Fellow Routines
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Routine ideas from the 2010-11 Fellows
Paul Kehrer
Routine with Michele Bigelow
- Once every 7 Days.
- Students are assigned an initial Problem Set and 4 Skill Builder sets.
- Every student has the opportunity to earn full credit for a quiz grade by properly filling out a correction and work sheet for the problem set.
- The next meeting, students who did not get every problem correct on the first attempt on the previous week's problem set stay in the classroom for review of that material, while the remaining students go to the lab with Paul.
- In the lab, for the first half of class, students work on a special problem set, involving multiple representations.
- Problem stems will be either Verbal, Symbolic, Graphical, or Tabular.
- We will work through a problem together, and then the students will work through a problem on their own, so we can assess their understanding.
- Group discussion will focus on developing strategies for solving problems with different stems.
- After classroom review with their teacher, the other students come to the lab, and everyone starts on the Morph of the previous week, and/or the next week's assignment.
Zachary Broderick
Essay Critiquing
Students are given an ORQ the night before, and several exemplary essays are selected to generate a critique assignment. During class, students are reminded of the rubric and complete the assignment. During the last 15 mins or so of class, Zach puts their critiques up on the projector and discusses them, holding students who were not taking the activity serious accountable by calling on them to justify their critiques. The goal is to get students to recognize a quality open response and what makes it good so that they can transfer these concepts to their own essays.
Small Group
Oak does not separate students by math skill in 7th grade, so during certain investigations the high-acheiving students are taken outside and work with Zach doing more challenging work on the same topic. This prevents them from getting bored covering material they already understand, while giving the lower students an opportunity to participate without having to compete with the high acheivers.
Nightly Homework and Review
When we have access to a projector, we will pull up the Item Report for last night's homework and review the problems students struggled with, which we identify by their low scores on the Item Report. This is sometimes followed up with Mastery Learning or some other reinforcement.
Individual Help
Students go to the computer lab and work on ASSISTments, while Zach moves from student to student providing individual help.
Computer Club
About once a week afterschool for 10 weeks, I taught a "Computer Club" in the lab at Oak. Each class I would cover a different topic and have them experiment. I also set up a phpBB forum to post class notes and allow them to discuss, ask questions, and share their projects. Some of the topics I covered:
Hardware and Storage (rebuilt a computer, talked about bits and bytes and file formats) Programs (how programs works) How the internet works HTML Javascript (which is a great language to start programming with)
Rob Martin
2010-2011 Routine Summary
This routine is based on the use of laptops and separating the class into mulitple sections. We make use of the school laptop cart. Depending on how well the laptops are charged, we will have anywhere between 8 and 12 laptops running at a time.
- Meet once a week.
- Laptops are set up at tables in the back of the room.
- Since there aren't enough laptops for all students to use at once, the class is split into two sections: One group works out back on the laptops while the rest stay in the front with the teacher.
- I create orignal problem sets that the students work on.
- All students have a math notebook in which they record their work while they are going through the problem set.
- Once the student finishes the assignments, they come to me to check their work.
- The student then returns to the front and a new student comes back to take his place.
- Repeat this process until all students have used ASSISTments.
- As students are working, I am checking their progress via the item report simultaneously and assisting students with questions/difficulties.
- At the beginning of class, I also work individually with one of the students, typically going over the previous night's homework.
Problem Set Specifics
This basic idea behind the problem sets is to create a short assessment to pin-point trouble areas that the class is experiencing as well as help solidify comprehension.
- Since we (myself, Janet, and any other teaching assistents) are readily available, problem sets do not have tutoring (unless we use pre-made ones that already include it, but this is uncommon).
- Content is focused on whatever topic the students are currently working on, usually one or two sections.
- All problems are closely based upon the textbook the teacher is using; in this case, the textbook is Everyday Mathematics by Wright Group/McGraw Hill.
- I typically make two problem sets for each visit: A tier 1 set and a tier 2 set.
- Tier 1 problem sets contain a basic assessment of the material. These problems are simple, purely math-based, and look like they would come straight out of a math book.
- Tier 2 problem sets contain short word problems that are designed to be more challenging and add context to the problem. Essentially, they apply the math concepts to real-world problems (in the spirit of the Everyday Mathematics textbook).
- Tier 2 problem sets may also be pure-math questions similar to tier 1 but with an added level of difficulty that is not necessarily covered in the textbook (to test conceptual knowledge by introducing an unfamiliar element).
- For tier 1 sets, I try to be as comprehensive as possible. For example, for the section on Fraction/Decimal/Percent conversions, there are 6 different conversions possible. I made sure to include a question for each.
- If we are covering a more broad range of material, I shoot for a difficulty level of slightly above-average because if students can solve the harder problems, it is a better indicator of comprehension.
- For topics with a narrow range of material, I try and give a range of difficulty to problems. Simple problems require little thinking, while difficult ones most-often require a multi-step solution.
- As of right now, all students focus on the tier 1 set; depending on time constraints, those who finish early are encouraged to move on to tier 2.
Bullet Points
- Big fan.
Zach Pardos
Description of Fellow's Teaching Routine
Millbury Middle School (NRich routine)
- Students meet in the classroom and the teacher reviews their homework, completed on assistments
- Students who got a perfect score are sent to the computer lab with me while the others review the homework solutions
- While in lab, before the other students arrive, we work on a math problem from the NRich site
- The goal is to get students to have fun while doing math
- I help them realize the mathematical concept underlying the solution to the problem
- For NRich problems which are new, I help the students formulate a shared solution that they submit to the web site
- Some NRich solutions are selected for display on the site the next month, which motivates the students
For some of the NRich problems I implemented a solution in code (using MATLAB). Showing students that there is a programatic, methodological approach to solving the problem was interesting to the students.
Peter Swire
Small Groups
At the start of the class, we use our ASSISTments data to divide the students into groups of four or five students. The students know that the groups were based on the previous night's homework, and students often come into class knowing what they need. Mrs. Delaney noted that before ASSISTments, this was not common.
Peter takes one of the groups and reviews the current topic with them. He shows them a few examples, works through a few examples with them, and then observes them while they do a few problems on their own. If a student gets stuck or has trouble doing problems alone, Peter goes back to showing examples and working through examples with the student individually. This process is repeated as needed for each subtopic in a lesson.
Individual Help
Unless everybody is doing very well, Peter or Mrs. Delaney (but not both) will often end up sitting down with a student alone. For example, in one of the small groups a student couldn't remember how to find a common denominator. While the rest of the group was working individually (see the Small Groups section), Peter took a minute to work through a few common denominator problems with that student.
Another example: one of the students who started the year behind the rest of the class broke his writing hand. He had been making great progress, and so to make sure he didn't fall behind again Peter wrote for him and reviewed with him individually. This student had been failing but the next day passed a test 100 percent with a teacher scribing for him.
Matt Dailey
Future Teaching Routine
- The problem of the day bundles that they do on weekends will now be done in class on Fridays
- This will consist of me (Matt) running a lab
- First half Mrs. Moran will send her kids down
- Second half Mr. Bastien will send his kids down
- If students do not get 100%, they will be reassigned it for homework
Jozsef Patvarczki
Computer Game Design
Once a week I worked with the students on Game design using the programs bellow. Interested students worked with me during lunch and worked on their own at home. Students gave presentation at the end of the year.
Game project presentation day (05/18) - AVI
Free online Flash based game creators
- Sploder - ChallengeYou
For more information, see my personal page: Jozsef_Patvarczki
