school’s Math Professional Learning Community (PLC) was to restructure the time distribution of the math period. Initially, we’ll start with 50-60% of the math period developing procedural skills (mental math, computation activities) and the remainder of the math period developing conceptual understanding and concept application (problem solving). As the year progresses we aim to have 25% of the math period devoted to procedural skills and 75% devoted to conceptual understanding and application. Each period consists of a 30-35 minute “fluency workshop” where we focus on computation skill(s) and a variety of strategies to use for completing problems. Mental math tips are also highlighted and practiced during this time and a one-two question assessment serves as an “exit slip” for this portion of the class. Data from the exit slips determines the structure of the fluency workshop for the next day—students who pass the exit slip go on to apply the computation skill in problem solving contexts and others receive different levels of re-teaching using multiple modalities.
During each math instructional period (fluency workshop & concept/application problem solving portion) calculators will be available for problem solving. In addition there’ll be an increased focus on strategies to build number sense, such as these listed below highlighted in Marilyn Burns’ “About Teaching Mathematics” (2007):
Our school annually purchases licenses or subscriptions to curriculum enhancing sites such as Study Island, IXL or BrainPop, and unfortunately, the usage of these has declined. Last year, only about 15- 20% of our students were completing regularly assigned work on these sites and my staff knows that internet access is still a problem in our school community. Although students have technology devices, just in the first week of school, many students have said they do not have internet access at home. A parent may have a phone, but no data plan. They may have a laptop or computer, but no dependable, consistent internet connection at home. When some of our students say “yes, I have internet”, they may mean that they have internet when they go to grandma’s house or to the library or when they use their friend’s phone.
I always encourage students to use the library for internet access but due to heavy public usage, reservations for library computers aren’t always available and many are prohibited from using technology resources due to outstanding fines.
At the beginning of the school year, I met with my principal, technology coordinator and other teachers to develop solutions to the limited internet access problem facing our students. We’ve decided to make our technology lab more accessible to students when school is not in session. We are creating a schedule to ensure our school’s technology lab will be open before and after school and on weekends so students will be able to sign up to work in the lab for technology access to complete assignments and perform enrichment activities. Doing this, we can be sure students have access to academic sites such as www.ixl.com, khan academy, learn-zillion, and study island, to name a few. Additionally, students will have more opportunities to complete a myriad of technology infused activities that I’ll be using this year to increase the amount of time students are engaged with academic content.
Increasing technology usage in the classroom will also help us achieve the gains we seek in developing number sense in our students. Several plans are outlined below:
1) Post Math Selfies on Twitter. This was assigned the 1st week of school. Students were to take a math selfie using any background that related to math. Students tweeted pictures of themselves with kitchen appliances, video games, picture frames, and other objects that they connected with math. Throughout the year, requirements for selfies will be more specific—number system concepts aligned with common core learning standards.
2) World of Wonder. The first round of “ wonders” are student-selected. Students will sign up to present their wonders and each day, we hear a 5-10 minute presentation on their wonder. As the year progresses, assignments will be specifically directed toward topics that help develop number sense. For example, wonders related to estimation strategies or computation strategies… who created the Lattice method for multiplying numbers? Why was it called “Lattice”.
3) Movie Makers – after viewing math instructional videos, students will be tasked with writing, producing and recording their own that explains a number sense content piece of the common core standards. For example, an EXPLAIN IT video that explains common core standard 8.EE.1 – Properties of exponents.
4) Website creation using Weebly. 8th grade students will design their own webpages to upload projects and post outcomes from fluency-number sense assignments.
5) Tech Tips – Students will research and report technology tips -- specifically sites and/or apps that relate to improving their number sense. These may include online computation practice sites, instructional videos, interactive web learning, etc.
6) Interactive Math Journal - Students will create a math journal throughout the year. Math journals typically house concept organizers, vocabulary pages, written responses to math prompts, etc. This year’s journals will be organized according to common core standards quarterly learning goals with a dedicated “fluency workshop” section so they can have a handy reference for using number sense methods and strategies.
Expected outcomes from implementing projects described above:
· Students will recognize that math is a part of their everyday lives and can describe in writing their observations of math. A “pretest” prompt was given in September and they’ll receive the same prompt in January and June and I expect their writing about math in their everyday lives to be more detailed and more relevant to the number sense topics that we’ve covered in class.
· Increased scores on standardized tests NWEA (spring ’14 to spring ’15), ANET, PARCC in the Number Sense content strand
· Students will be able to use multiple strategies to perform basic computation (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing rational numbers)
· Demonstrate fluency in working with numbers represented in multiple forms (fractions, decimals, etc.)
· Increase time spent accessing content outside of classroom
My students have difficulty reasoning with numbers, their various representations and computation fluency. Focusing on number sense for the 2014-2015 school year will allow my math team to aggressively attack this deficiency and will equip them with multiple strategies for achieving computation fluency and enhance their ability to reason with rational numbers. Using technology to strengthen and communicate connections to their everyday lives will help develop my student’s ability to see more math in their world. These connections will carry over into other content areas and contribute to establishing the STEM foundation they’ll need to be academically successful.
By Rosalind Ali
The new school year comes with renewed energy and vitality among the staff at my school. Teachers came back to school ready to share out from their summer learning and happily, one common theme was increasing the use of technology in the classroom. Administrators and teachers, alike, returned ready to implement new (and old) technologies as learning tools in the classroom. We realized quickly one easy win— taking advantage of parents following us on twitter. We discovered that some parents, with whom we were unsuccessful using common communication technologies (cell phone, email, etc.), were following us on Twitter! We immediately implemented the use of twitter to communicate with parents and students school-wide. One of our professional development sessions was solely devoted to creating twitter accounts and using the social media site for educational purposes. By the end of the first couple of teacher planning days in August, all teachers had created a twitter account for instructional purposes and communication with students, families and the community. This was really encouraging and convinced me even more of the critical need jump out of my comfort zone and implement as much of what I learned this summer as possible in my own classroom and convince my coworkers to do the same.
The first few days of school allowed me to see my original Dream It outline from a new perspective and it’s been modified to better align with my school’s goals and expectations from my principal for me, as a teacher leader, mentor and math department chair.
DREAM IT Project:
Developing Number Sense
Reasoning with numbers and understanding how to navigate the world;
How do we use numbers and their representations in our everyday lives?
Recognizing and understanding math in the world around us and increasing computation fluency are examples of desired outcomes in this focus area. While developing number sense has always been important for students’ mathematical development, changes in standardized testing have caused a renewed focus on the development of number sense for students to meet achievement levels on the new PARCC tests. My school’s goals for student attainment in math are 69% (6th grade), 85% (7th grade) and 70% (8th grade). These goals were set based on data trends from prior years, my math team’s knowledge of students, and last year’s resources. My desired outcome for this focus area is that students meet and/or exceed these goals.
The first action of the school’s Math Professional Learning Community (PLC) was to restructure the time distribution of the math period. Initially, we’ll start with 50-60% of the math period developing procedural skills (mental math, computation activities) and the remainder of the math period developing conceptual understanding and concept application (problem solving). As the year progresses we aim to have 25% of the math period devoted to procedural skills and 75% devoted to conceptual understanding and application. Each period consists of a 30-35 minute “fluency workshop” where we focus on computation skill(s) and a variety of strategies to use for completing problems. Mental math tips are also highlighted and practiced during this time and a one-two question assessment serves as an “exit slip” for this portion of the class. Data from the exit slips determines the structure of the fluency workshop for the next day—students who pass the exit slip go on to apply the computation skill in problem solving contexts and others receive different levels of re-teaching using multiple modalities.
During each math instructional period (fluency workshop & concept/application problem solving portion) calculators will be available for problem solving. In addition there’ll be an increased focus on strategies to build number sense, such as these listed below highlighted in Marilyn Burns’ “About Teaching Mathematics” (2007):
- Model different methods for computing
- Ask students regularly to calculate mentally
- Have class discussions about strategies for computing
- Make estimation an integral part of computing
- Question students about how they reason numerically.
- Pose numerical problems that have more than one possible answer.
Our school annually purchases licenses or subscriptions to curriculum enhancing sites such as Study Island, IXL or BrainPop, and unfortunately, the usage of these has declined. Last year, only about 15- 20% of our students were completing regularly assigned work on these sites and my staff knows that internet access is still a problem in our school community. Although students have technology devices, just in the first week of school, many students have said they do not have internet access at home. A parent may have a phone, but no data plan. They may have a laptop or computer, but no dependable, consistent internet connection at home. When some of our students say “yes, I have internet”, they may mean that they have internet when they go to grandma’s house or to the library or when they use their friend’s phone.
I always encourage students to use the library for internet access but due to heavy public usage, reservations for library computers aren’t always available and many are prohibited from using technology resources due to outstanding fines.
At the beginning of the school year, I met with my principal, technology coordinator and other teachers to develop solutions to the limited internet access problem facing our students. We’ve decided to make our technology lab more accessible to students when school is not in session. We are creating a schedule to ensure our school’s technology lab will be open before and after school and on weekends so students will be able to sign up to work in the lab for technology access to complete assignments and perform enrichment activities. Doing this, we can be sure students have access to academic sites such as www.ixl.com, khan academy, learn-zillion, and study island, to name a few. Additionally, students will have more opportunities to complete a myriad of technology infused activities that I’ll be using this year to increase the amount of time students are engaged with academic content.
Increasing technology usage in the classroom will also help us achieve the gains we seek in developing number sense in our students. Several plans are outlined below:
1) Post Math Selfies on Twitter. This was assigned the 1st week of school. Students were to take a math selfie using any background that related to math. Students tweeted pictures of themselves with kitchen appliances, video games, picture frames, and other objects that they connected with math. Throughout the year, requirements for selfies will be more specific—number system concepts aligned with common core learning standards.
2) World of Wonder. The first round of “ wonders” are student-selected. Students will sign up to present their wonders and each day, we hear a 5-10 minute presentation on their wonder. As the year progresses, assignments will be specifically directed toward topics that help develop number sense. For example, wonders related to estimation strategies or computation strategies… who created the Lattice method for multiplying numbers? Why was it called “Lattice”.
3) Movie Makers – after viewing math instructional videos, students will be tasked with writing, producing and recording their own that explains a number sense content piece of the common core standards. For example, an EXPLAIN IT video that explains common core standard 8.EE.1 – Properties of exponents.
4) Website creation using Weebly. 8th grade students will design their own webpages to upload projects and post outcomes from fluency-number sense assignments.
5) Tech Tips – Students will research and report technology tips -- specifically sites and/or apps that relate to improving their number sense. These may include online computation practice sites, instructional videos, interactive web learning, etc.
6) Interactive Math Journal - Students will create a math journal throughout the year. Math journals typically house concept organizers, vocabulary pages, written responses to math prompts, etc. This year’s journals will be organized according to common core standards quarterly learning goals with a dedicated “fluency workshop” section so they can have a handy reference for using number sense methods and strategies.
Expected outcomes from implementing projects described above:
· Students will recognize that math is a part of their everyday lives and can describe in writing their observations of math. A “pretest” prompt was given in September and they’ll receive the same prompt in January and June and I expect their writing about math in their everyday lives to be more detailed and more relevant to the number sense topics that we’ve covered in class.
· Increased scores on standardized tests NWEA (spring ’14 to spring ’15), ANET, PARCC in the Number Sense content strand
· Students will be able to use multiple strategies to perform basic computation (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing rational numbers)
· Demonstrate fluency in working with numbers represented in multiple forms (fractions, decimals, etc.)
· Increase time spent accessing content outside of classroom
My students have difficulty reasoning with numbers, their various representations and computation fluency. Focusing on number sense for the 2014-2015 school year will allow my math team to aggressively attack this deficiency and will equip them with multiple strategies for achieving computation fluency and enhance their ability to reason with rational numbers. Using technology to strengthen and communicate connections to their everyday lives will help develop my student’s ability to see more math in their world. These connections will carry over into other content areas and contribute to establishing the STEM foundation they’ll need to be academically successful.
