Personalization, Planning, and Paint

Edited By Nate Goza @thegozaway

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Our Path to Personalization With Standards Based Feedback
Presented by Kristy McGowan & Christi Lovrics

This session will discuss how we designed our MPM2D course to better student learning through our version of personalization, engagement and standards based feedback. We will explain in detail our version of a more personal “flipped” classroom, a personalized factoring unit with multiple entry points and varied assessments, as well as a trigonometry unit in which we designed a Google Site to help students navigate through the material at their own pace. We will discuss how we designed and administered formative assessments in each of these units with a standards based framework. Finally, we will offer our perspective as well as student feedback on how these changes in our classroom influenced the attitude and learning of our students.

To join the meeting when it starts at 9pm Eastern (or RSVP if it’s before 9pm), click here.

Catch up on all the great PD Sessions from past presenters here!

The Word from the #MTBoS

If you’ve never seen Blue Man Group, you should. If you’re looking for some inspiration on how to use exciting popular culture to engage students in exploring science or math, go read Andrew Shauver’s post The Blue Man Group did high school physics teachers a favor . Actually, just watch the video embedded in the post (which is the bulk of the post, anyway). Using their superb timing and their highly finessed skill in staring at one another and the audience, Blue Man Group demonstrates some basics of sound. The 5-minute video entertains and educates, and opens the door to other questions, and I’m thinking that searching other video clips from the show might suggest many mathematical ideas. An interesting research project for teacher and student…

Adrianne Burns over at My Journey So Far… compares two professional development experiences in her post My Experience with FiresidePD. The first class, which was online and ‘personalized’ because of the self-pacing allowed by the medium, taught the participant a few tricks and tips which were quickly mastered, and almost as quickly rendered out-of-date. But FiresidePD, experienced with colleagues in the comfort of someone’s living room (and facilitated by Josh Gauthier and Jason Bretzmann both of Bretzmann Group), put Adrianne in an environment in which she identify and target specific professional needs, learning skills that she could immediately put to practical use. The comfortable and collegial environment also gave her the opportunity to explore in depth longer term personal learning goals: “It was like a 3 hour lesson planning session where we could bounce ideas off each other.” Adrianne talks about creating a similarly comfortable environment for her students, which is an inspired idea. I wonder whether we can create similar environments for ourselves as self-initiated (determined?) on-going professional development.

Peace –
Wendy Menard (@wmukluk)

Functions are an important part of Algebra and require a lot of abstract thinking on the part of students who may be used to the concreteness arithmetic from earlier grades. Kent Haines decided to put together a blog post that details the activities that he uses. The post, Functions Are Finally Clicking, walks through the activities he does in the beginning days of the unit and the kind of thinking he is trying to foster along the way. “My students have a better understanding of the meaning of a function,” Kent says as he describes his success, “and I have laid the groundwork for some great upcoming work with slope and linear functions.” Before the unit begins, Kent plays a lot of “Guess My Rule”, a game which Michael Pershan expanded on in the post What’s My Function, Rule, or Formula?. Michael’s post is definitely required reading if you’re preparing to use the game. The unit kicks off in earnest with the Function Carnival Desmos activity, followed by a Shell Centre activity on interpreting graphs, and also uses a card sort from Sarah at Math Equals Love. The entire post is interesting for people who teach functions, but it is also valuable to see how a teacher stitches together the various activities that are passed around in the #MTBoS.

Written by Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter)

Every time I visit Steve Wyborney’s blog I’m reminded of how much fun math can be when we just play. Last week, Steve posted his most recent free resource Splat! Part-whole thinking plays a huge roll in the development of students’ number sense and Splat goes right after it.

How many dots are under the Splat?

Big shout out to Steve for sharing all his lessons in a downloadable PowerPoint. While visiting, be sure to check out the links at the bottom of the post to find more of his interactive gems. Steve says that he’s “on a learning mission” and I’m thankful he’s taking us all along.

Written by Graham Fletcher (@gfletchy)

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