Education Growth Mindset – So Important for Teachers and Students

I just came back from Kaiserslautern, Germany, where I was working with Department of Defense Education Activities (DoDEA) math teachers as part of the DoDEA/UT Dana Center College and Career Ready Standards Initiative. Our focus this summer, which kicks off the next year of continued support and training, was on helping teachers create a classroom culture of student discourse and a growth mindset that allows students to develop deeper mathematical understanding and become problem-solvers and confident mathematicians. It was a fabulous two days, and the teachers, some who had never explored this idea of ‘growth mindset’, really had some powerful conversations around this idea of providing students productive struggle opportunities and helping them develop this sense that they can solve problems, and they can improve mathematically, and they can learn. It was rather eye opening for many.  How many of us educators have come across those students who give up without even trying because they think they can’t do it? Or they have been so ingrained in the idea that they are ‘bad at math’, so they don’t even try? That’s what this idea is about.

Carol Dweck is a leader is this field of Growth Mindset, and how to motivate and help support this idea of a growth mindset. In fact, the teachers I worked with as part of our workshop, read an article by Dweck that provided some insight into what we as both teachers and parents, inadvertently sometimes do that prevents students/children from having a growth mindset. Something as simple as the way we praise can actually interfere with this growth mindset. More here.

Many of you may be unfamiliar with what a growth mindset is, so I found a great TedTalk from Carol Dweck that explains the idea behind it. As educators, this is something to really think about because we want to develop in our students the willingness to persevere and solve problems that may seem difficult.

 

Free Online Casio How-to’s & Content Focused lessons – Great Personal Learning Resources

I am clearly on a ‘what should you do with your summer’ kick, if you look at my previous two posts. But – my belief is that summer, while a time for fun and relaxation, is also a time to brush up on some skills you may be lacking or things you want to learn, find new ideas for the classroom….basically, use the time to foster your own personal learning.

This learning doesn’t need to be expensive, it doesn’t need to be long – it’s all about improving skills or learning new ones. With that said, I thought I would remind all of you, whether you are a teacher, a student, or a parent of a student – if you want to brush up on your Casio calculator skills, we have a lot of free online tutorials and how-to’s that might fit the bill. In my interactions with teachers, I am often asked if we have ‘tutorials’ so that the teachers can support all those students coming to class with Casio calculators (because they are more affordable and much more intuitive to use).  The answer is yes!

In this post I am just going to share some links to our free online resources, and highlight a couple of the videos here as well.

Casio Education has a Youtube Channel where we post previous webinars (so these are longer and actual ‘lessons’), shorter how-to’s, and some quick reference videos and overviews as well. Here’s the link to the Casio YouTube Channel.

A couple highlights here:

Here is an example of a short look at the fx-9860 Stat menu:

Here is a much longer lesson with the Casio Prizm on families of functions:

There are also Prizm specific guided tours at this link.

And I have my personal YouTube channel where I do comparisons and how-to’s on the different calculators, so there might be something of interest there as well.

Here’s a quick how-to using the fx-991 Scientific Calculator to solve systems of equations (and use the QR code):

So – if you have a spare 10 minutes or a spare hour, there’s something for you and we will continually add to these so come back often!

Summer Vacation – Use Your Experiences to Create Engaging Lesson Ideas

Sea Turtle at the Big Island, HI. How long do they live? How far do they travel??

I know most students and teachers this time of year are very familiar with Alice Cooper’s song “School’s Out for Summer”  (Seniors are probably focused on the line “school’s out forever….”  Maybe even some teachers!)  No doubt, summer is a time of rejuvenation for students and teachers – a much needed break, both mentally and physically. Note: Those of you who do not teach, and see teachers as having it ‘easy’ with the summers off, might try to spend some time in a teachers shoes before making those ridiculous assumptions, or read up a bit on what teachers actually do (they work more than 40 hours per week) and why summer breaks are so important.

Summer break is fast approaching for many, and some may have even started theirs. I remember those first couple of weeks literally not wanting to even look at anything related to school, students, or teaching. But – as most teachers will attest to, there comes a point where summer vacation weaves into professional learning or preparing for the next school year to begin. We never really turn off completely – we take classes to learn something new, or research some new technology or applications we want to try in class next year, or we revamp some lessons from the previous year. Summer vacation always ends up, at some time or other, connected back to teaching and learning – either personally for our own professional growth, or related to how we can be even better the next school year for our new group of students.

For me personally, everything I do always has me thinking of ways to create an interesting lesson for my students. It’s that pervasive idea that whenever possible, connecting the real world back to what students are learning will make the learning engaging and relevant. Just last week, sitting on the beach in Sea Isle City, NJ, watching this big machine out in the water that was dredging sand to replenish Avalon Beach, all I could think about were questions I would want my students to investigate.  Just a few of my questions, as I sat there:

• How much sand is being pulled up? Is it from the same spot (my observation, since the dredge is in a different location each day, is that no it is not)
• What happens to the sea animals and plant life that are ‘dredged’ up with the sand? Or, is there a filter that only allows sand in?
• What are the impacts on the sea life?
• How many hours a day do the dredges run? (seems like 24 hours to me!)
• How long does beach replenishment last? (if you don’t have any storms to wash it all back to sea) How long does it take to replenish a beach?
• How many pounds of sand is needed and where do they place the sand?

Lots of questions just from sitting and watching. What a great #STEM lesson this would be for students – there’s math, there’s science, there’s engineering and there’s definitely technology – it’s quite the endeavor. There is probably a ton of data out there and information about sand restoration projects, so you could have students researching, doing the math, checking out the science, investigating the machines used and the manpower needed. I did an initial search and found a couple articles already where I learned things like the grain size of the sand determines where the dredge pulls sand from (has to match the beach they are replenishing).  Pipelines are created to carry the sand from the dredge to the beach (so, how big are those pipelines? What happens after they ‘finish’ – do the pipes get removed?) Sometimes this is done to protect sea life, often times to protect commercial and residential properties, so this then begs the questions such as what’s the cost (money wise and to the environment), who benefits, what are the potential dangers and damage (to environment/sea life, etc). Here’s just a few articles I found.

• Beach Replenishment
• Beach Nourishment
• Beach Reclamation

My point here is not to give you a lesson on beach restoration. Instead, my point is that I was just sitting on the beach, enjoying my vacation, and saw the

Two clear streams in Costa Rica that when they meet, the chemicals in them react and turn the water blue. Why

machinery and started thinking. Posing questions. Realizing that there could be an amazing #STEM lesson here, which got me excited and doing research and yes – vacation or not – planning for teaching.  I think it is a natural tendency as a teacher to see a ‘lesson’ pretty much anywhere we go, which is what I want to emphasize here. Even on vacation, if you have a great idea based on something you are doing or seeing, some idea you think would be an engaging lesson, go with it. Take some pictures. Write down some ideas. Do some research. Use your own experiences and ‘time off’ to discover teaching ideas and spark your own enthusiasm for the next school year. Bring your vacation into your classroom and build relevant, real-world, multi-content lesson ideas that will spark student engagement, questioning, critical thinking and problem-solving.

Rethinking Summer School – Equity & Promoting Student Learning

Summer school – I know that it conjures up bad thoughts in most of our minds. Having to go to summer school usually means you failed a course or a grade and you have to make it up.  But – do only the ‘failures’ or the ‘bad kids’ need to go to summer school? Is that what summer school is for? This is what most of us think of when we consider summer school, when in reality, summer school should be a place where all students could go to keep on track, get ahead, or learn some new things. Research shows that the 3-month summer break is often a huge learning set-back for many students, particularly minority students and students living in poverty, causing a widening of the achievement gap, in part because these students are often denied opportunities for summer ‘enrichment’ courses or camps. Summer school options are usually focused on remediation and failures, and not very enticing for students to attend voluntarily, and so we have most students taking a 3 month break from any learning. But what if we approached summer school differently? What if it weren’t a punishment, but rather a place where students were motivated by other students or college student mentors and were engaged in new and interesting topics that kept them learning?

I found this really motivating TedTalk by Karim Abouelnaga, who from his own experiences with school, decided to try to change the way we rethink summer school. It’s not too late, even for this year, for those of you educators out there getting ready for this years summer school to consider making some changes that would make summer school a learning opportunity for all students.

Using Pictures on the Casio Prizm CG-50 Graphing Calculator

I previously wrote a post a while back about the power of using pictures to connect mathematics to the real world. In that prior post I talk about the built-in pictures that already come with the Casio Prizm Calculator (CG-50 and CG-10), and wrote down the steps. With our new model out, the CG-50, I thought I should probably revisit this but make a quick how-to video instead just to demonstrate how easy it is and show off how many pictures are there.

Currently in my online course I am teaching, we are exploring transformations, and creating some real-world dynamic math examples, so Ferris Wheels have come up. Which got me remembering the Ferris Wheel picture that is one of the many available. Keep snowballing my thoughts, and you end up with me thinking of all the possible applications you could do with the calculator just using that one picture – i.e. what is the angle of rotation for one of the cars to ‘move’ onto another? Why are there concentric ‘circles’ as part of the structure of the ferris wheel – is this a strength issue? What is the length of one radius of the Ferris wheel (in real life – how could you calculate this from the picture? Is similarity involved?) Whats the distance between each car (measuring from the point they are attached on the Ferris wheel – so, arc length?)  And this is just one picture!

There are also ‘movies’ within the Picture Plot menu that allow you to see moving objects and plot their path as well, so again, some real-life connections to mathematical concepts right at your fingertips. As the school year is drawing to an end, this is definitely a time when you want to assess if students can make those connections of mathematics to the world around them, so exploring these types of pictures is a great way to engage students and provide them a reason for why they were learning all those math concepts. (Hopefully you were doing that all along as part of the learning process, but never too late….)

Here’s a quick video on how to access the pictures and ‘videos’ on the CG-50 Prizm, though the process is the same for the CG10 Prizm as well. Have fun exploring!

Thinking Ahead – Planning for Next Year’s Classroom Culture

I was in Austin all last week training for UT Dana Center (@UTdanacenter) International Fellows
(#UTDCIFF) and Department of Education Activities (@DoDEA) College and Career Ready Initiative teacher workshops happening this summer. A major focus for the week was on classroom culture and how important this is to mathematical learning and student discourse. Everyone at this training was either a current math teacher, a supervisor, mentor, coach, professional development provider, etc., so naturally, as part of the conversation, the following questions/concerns arose:

1. What is classroom culture and why does it matter?
2. How do you get students to talk to each other and engage in productive learning?
3. How do you respond to teachers who say things like, “well, this would never work with my students” or “I can’t get my students to talk about math when we are in groups”…

You get the picture, and I am sure you have either thought these things or heard these from teachers you work with.

The short answer – it takes planning, training, and consistency. If a teacher thinks that they can just put students into groups, give them a problem, and they are going to immediately start talking and working together, they are very quickly in for a big surprise. Especially that first time, and especially if you have never done these types of collaborative learning with your students. Which brings us back to classroom culture.  What is it and why does it matter?

There are many definitions out there of classroom culture. I will give you my perspective. Classroom culture is a classroom environment where students feel safe making mistakes, they are comfortable sharing their thinking process with other students and with the teacher, and all ideas are entertained and acknowledged. Everyone’s voice is heard, everyone gets a chance to participate, and there is respectful conversations and debate about the work being done.  This matters because then students are given permission to persevere in problem solving situations where they may not know the answer, or may have a different approach then someone else or may have a question about something another student or the teacher has shared. It ties into those mathematical practices (#1 & #3, just to name a couple):

• Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
• Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others

But, this type of engagement, discourse and collaboration with and among students doesn’t just happen. Here are what I consider the three basic elements:

1. Planning

Planning entails thinking about the structures you want to use with students (so pairs, small groups, whole class) and the types of discussions and work you want to students to engage in. There is more to it than this, but some things to think about are

• What task are students working on and what is the goal (a worksheet of 40 problems is NOT going to promote student discussion). Provide a rich task that fosters critical thinking, questioning, problem-solving.
• How do you want students to engage? Are they talking in pairs first and then sharing with the small group? Does each pair/group need to show some product (i.e. their work, their thinking, the end result).
• How will you bring the whole class together at the end? Will each group share out? Will you hang work and have a ‘gallery walk’ and come together to share?
• How will you know that students have learned or reached the goal? What should students be able to do?

You need to think of these things ahead of time, most importantly because without an engaging, rich, though provoking problem, the conversations students have won’t be productive (and can lead to all the issues mentioned previously).

2. Training

How do you get students to talk about math (or any subject?) How do you get students to work in pairs or small groups and stay focused on a task? How do you get students to listen to each other and to provide critiques without insult (i.e. no ‘that’s stupid’ or “you’re an idiot”). It takes training.  I mean that literally. You have to show and model what it is you expect of them and practice, practice, practice.  Again, there is more to this than what I am listing, but here are some ideas:

• Start those first few days/weeks of school with non-content related activities that are non-threatening, fun, and where everyone feels comfortable sharing (so talk about ‘the best horror movie’ or argue for/against a ‘beach is the best place to vacation’)
• Set up group norms – i.e. if someone is talking, everyone else is listening; everyone makes mistakes, and that’s okay, you can support them and provide alternatives, but never insult them; everyone must contribute one idea; everyone’s idea should be heard; you can disagree but must provide a reason why; etc.
• Show them how to get into small groups (so physically moving desks back and forth – it’s fun to do this a timed game); show them and practice how to talk with elbow partners, or face-partners, or the people next to them.  Practice sharing talk-time (a time works here).
• Show them and practice group ‘roles’ – i.e. timer, recorder, controller, group spokesperson, etc. Switch roles up.
• Practice different ways of calling on students (so they know they are all responsible at any time) – so person in the group/pair with the shortest hair, or the darkest colored shirt, or blue eyes….really anything works.

There are obviously lots more ways to set up these collaborative processes, but the idea behind training is that there are some expectations for talking, sharing, and working together, and if we practice these and adhere to these, then our time learning is going to be more positive and productive. Practice, practice, practice.  Which leads to consistency.

3. Consistency

I know teachers here this all the time – if you set boundaries for your classroom, you need to be consistent or students will not follow them (heck, this is true for parents as well!). Again – those first few days and weeks of school are where you set these boundaries up and start practicing with students and modeling both behaviors and actions. More importantly, follow through on any consequences. For classroom culture, this means if you have an expectation that students listen when others are talking, whether that be student or teacher, then be consistent.  If you are talking and they are not listening, stop – call it out – and then talk again. Same thing for students talking. Acknowledge when something is not adhering to expectations and call it out and then refer back to your expectations. Students very quickly learn what is expected, and if they realize that you are going to consistently hold them to these expectations, such as listening, allowing for mistakes, everyone’s ideas matter, etc., then they are going to feel comfortable speaking up and sharing their questions and their solutions/ideas. It becomes a classroom where learning is up front and center and ‘we are in this together’ becomes the norm.

CHALLENGE

I plan to do some more specific posts about classroom culture and provide some resources connected to planning and training. For now, I brought this idea of classroom culture up at the end of a school year because as teachers, you are about to embark on a summer of rest and relaxation. For most teachers I know, it is also a time where we do some personal learning and planning for next year. I would like to challenge all of you to really think about how you want your classroom culture to be next year. You need to start on day one of school creating this classroom culture, so spend some time this summer planning for that. What structures do you feel you could incorporate (i.e. pair work, small groups, etc.) and learn about those structures. What are rich tasks and go find some that would work for the content you teach. What do you want students doing when they are learning together? Go find some tips and ideas for how to create those collaborative discussions and problem-solving environments.

Only YOU can change the classroom culture in your own classroom – so think about what you want that to look like and sound like, and spend some of your summer learning and finding ways to foster this culture in your classroom when school starts in September (or August).

Exam Mode on the Prizm CG50 Graphing Calculator

As my last post stated, it’s that time of year for standardized testing. As part of this, certain states require that students use calculators that have been set to exam mode. This means that certain features of the calculator have been ‘turned off’ or are inaccessible to students while the exam is going on.  I remember spending hours setting all my calculators to exam mode for students and then having to spend hours undoing that once exams were over – quite a pain.

The beautiful thing about the CG50 Prizm graphing calculator is that you never have to undo the exam mode – it will automatically turn off exam mode after 12 hours. Which means, you can set it, students can take their test, and then next day, the calculator is ready to go again with full functionality restored.  Another nice feature is that when the calculator is in exam mode, you can actually see it on the screen – there is a green highlighted border when in exam mode. This makes it easy to walk around and visually check that the calculators are indeed still in exam mode (or were set to exam mode to begin with, if you have your students do the process for you).

I made a quick video on how to put a CG50 Prizm into exam mode. I apologize for the lighting – very hard to film the actual calculator (vs. emulator) while holding my computer video camera…and those shadows?!!  But – hopefully you can get the gist of things!!