There has been a running debate on our campus about the importance of memorizing multiplication tables. Pro: The state test doesn’t allow calculators, so students need to multiply without a calculator. It’s the math equivalent to English/Language Arts teachers’ alphabet: the building blocks necessary to accomplish bigger things. Automaticity increases performance on multi-step problems. If students have to stop to… Read more →
Two interesting reads: To See Increases in Student Achievement in 1:1/BYOD Classrooms, Teachers Must be Given Curriculum with Technology Activities Baked in, from The Journal asserts that research shows that technology devices in the classroom will not improve student performance unless the technology is inherent in the curriculum — not just an add-on. Success requires “60 percent to 75 percent… Read more →
A recurring theme in Dan Meyer’s blog is capturing the educational opportunities that technology brings to our classrooms. There is a subset of American teachers who are technology reactionaries. They point out that the classrooms of their youth functioned without computers, iPods, LCD projectors, and PowerPoint presentations. Back then, someone turned the knob to advance the filmstrip when they heard… Read more →
In our campus leadership meeting this month, we discussed how to sustain transformation. Our campus has championed some big changes in attitude and practice as we’ve worked to implement PLCs at Work in the model of Solution Tree. We read the article Sustaining Improvement Efforts Over the Long Run by Craig Jerald and listed some of the keys to keep… Read more →
This month’s book study chapter addressed the messages we send with our classroom management. If we demand academic excellence, we should also demand behavioral excellence. We want students to exactly follow procedures, not just adequately. What does this look like? Students may have to repeat procedures until they get it right. At my school, we do this with fire drills. … Read more →
I recently read Walking Papers in which Francesco Clark tells the story of his spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed. He describes the treatments he has sought out, how he has dealt with a variety of attitudes within the medical profession, and how he has started a business creating skin care treatments. The medical professionals provide a great analogy… Read more →
So I’ve been visiting with a colleague over some common challenges, and I’ve been impressed by what a deep thinker he is. Even when he’s talking about students’ behaviors, he’s really talking about the big picture and what that student behavior represents. During one of these conversations I complimented him on a really engaging lesson and he responded with a… Read more →
Today’s classroom goal was to build connections between the volume of a cylinder and its matching cone (same radius and same height) and the analogous prism/pyramid pair. There is a classic demonstration filling a cylinder/cone pair with water or sand. It takes three cones to fill the cylinder. An extensive youtube search shows only two videos of this demonstration: one… Read more →
Getting ready for tomorrow’s campus book study found me reading about classroom procedures in Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion. Often I’ll attend an inservice or read an article and be reminded of techniques I used long ago but abandoned for some reason. A sort of, “Hey, I used to do that and it helped a lot. Why did I… Read more →
My PLC wrote a list of the key skills and concepts we want our students to know. The idea of these power standards is very powerful, but we sure made some mistakes along the way… and we keep finding more mistakes. When we reflected on last year, we realized that we had written power standards, but we didn’t pay much… Read more →