Fun With A Name Tent

As I ask my new students to make a name tent with an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper on the first day of Summer Academy, I think, "Let's have a little competition." This wasn't in my lesson plan. Ha!

If you haven't noticed, I have become obsessed with classroom competitions. Here are two posts in case you missed them:
Fun With A Dot and A Line
Fun With A Sticky

Therefore, I'm adding today's post of Fun With A Name Tent to the "Fun With A" series. A name tent looks like this:

I use name tents for teacher trainings or on the first week of class with students so I can quickly learn their names. Right as I tell my new students to make a name tent, I announce, "Let's see who can fold their name tent into the best thirds?"

Game on!

If you have read (or remember) my two posts from above, you know this activity will go something like this:

• Students get time to create their best thirds.
• Students decide in their group (of four) who has the best name tent.
• Students vote (whole group) by eyeballing the tents and make a prioritized list. 
• Students define how we decide the best thirds.
• Students define what to measure.

Here are some whiteboard shots of my lazy writing as I quickly jot down what students say. It's fascinating.

I handed each group a name tent that was in the running for the best thirds. Some groups used inches and some groups used centimeters to measure.

I didn't care nor tell them what unit of measurement to use. I walked around and questioned which unit of measurement they were using and asked them to explain why they chose that specific unit of measurement. We later had a discussion (almost arguments) about which made more sense for this task. Most students eventually were convinced by their peers that centimeters would be more accurate here. My second class had two tents that were extremely close, but couldn't tell which was better:

We had to compare 0.5 centimeters to 0.25 inches to see who had the smallest error, Leyla or Srihitha? It was awesome! We had to decide if we wanted to convert the inches to centimeters or vice versa. You can see that Leyla won by 0.135 centimeters. DANG! Those are some good folds.

Next, I introduced them to Estimation 180 by estimating my height. They'll be keeping track of their estimates in their compositions books.

My favorite part was this exchange:

Brianna: Will you tell us your height?

Me: No.

Brianna: What?

Class (disappointed): Ohhhhh!

Brianna: That's not fair. Then why are we doing all this work?

Me: I understand. I said I'm not telling you my height.

And then BAM! I take out my measuring tape!

Me: Brianna, stand on your desk chair and you can measure how tall I am.

Brianna: Oh, cool! 

We proceed to estimate my wife's height and then we estimate the TOTAL height of the class. This was fun. I asked, "What would be useful to know and how would we go about getting it?" borrowed from Dan.

My favorite was Mansi. She suggested that we multiply the number of students (20) by 5 feet since most students were about 5 feet tall. Then we add or subtract the difference of each student's height in relationship to 5 feet. We started a Mansi column in our Google spreadsheet. This would make for a pretty cool lesson on integers.

Before we went outside, I had the students get in order from what they thought was shortest to tallest. If you keep track of the data in a spreadsheet, use the spreadsheet to verify their order: another great tool from a spreadsheet.

With this organized data, you could do a lesson on mean, median, mode, and range. Even mean absolute deviation if you're up to it. Another great part was Dylan noticing a student was absent today. "We don't know the height of the kid who isn't here today."

You could take this task and apply the mean or the mode. Have students predict the height of the absent kid. Furthermore, you could segue into probability if you like. What are the chances the absent kid is the mean height? the mode height?

How sweet of my first class, they wanted to include my height in the total height. We went outside and looked for an area long enough to fit our calculated total height of approximately 103 feet.

We went a little bit past 103 feet because some students were considerate enough to avoid placing their feet next to someone else's head. The dismissal time was rapidly approaching so I let it slide. One clap on three for Reese. She had the closest estimate of 102 feet.

One. Two. Three.

CLAP!

Thirds,
1050

A Few Updates

Update 1:
I finally finished Act 3 for my Deodorant lesson. I hope you check it out and can give me some feedback; I think it could be much better with your help. If nothing else, check out how long it took to use 5 sticks of deodorant. Mathematical Modeling should really be at the forefront of this task. It might appear linear, but I would bet a year's supply of deodorant that an adolescent's deodorant use will be far different than mine. I also guarantee students will think of variables ranging from climate to age to geographical location to genetics to more. I think you'll have some excellent conversations with the deodorant task. My favorite part is the sequel: How many sticks of deodorant would one use in a lifetime?

Way back when this task first started, I opened up a little estimation competition in the comments at 101qs. Don't listen to a word Nathan Kraft says. The person with the closest guess would win an Estimation 180 prize. With so many close estimates, the following gentlemen will be the first to receive the new Estimation 180 stickers, hot off the press!

Congratulations to:
1st place: Chris Robinson (May 14, 2014)
2nd place: Robert Kaplinsky (May 5, 2014)
2nd place: Michael Fenton (May 15, 2014)
3rd place: James Cleveland (May 3, 2014)

Update 2:
Estimation 180 will be getting a facelift and other updates over the summer. Here are a few things to look out for:

• New logo
• New fields for entering student estimates
• Clean spreadsheets containing "other estimates"
• Updated Lessons
• Search by Categories
• Sentence frames for student reasoning

I'm most excited about the last update; sentence frames. I occasionally browse over student responses and notice many students entered "I guessed." I think it would be extremely helpful for teachers to provide their students with sentence frames in order to better articulate their reasoning. I will be focusing on this tool in upcoming presentations and workshops.

The new logo was done by my niece. I love her simple design, the two 180 degree arrows, the metric reference, and her idea to transform me into a stick man. That reminds me, I still owe her a pizza!

I hope to get a few t-shirts made too. You can sport them at your next PLC, department meeting, casual Friday, or math conference. Any takers?

Update 3:
I've accepted a Teacher On Special Assignment (TOSA) position with my district for next year. It's a bittersweet feeling at this point. On one hand, I'm very excited because I'll be working at various secondary sites throughout my district, collaborating with other math teachers, helping design lessons and implementing various technology. My official title will be a Digital Learning Coach. I hope to seek advice from people like John Stevens, who have been doing this for some time now. As I pack up my room, I already miss my own classroom and students. However, I look forward to learning a great deal from the teachers I will be fortunate to work with and the students I'll be able to interact with at each site.

Updates,
243

Going Round In Circles

Whenever I start talking about circles with my students, I use this little wager.

I get students to pick one of the three choices and work the room, looking for a brave student I know will deliver my nachos. I talk up the nachos (and the circumference) as much as possible. Anywhere from 90 to 100 percentage of students will say the circumference is shorter than the height of the water bottle. Let's see if I win nachos or I let my students go to lunch early.

Okay, so double or nothing? I don't bring in this glass, but I do use a taller cup with a really small circular base. Where do you stand on the double-or-nothing wage? Did I give you enough information to take the bet? With a glass like this, you should get at least one student to keep you honest and ask which circumference of the glass you'll be measuring.

This little wager (activity) allows me a quick introduction and fun application of circumference. Somewhere I'll discuss vocabulary and formulas with students while giving them a graphic organizer they can fill out.

I'll usually do an activity where students measure the circumference and diameter of objects in order to discover the relationship of Pi. Stuff very similar to Fawn's Friday Bubbles. Note to self, use Excel (or a spreadsheet) to keep track of those measurements. I've also explored Rolling Tires in the past. This year, I brought the wheel to the class for a small activity. A physical wheel. The wheel from my son's wheelbarrow.

The small activity was for students to guess how many rotations this wheel (8-inch diameter) would make from one wall of my class to the other wall. Students were able to see how circumference can take on the meaning of a tire rotation, hence the graphic I made above. It was sweet to see students roll the wheel across my 21-foot long room and actually get 10 rotations like the math predicted. If you have a wheel like this, bring it in and do this activity.

We also did these awesome lessons. And. I. Mean. AWESOME!
Pizza Pi by Mathalicious and
Penny Circles from Team Desmos and Dan Meyer.

There's so much to do with circles and so little time. 

Round and round,
945

Fun With A Sticky

Earlier this year, I wrote about Fun With A Dot and A Line, a Math 6 lesson I loved because it had:

• A simple question/task.
• A competition.
• Student creativity.
• Students assessing the work of each other (accountability).
• Students defining the necessary vocabulary/rules.
• Students determining the necessary tools to help solve the task. 

As my 7^th graders approached surface area, I prepared a few activities in preparation for File Cabinet. Here is one of those activities. I give you Fun With A Sticky:

Launch:

Hand each student a 3” x 3” sticky as they enter. Post the following on the board:

Explore (creativity):

A few students might do something like this.

Give the class a hint or two (if they need it):

1. This can be done with four lines.
2. Think Tic-Tac-Toe

Here's what we're going for:

If a student is still clueless, encourage them to look around and see what their classmates are doing. As the teacher, keep your eyes peeled for students who are approaching this with some creativity. Sarah and Pricila used the straightedge of their binders to draw lines. Gerardo tried folding the sticky in thirds like this.  

Student accountability:

When done, have each student write their name on the back of the sticky. Have each group of 3-4 students decide who has the best 9 squares and bring that one sticky up to the teacher. In no particular order, place them under the document camera for all students to see. Without sharing, ask each student to quietly (mentally) pick the top 2 stickies they feel have the best 9 squares. 

Vocabulary/Rules:

Ask students for input. 

Me: "Without telling me which stickies you’ve picked, how are you determining which sticky has the best 9 squares?" 

Jesus: They drew straight lines.

Carla: They are perfect squares.

Have the class define a perfect square.

Carla: Each side is the same length

I now had students take their top 2 and pick their favorite one. Somehow get your students to vote; little sheets of scratch paper, SmartBoard Responders, iPads, etc. I labeled each sticky alphabetically to avoid “this” sticky and “that” sticky. I had each student stand up. I then said, "Sit down when I say the letter of your sticky with the best 9 squares."

Necessary Tools:

They narrowed it down to about 3 stickies and gave great rules for finding the best 9 squares.

Me: What tools can I use to make it even more precise?

Student: A ruler. 

Me: Ok. What do I measure and what am I looking for on these stickies?

Here’s where you get students to discuss (or discover) how each square should have a width of 1 inch and a length of 1 inch. In other words, you’re defining a square inch with your students. Okay, there will be some "squares" that are just garbage and can be eliminated by eyeballing them. However, here's where you get to be dramatic with your students. Get them worked up. Ask them which ones you should measure. Mess with them a little and joke with them how they're unable to determine the correct "squares". Have fun with it. Either way, make sure students see the squares being measured. If I had more time, I could have redistributed the stickies and passed out rulers for the students to measure each other's "squares". You can see from this picture that the winning sticky note had a total of 3 "perfect squares."

Congratulations to my winners! They received a brand-new whiteboard marker.

Here’s the icing on the cake (and lesson design telling me something wonderful just happened):

• Itzco wanted a chance to do it again. He'd been sleepy in class all week.
• Genesis wanted a ruler if we did a second round. Let's just say her attitude toward math all week was subpar and she has difficulty being a self-starter.
• Students wanted a chance to improve and try again. Especially students who initially drew ridiculous "squares".

There it is, Fun With A Sticky. Here's that list one more time:

• A simple question/task.
• A competition.
• Student creativity.
• Students assessing the work of each other (accountability).
• Students defining the necessary vocabulary/rules.
• Students determining the necessary tools to help solve the task. 

Sticky,

846

SBAC on Steroids?

California is an SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) state. This last week my school started the SBAC Field Tests and I was a Test Administrator for my 7th grade classes. Before I continue, let me post part of the Security Affidavit I had to sign.

That's right, I will not divulge the contents of the field test. However, I will first refer you to last year's post where I made a video comparing released CST questions and SBAC practice questions.  Here's a reminder (screen shot), comparing just two questions. 

This week, I felt like my students were looking at SBAC practice questions that were on steroids. Since I can't speak about the SBAC Field Test questions, I took my Deodorant 3 Act task and put what I think the SBAC steroid version might look like. I have nothing against SBAC. I tried to create a similar task that had rigor, complexity, and mathematical modeling.

First, my Deodorant task goes like this:

Act 1: How long will it take to use all of that deodorant?

Act 2: Data from the first 4 sticks. 

Act 3: The answer is still in the works. 

Sequel: How many sticks of deodorant would a person use in one lifetime?

Here's how I'd see this same task presented SBAC-on-steroids-style. 

I walked away this week, thinking our students need to do many things.

1. Read the story. 
2. Decode the text.
3. Understand the question.
4. Organize the data.
5. Retrieve and access the correct skill(s) or skill set.
6. Apply the necessary skills.
7. Perform the correct operations with the above skills.
8. Interpret their answer.
9. Explain (and articulate) their answer.

As a teacher of many ELD students, I can safely say that the following steps are already challenging; 1, 2, 3, 8, and 9. Don't get me wrong. I believe in literacy, but I wouldn't want language to be a barrier when assessing a student's mathematical abilities.

Hear this though: Students must make sense of the problem before they can use mathematical modeling to predict the answer. Then, they must articulate how they got their answer. I would consider this expectation the new norm.

I'm not done. I could totally see SBAC taking this deodorant task and creating an additional question that would complete my 3 Act. Check out this doozy.

We're looking for students to drag numbers to both axes, use a line of best fit, make a mathematical prediction, and explain everything again. The only thing I left out of this question was for students to write an equation for the line they draw. 

I have more to say about this, but that's enough for now. I'm already thinking about how to better prepare my students for these types of questions, which should be my next post. If you have any thoughts, please share. If you've made it this far, here's a preview of Act 3 for my deodorant task. Don't worry, I keep my shirt on!

Steroids,

1158

Get Students to Argue in Math Class

I recently submitted my speaker proposals for both 2014 CMC conferences. One of my proposals is for the following session:
Title: "Get Students Arguing in Math Class with Number Sense Activities."
Description: Get students to productively argue about math situations. Participate in number sense activities requiring students to construct viable arguments, critique the reasoning of others, and use sense-making. Get ready to throw down.

I also had to answer a few questions justifying the session and connecting it to the CCSS and 8 Mathematical Practices. I provided the following connection:
The presenter will use number sense activities to get participants to construct viable arguments and share their reasoning like students. Using presenter-made tasks (Estimation 180) and other online resources appropriate for grades 3-8, attendees will be able to see the importance of student reasoning and creating productive discourse in the classroom. Teachers will also be provided with sentence frames and stems for all students, especially English language learners.

I'm really excited at the thought of this session getting accepted so I figured I would jot down a few ideas here and see what you all have to contribute. Even if I'm not accepted, I think every math class has to have students productively arguing at times. Doing estimation challenges with my students has been so beneficial for them to get better at the art of arguing. However, I know it could be better. I'm not sure if you've ever experienced it before, but it's a treat to stand off to the side or in back of a group of students arguing about a question in math. They have no idea you're nearby because they are so caught up in the argument. Don't get me wrong, it's not like they're swearing at each other and calling each other names. They are having a rich discussion, sharing conjectures, examples, counterexamples, etc. and I have the pleasure of spectating. I usually turn to an innocent bystander (nearby student) and whisper, "Awesome, look at them arguing. Isn't it great?" The student usually looks shocked that I'm happy their classmates are arguing. I love it!

I'd like this session to place a big emphasis on two mathematical practices:
MP 3: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
MP 1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

I plan to break these two practices down more in my session. For now, I feel I need to focus on three major parts to arguments: having excellent content, capturing the arguments, and indirect facilitation.

Content: There's a wealth of content available, but I think the more controversial the point of contention, the better. One of my favorite moments in math class was when we did Mathalicious' Datelines lesson. Students were arguing about which celebrity shouldn't date another celebrity because of the age discrepancy. Some students disagreed about the rule of (n/2) + 7, especially since I was teaching 14 year-olds at the time. It was awesome.
Here's my current list of resources that have given my students great things to argue about:

• Estimation 180
• Mathalicious
• Would You Rather 
• by John Stevens

My kids went nuts arguing about a similar question to this "Would You Rather" found here.

These don't have to be full-on lessons. They can be warm-ups, math talks, used during classroom transitions or to break up your direct instruction, etc. I'm really looking forward to using @MathCurmudgeon's site MathArguments180.com
Imagine your students arguing about which student should pack your parachute based on this data.

Another up and coming resource is Open Middle by Robert Kaplinsky and Nanette Johnson.

What resources would you add to my content list?

Capture: I need to capture these arguments for a few reasons. Students need to listen to other students argue, especially from different classes. My memory is very porous, and I can't remember what students say verbatim. Students can listen to the recordings and pick a side, or provide their own agreement or dissent. I'd also love to share student arguments with other teachers, especially at this session. How do I capture this?

I just downloaded Voice Memos for iPad onto my school iPad. I will test it out next week with students. Wish me luck. Here are the features I'm optimistic about:

• It will record in the background while another app is running.
• It was $1.
• I can pause the recording.
• I can trim audio clips.
• I can sync with Dropbox.

Have any tips for capturing student arguments?

Facilitation: Here's where I need to do a better job. For many of my students, English can get in the way of them articulating their point. I'd like for students to listen better to each other and respond accordingly. I want to hear what they have to say. I want them to be a contender in their disagreement, but I don't want them to be held back because of language deficiencies. Therefore, I need to provide them with sentence starters and stems. Fortunately, these can be used with any student. Here's a few:

• My opinion about this is _____________.
• I could argue that _____________.
• I disagree with your statement that _____________ because _____________.

Have any stems or sentence frames you're already using with students to help them articulate their thoughts?

Argue,
339

NCSM 2014 Day 1

Day 1 of NCSM was yesterday and here’s something I found interesting. Robert Kaplinsky, Dave Chamberlain, and I were walking back to our hotel room from the conference and I saw this clearance sign to the entrance of our hotel. I have been known to do estimation challenges before with clearance heights, not once, but twice.

I thought to myself, "There's NO WAY that thing is 6 foot 4 inches!"

I walked up to it and thought I should hit my head. Nope.

Okay, I’ll stand on my toes. Nope.

Okay, what’s going on here?

Why is this mislabeled? What’s your theory?

I’ll admit, this made me a little suspicious of the other clearance height challenges I’ve captured. Is this worthy of Estimation 180?

Photo bomb!

Suspect,

852

The Broadcaster and The Artist

We have a 30-minute intervention period four days a week at my school as part of our RtI program. Monday and Tuesday are slotted for math intervention. Thursday and Friday are slotted for Language Arts intervention. The students that report to me on Friday are supposed to participate in some type of activity that helps them improve with collaboration and/or communication. Here's a quick little activity we did last week you can try with your students. It's really cool to see how the students communicate with each other.

I made these two slides in Keynote.

I took my students to the outside lunch tables to sit across from their partner. One partner (artist) had a blank sheet of paper and their partner (broadcaster) had one of the sheets pictured above.

Job Descriptions:
Broadcaster: without showing the artist the sheet of paper, use descriptive language to help them draw the picture in front of you. You can't touch the artist's paper or point where anything should be drawn.

Artist: follow the directions of the broadcaster and ask any clarifying questions.

Add or subtract any rules you'd like. When groups are finished, have them compare their drawing with the original. After they see how accurate or inaccurate they were and have a good laugh, switch roles. If they had the yellow sheet during round 1, their group now gets the blue sheet during round 2.

The fun part is having each group pick their favorite drawing and we do a little competition back in class. I display their drawings using the document camera and we share some compliments and some good laughs. Hope you give it a shot.

Some Student work:

Broadcast,
1107

4!

Me: I need two volunteers. You have no idea what you're doing. Thanks Brianna and Jesus. Go stand in front of the whiteboard on the side of the room. You are the two contestants in today's Spelling Bee.

This is how I opened today's lesson. Wait. A Spelling Bee in math class? I address the audience:

Me: I need your help. I am going to ask you a question. The answer is a number. I am not interested in any categories like gender, height, age, birthday, first name, last name, etc. For my Spelling Bee, I need you to take my contestants and order them for me. What's the maximum amount of ways I could order these two contestants?

Students have time to think and some quickly raise their hand to say, "Two."

Me: Show me. Tell us what they are.

Student: Right now Brianna is first. Jesus is second. We could switch them and Jesus goes first.

Me: [looking at Brianna and Jesus] Do what she said.

Brianna and Jesus switch order.

Me: Have I maxed out all the possible combinations for ordering Brianna and Jesus?

Class: Yes!

For a little comic relief, I toss Jesus an easy word to spell.

Me: Jesus, spell "cat".

Jesus: C-A-T

Me: Wait. What?

I learned today that most kids don't know how a spelling bee works, so I call on a few kids to explain the three steps:

1. Say the word.
2. Spell the word.
3. Repeat the word.

Me: Jesus, let's try this again. Spell "cat".

Jesus: Cat. C-A-T. Cat.

Me: Bri, spell "discombobulate".

Brianna: Ughhhhhhh. What?!

Me: Okay, can I get a third contestant for our spelling bee? Jesus, since you're the winner, please pick someone. 

Standing in front of the audience, I now have Jesus, Brianna, and Garry.

Me: Okay, let's say their current order is one possible combination. Let's keep Jesus first. Can you get any other combinations with Jesus being first?

Student: Yea, switch Bri and Garry. 

I look at Bri and Garry.

Me: Do it! Okay we now have two possible combinations. Have we maxed out the possible combinations with Jesus being first or can we get more?

Class: We're maxed out.

Me: Okay, someone give me a new combination.

Student: Put Brianna first this time. Then Jesus. Then Garry.

Me: Okay, we now have three combinations. Can we get more where Brianna is first?

I repeat this process until the class has agreed we maxed out our combinations with six total. Great. I toss this information in a table like this to keep track of it.

Me: So what if I add a fourth contestant to the spelling bee? 

Sarah: No!

Me: Really Sarah? What? Are we going to have more or less combinations?

Sarah: More.

Me: Gimme some guesses everyone. Toss something out there for fun. How many combinations could we get with four people in the spelling contest?

Students tell me 8, 10, 9, 12, 16, 13 and I write all of them up on the board. I ask for some quick reasoning behind the guesses.

Me: Ok, thanks. You all can't be right. Instead of moving people around, let's do this instead. 

I gave each group a sandwich bag with four different colored snap cubes: red, green, blue, yellow. Students were to work in their groups to figure out all the possible combinations of four colors. They were to write it down in their notes for the day. I circulated the room, noticing student work.

For groups that think they're done, but wrong (like only 12 combinations):
I zone in on one combination and keep their two colors fixed, "Have you maxed out all the combinations with these two at the front?" Usually this is the only nudge they need to get closer to the correct number of combinations.

For groups that are on track:
I make it obvious I note their work, or ask for a quick explanation, or I quickly move to another group.

Groups that finish and have the correct answer:
I have them explain their work, organization, process, and reasoning. I ask if they feel confident and usually they do. I'm not going to string them along. I respond, "That makes sense to me." followed by:

Me: So what if I gave you a fifth color?

Student: [typical response] Ughhh. 

Me: Oh, what's wrong?

Student: That's a lot of work.

Me: I know, right? I'm right there with ya. I wouldn't want to write out all those possible combinations either. So, your job is to try and figure out a shortcut. In other words, if I just gave you four colors right now, how could we quickly get 24 combinations without writing them all out. If I'm now giving you five colors, what would be a quick way to figure out all the possible combinations?

Once I see that most groups have reached the magic number (24), I show them this and have them count.

Me: One clap on three for the closest guess. 

1-2-3 CLAP!

Many kids see that 4 groups of six combinations yields 24 combinations. I toss 24 into our table and ask the whole class about finding the possible combinations for five colors. Typically, the students want to avoid this nonsense and express some noise of rebellion.

Me: What's wrong? You guys don't want to write out all the combinations? Well, let's try and find a shortcut. Do we see anything from our table that might help us?

To my pleasant surprise, at least one kid in each of the three participating classes found the following relationship:

Abraham, Brianna, and Daisy: You take the previous "Combos" result and multiply it by the diagonal "Colors" amount to get the new amount of "Combos."

Me: Let's see if that works.

It does. Great!

Me: Okay hot shots! This is a great shortcut. What if our principal walked in and gave us 13 colors. How would I quickly figure out the total number of combinations since I don't have the number of combinations from 12 colors?

Here's where I introduced the use of factorials. Yes, I could have spent time getting the kids to look for this pattern, but I simply didn't have or make the time. I felt it was a good place to show them that putting the factorial symbol after a number means to multiply it by all of the natural numbers less than the given number.

4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24

Me: So if our principal walked in and said, "Find all the combinations of 13 colors." we'd go thirteen...

Class: ...times twelve, times eleven, times ten, times nine...

In reflection, this lesson created more successes for my students than I anticipated. Some include:

• Discovering patterns and relationships within a table,
• Creating a need for the factorial of a number,
• Adding another vocabulary term to our tool belt, and
• Finding combinations more efficiently.

This lesson started with a low-entry of two students and two combinations.
We built in the next part by finding six combinations for 3 students.
We built in a guess for the combinations of four students so they can invest in the question and look for patterns.
We manipulated four colors, organized our combinations, made conjectures, and arrived at a reasonable answer that maxed out the combinations.
We pushed those students who finished early to discover a shortcut on their own.
We created a need for avoiding excessive work with larger numbers and a need for some type of formula (factorials) that will get us the same result.

I came into this lesson with a rusty understanding of factorials, probability, and combinations. Anyone who is against Common Core State Standards, think again! It's making math teachers know their content better, so they can better serve their students. It's opening the door for students to reason their way in math class. I'm not blogging to get into the importance of CCSS right now. However, I'm convinced this was way better than me standing in front of the students telling them to put an exclamation point after 4 (like this 4!) and to just multiply 4 by 3 by 2 by 1 to get all the possible combinations of four somethings. Instead, the students discovered the relationship (pattern) within the table and felt confident in discovering the total combinations of five colors without drawing them all out.

Factorial,
848!

My Crush on Google Forms

No matter who you are, who you teach, what you teach, and what type of school demographic you teach, teachers always have to account for student behavior and classroom management. Likewise, you might be the most engaging teacher, have the most awesome lessons, and/or have a lot of students who adore your every sneeze, but we can all benefit from keeping track of student progress. Enter my crush on Google forms/docs/drive this semester for two reasons.

After-School Help
Nothing complicated. When students show up after school for math support (voluntarily or involuntarily), I have a quick way to keep track of who showed up and how long they stayed. The "miscellaneous notes" section is helpful for tracking students' skills or questions they might have, etc.

This can also be helpful when working with parents if you have an action plan for their child to receive additional support outside of class time. The last thing I want to do is create more work with these forms. When students show up, I have them write their name on the board and the time they depart so I can quickly enter their work time. This is a short and sweet form. Let's move on. 

Behavior Log
The purpose of the form is to log any interaction I have with a student as a result of being off-task, misbehaving, or anything else that disrupts the learning process. The purpose of this Google form is not to curb bad behavior. However, I will say it can be effective to fill out the form together with the student. Tread lightly: don't make a show of it in front of their classmates or project it up on the screen for all to see.

Behaviors:
This is not an exhaustive list of classroom (mis)behaviors. However, think how easy and efficient it is to check common behaviors. When filling this out with the student, it helps to have them identify what behavior disrupted the learning process. The "other" option takes care of anything you can't foresee your students doing. Always nice to have.

Action Taken:
My school expects teachers to handle as much classroom management issues as possible by having us layout a progressive discipline procedure with our students. As you can see, my list under "Action(s) Taken" seems pretty progressive, or at least I think so. For me, the most meaningful and effective action is the "Student-teacher conference." Whatever your fancy is, create a list of actions you usually find yourself doing and make them checkboxes. Don't forget the "other" section.

If this happens again...
I have a really porous memory so this section is a lifesaver. You're telling the future you what to do if a student repeats their behavior. I can't tell you how many times I just open the Google responses for my log, press Command-F (for find), type the student's name, and BAM! I have what they previously did and what we agreed on as the next step in progressive discipline.

Additional Notes
I sometimes use this to make a note about the student responding well to a warning, the details of a student-teacher conference, or the actual incident itself. It's there for what you need it for.

Final thought:
Create a shortcut in your browser for these Google forms. If you're out in the wild with an iPad, create a shortcut there too.

Don't get me wrong people, I'm not bragging about student discipline with this post. I believe that most student misbehavior can be prevented by providing students meaningful/engaging learning experiences, classroom boundaries, and routines. Mix this with a lot of preventative-maintenance teacher moves and students typically stay on task and out of trouble.  But we can do more than that.

PBIS
Our school has also required every teacher to include a Positive Behavior Incentive System (PBIS) in their classroom. Students earn some type of token for positive contributions to the learning environment and can cash them in for prizes that range from candy, to sitting in the computer chair, to a bag of chips, to an Expo marker, to picking something from the mystery box.

Students used to earn stickers in my class for positive behavior, where they could cash in the stickers for prizes. It was a hassle for all of us. Recently, a colleague went to a conference and shared a PBIS idea I've found to be pretty effective. I hand out small "Thank You" notes printed on scratch paper. Students save them and can cash them in. So far, so good.

My goal of this post was to encourage you to look into Google forms for efficiently keeping track of student interactions. If you have others, please share.

Crush,
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