Tales in Classroom Management, Structures and Routines, and Sanity…

Four years ago I made the change from teaching in a 9-12 high school to teaching in an 8-9 middle school.  I was very naive in thinking it wasn’t that big of a change. I had been teaching 9th and 10th graders, and I was moving to 8th and 9th graders.  How different could it possibly be?

Come to find out – a lot – a lot – a lot – a lot. I quickly discovered my ineptitude at classroom management.  If there had been a support group, I would have been there.

Me:  “Hi, my name is Megan, and I suck at classroom management.”   
The group:  “Hi, Megan”.

Also – I went from 50 minute class periods to 42 minute class periods.  Time became precious and I found myself constantly running out of it. I wasn’t using it very efficiently and for sure not wisely.

Thus began my relentless pursuit to get better at classroom management and engaging students.  I am still on this relentless pursuit; however, I have found 3 strategies that have been working in my classroom and I’ll be implementing a new one this year.

Every blog post will have this BIG DISCLAIMER – I am not an expert.  I do not claim to be an expert.  I am simply sharing a few ideas that have worked in my own classroom.

1. Musical Cues – after I finish writing this blog – I will write another one about my Musical Cues.  Four years ago when I read Mr. Vaudrey’s post on Musical Cues, I wanted to try them. So I did and haven’t looked back.  I use 3 musical cues to run my classroom.

• • Do NOW – this is a song that changes every year.  The first year I used “Call Me Maybe”. The second year was “Can’t Stop the Feeling” by JT.  Last year I used “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne. I’m still looking for this year’s song. It starts when the bell rings and it plays for the first 2 minutes of class.  Students are to complete the Do NOW before the song ends.

• • 1/2 way into the class period song – this is Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” and there’s a 1 minute clip that plays “Oh, we’re halfway there, whoa livin’ on a prayer”.  This hasn’t changed. I play it every year for my 1/2 way song.

• • Final Countdown – with 2 minutes left of class, you guessed it, “It’s the Final Countdown”.  This also hasn’t changed. Students complete the daily check-in (listed below) during the final countdown.  

I use the Musical Timer Chrome Extension by Chris Rime to run these automatically.  What you say? AUTOMATICALLY – Repeat automatically – I do not even think about it. It is a little tedious to set up, and I will detail it more in my blog post dedicated to musical cues.  Once it’s set up, it’s golden. Like I love it love it love it. (there is a downside when my projector audio turns off during the middle of a class period)

I have been tempted to add more musical cues – however – these are the 3 time markers that I can count on every single day.  And I want the triggers to be automatic so I don’t have to remember, so I’ve stayed with 3.

2.  Do NOW – This is a strategy that has helped eliminate tardies and get my class going right from the beginning bell.  I use this in conjunction with a musical cue and it’s a spiraled skill for them to complete, usually on their desks (as they’re whiteboards).  Sometimes it’s a “go get this to get ready for class”. Sometimes it’s a “open your Chromebook, go to our Google Classroom and fill out this form”.  But more often than not, it’s a problem to be completed that I can walk around and see on their desks: a very informal formative assessment. I am relentless about teaching this strategy from day one.  Come in, get your necessary materials, and do the Do NOW, NOW!

3.  Daily Check-In (Metacognition)- during the Final Countdown, I have students fill out a 2 question Google Form called the Daily Check-In.  The 2 questions include:

• Rate your comfort level on today’s material:  1 to 3 (1 – please help, I’m lost, 2 – I can do this independently, 3 – I know this so well I could teach someone else)
• Comments/Questions/Concerns/Compliments

I started this 3 years ago and have not always had the students do it everyday.  This year I’m going to have them do it Every. Single. Day. I give a quick look every day and respond as necessary.  It also gives them a chance to process Every. Single. Day. Last year I learned this is an actual thing called metacognition. Who knew?  I was actually doing something before even knowing I was doing something good. I just knew I wanted students to tell me on a daily basis how they were feeling.

Over the past couple of years I have of course been tempted to stop these routines and try something new.  However, they work. They still work. And so when I think those thoughts of trying something new, I remember and shout out loud:  “THEY STILL WORK!” Until they stop working, I’m gonna keep these 3.

This year I’m going to try a new strategy.  One area that I’ve really struggled with over the years is pulling my class together and getting everyone’s attention.  I try to use whole group instruction sparingly, but there are times when I need to pull the class together. Soooooo – I bought a wireless doorbell. Whenever I want to get the entire class together, I will ring the doorbell which will indicate they have 1 minute to get quiet.  I will ring it a 2nd time when I’m ready. I plan to teach and model this strategy over and over again in the first few days of school.  

In summary – I’ve reflected on why these strategies work.  First of all, I identified areas of need for my classroom where I feel the most insane and out of control. Here were my areas of greatest need:

1. Time management.
2. Behavior management to get the class going.
3. Making sure to keep a pulse of the students’ feelings around the content.

Time management was a huge need.  I always lose track of time, especially when my class periods were significantly shortened.  Musical cues helped with that need. Behavior management at the beginning of class was a huge need.  Students were messing around while I was in the hallway greeting students. Class took forever to calm down and get going by the time I got in the classroom.  Do NOWs give students an immediate purpose when they walk in the classroom. And by me greeting them at the door, I give a constant reminder to get started right NOW.  Lastly, I was having issues with students hiding until test day. The daily check-in became a non-threatening way for students to communicate with me without actually having to talk to me.  They’re very honest and give me a glimpse of what’s going on in their head. (I’ve also implemented Formative Assessments with Responses as a fix to students hiding until test day – that’s another post).

This year I am back to a high school setting (10-12).  Do these routines seem too middle school’ish? That’s definitely a concern I have, but we will see.  Maybe this will be the year they don’t work and I will have to find something else, but I’m going to give them a go.  

Now I just have to find my opening song… shoot me ideas and keep in mind, I like to DANCE!

Peace, Love, Math, and reclaiming my SANITY!

MSH

Workshop Model in a Secondary Classroom – my version

As an instructional coach this past year, I had the privilege of visiting other buildings in our district, particularly elementary classrooms. Visiting these classrooms was one of the best thing all year about being an instructional coach.  Elementary teachers are rockstars when it comes to classroom management, routines and structures to keep students engaged, and meeting the needs of all their students.  I have learned so much from elementary teachers.

This past year our building (an 8-9 middle school) focused its learning in MTSS around student engagement.  Our district uses innovation configuration maps to center our professional development.  The maps move from right to left with Learning on the far right and Established on the left to indicate progression toward mastering the art of teaching (by the way – something we’ll never do).  Here is a snapshot of part of the map we used this year:

Something to keep in mind – these maps were written for K-12 teachers and obviously a kindergarten teacher and a 12th grade teacher have much different needs in their classrooms; however, this is a guideline for maximizing student engagement (And because I’m a huge Pirates of the Caribbean fan … From Pirates of the Caribbean:  The Curse of the Black Pearl – Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate’s code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. )

If you noticed, an Established teacher will use student-centered learning opportunities daily, small group instruction daily, and whole group instruction sparingly.  This is a rather tall order – but I set out to try it and here’s why.

We adopted a new resource 3 years ago.  We also accelerated all 8th graders to Algebra 1 during the year.  The resource we adopted was CPM which is a whole new way of teaching math.  CPM and I didn’t hit it off very well.  It has a “do it our way” mentality and I’m a rebel and don’t always want to do it the way someone tells me to do it.  However, I love the problems in CPM.  They’re great for getting students to talk and explore and discover the wonderful math things.  The structure – however – doesn’t always work for my students, and I wondered how I might implement CPM and the workshop model together.  The following is what I came up with.

BIG DISCLAIMER – I am not claiming to be an expert on this topic.  I do not claim that this is the best way, only way, etc.  What worked for me, may not work for you.  I’m not claiming that everyone should do it this way.  This was an experiment that ended up working from time to time.

Here’s a picture of how I set up my classroom for this:

There are 3 main station areas –

1.  Independent practice – desks are set up in 2’s in rows.
2. Group work – desks are arranged in 4’s
3. Teacher table work.

When I run a workshop, here are the components:

1. Mini-lesson whole group
2. Small group instruction with the teacher
3. Student-centered learning opportunities (independent practice and group work)
4. Metacognitive opportunities for students
5. Formative assessment
6. FA response

Here is a lesson I ran for students to learn properties of quadrilaterals.  This took about 4 days to complete. Our school has 42 minute class periods and I always have a Do Now that takes the first 5 minutes and have a Final Countdown Google Form for metacognition for the last 2 minutes of class, leaving 35 minutes.  I use Musical Cues for the Do NOW, the halfway mark of class, and the Final Countdown.  This year the musical cues were Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train for the Do NOW, Livin’ on a Prayer is always my halfway song (it’s a 1-minute clip), and the Final Countdown is the final countdown song for 2 minutes.

The mini-lesson was a reminder of slope – so we watched Slope Dude and remembered how to find slope on a coordinate plane.  Students had to use coordinate geometry to discover properties of quadrilaterals using slope and length (distance formula), so we needed to review those topics from Algebra 1.

Small group instruction with me was a mini-lesson on distance formula – we don’t actually use the formula – we just use pythagorean theorem to find the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle on the coordinate plane.  I had a guided investigation for them to do this.  It was review from their Algebra 1 class (at least it should have been review).  I gave specific, targeted instruction for those students who needed the extra scaffold.  For others, they worked through it quickly, remembering how to find the length of a segment on the coordinate plane.  We also remembered how to find the slope of a line.  When they got done with this, they moved on to the following investigations.

The student-centered learning opportunities included Geogebra investigations through GoFormative to find properties of quadrilaterals and independent practice once they had discovered all the properties of the quadrilaterals.  They worked in pairs on the Geogebra investigations and mostly on the independent practice as well.

The Geogebra investigations were applets embedded in GoFormative.  They were guided by questions that led them to discovering all the properties of a given quadrilateral which they then filled out on a Quadrilateral Toolkit.  No memorizing of properties at all.  Cause why would we do that to anyone?

The independent practice was then a connection between the algebra on a coordinate plane and the properties of quads.

All of what was just described is in the Hyperdoc found on slide 5 of the Google Slides for the week.  I don’t think you’ll be able to look at the GoFormatives but if you go to Geogebra and search for quadrilateral properties – there are a ton of applets and investigations.

For metacognition, each day the students placed their name next to the activity that I had posted on poster paper on the wall.  They also filled out our daily Google Form that had them rate their level of comfort and provide a space for them to give me details about where they’re at in their learning.  If students weren’t on pace to complete all the tasks by day 4, they worked with me to get on track.

Once I got all the students through the slope and distance algebra skills, I was free to work with students on the investigations.  This happened near the end of day 2.  The investigations didn’t require students to know the algebra skills.  They were merely playing with Geogebra applets and answering questions.  The independent practice did require finding slope and length so in order to do those, they had to get through my instruction.

On the fifth day, the students took a formative assessment to gauge their progress on quadrilateral properties.  When we came back that Monday, I had a response ready based on their formative data.  The response was tiered and students were homogeneously grouped based on their need.  Throughout the workshop the four days prior, students had been heterogeneously grouped randomly using Google Sheets to randomize the roster.

This was a rather long workshop because we investigated so many quadrilaterals.  I’ve run shorter ones – but the shortest is still a 2-day workshop.  One of these days I may get as good as the elementary teachers and run it in one day.  That’s my goal.

Also – I do NOT do this all the time.  For sure, I run a workshop once a unit.  And we (as a Geometry PLC) always have a response to formative assessments.

Again – this is just what has been working for me to meet the needs of students.  It’s most definitely not perfect, but I have seen way more engagement from students by using it.

Peace, Love, Math and the Workshop Model –

MSH

My #1TMCThing from #TMC18

I attended Twitter Math Camp this summer after wanting to go since 2012.  I’ve been a follower and small participant of the #MTBoS (Math Twitter Blog-o-Sphere or “Mitt Boss”) since I got on Twitter as an educator in 2011.  Before this year, I was a member of #TMCJealousyCamp and #NotAtTMC religiously.  I followed the tweets, the wiki, and absorbed as much as I possibly could without actually being there.  To say I have been in awe of these edu-math-celebrities would be an understatement.

This year – I was actually there – in person – face to face with my edu-math-heroes.  I started the first day looking in – spotting said heroes, so intimidated that I was too scared to approach them and instead tweeted at them.  And then they approached me.  It was kinda funny actually.  Twitter is a great place to be an introvert and yet people think I am an extrovert.  I can talk to people without actually having to face them.  It’s perfect for me.

It’s insanely challenging to pick #1TMCThing to focus on – but here it is – “You are enough”.  Julie Reulbach gave the keynote on day 2.   She had so much encouragement for teachers and in fact MADE us tweet out scripted tweets that started with:

“I am a great teacher because… ”

“I am a #teacherleader because…”

Here are mine:

Notice anything about those?  Well Julie then proceeded tell us all this and give us the sticker to remind us:

When I compared my tweets to this message that “You are enough” – I noticed that I am stuck in the belief that I am not enough.  That I require help from the outside to do well.  The whole “it takes a village” thinking – which I still believe that it takes a village to walk through life.  I cannot imagine going at anything alone.  I do believe we are meant to be in community with one another… but that’s different than this.  “I can be enough and need community” is a new concept for me.   My thought process in the past has been “I am not enough BECAUSE I need community.”

Here are two imposter-type issues that I’ve been processing:

— I have to do it Julie Reulbach’s way because she is amazing and if I don’t do it her way, I am not enough of a great math teacher.  And insert any name there.  (I love Julie a lot – and I think she’ll understand my point.)

— I have to do it the textbook way because everyone loves that resource and says it’s the best and if I don’t love it then I’m not enough of a great math teacher.

The first one is for sure the biggest obstacle to overcome for me as I’ve been a MTBoS lurker for so long and am so in awe of the amazing things these teachers do in their classrooms.

So – my #1TMCThing is to BE ME and know that I am enough.  And to make sure that I am encouraging everyone around me that way as well.  You don’t have to do it MY WAY or the textbook way or Julie’s way.  You are enough.  Do it YOUR WAY.  (I’m now talking to myself with this – it’s my own personal pep talk).

Now what?  How is anyone going to hold me accountable to such a vague thing?  How does one measure confidence?  I don’t know – but I plan to have constant reminders around me.  For example, at Staples this morning as I was browsing in a non-notebook section, this notebook was on a shelf:

Of course I bought it.  It might not get used and just be a placeholder on my desk.  Or I use it but keep the cover, laminate it or frame it.  Not sure – but I know I need the reminder to help hold me accountable.

And I’m not sure this is a teacher-specific message.  As a teacher, it is VERY easy to lose sight of this in the midst of the 4 million things we are asked to do.  It’s VERY easy to get caught up in thinking that I can’t do it all, I can’t do it all well, I’m not enough for these students.

But I can imagine this being a challenge for anyone.  I know I have felt this as a mother and for sure as a wife…and more recently as a woman in this culture.  “You are enough” is a message that EVERYONE needs to know.

Elissa Miller (@misscalcul8) shared her Two Nice Things and had us share two nice things about ourselves and that was the hardest thing for all of us to do.  Say 2 nice things about ourselves.  Clearly we have a “you are not enough” complex because if we all knew we were enough, it would have been a lot easier to say 2 nice things about ourselves.

So there it is – “You are enough” – my #1TMCThing.

Thank you to the whole #MTBoS and #TMC and #iteachmath community.  In the words of Matt Baker (@stoodle), “I am the teacher I am today because of the #MTBoS” – or even better “I am A teacher today because of the #MTBoS” – both are true!

Peace, Love, Math –

Megan

(Meegan High-Knee)