From Jennifer Fairbanks…
Happy #mtbosblog18 Day – Our 1st one of 2018! Join us and blog today! Share anything you want! When you blog, tweet out the link.
Join us as we all blog on the same day – the 18th of each month! Blog about anything. Write at any time. #Pushsend on the 18th. Then, we will all have a plethora of good things to read. We can use Twitter and the hashtag #MTBoSBlog18 to encourage and remind people to blog. If you are interested, record your name and Twitter Handle, areas of interest/teaching/coaching, and a link to your blog’s website. Don’t have a blog? 2018 is as good a time as any to start. Take a risk and dive in! Or, read and add comments!
Hmmmm. WElllll. Okkkkkkk. What do I blog about? Here goes…
Our schoolwide focus this spring is on revisiting what we know about good formative assessment and putting it into practice. Eventually, we will be encouraged to ensure we are utilizing the practice of PA on a daily basis – for those not already doing it. After speaking with our SLC, we thought it would be a good use of time for our department virtual PLC – on our NTI (aka Snow Day) – to work on ensuring that each learning target in an upcoming unit has a quality FA in place. And if not or if it really doesn’t measure what the target is intending, then plan a better one!
As we began building the document for Algebra I unit on Functions, I was reminded of so many great strategies learned through the years and new strategies shared by others. Most of these have been learned through trial and error, they didn’t “just happen.” When trying new things, sometimes you need take NIKE’s advice and Just Do It! See what happens, reflect and try it again! So here is a list of a few things we ran across while working this morning:
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Every Graph Has a Story –
When given a graph with no labels, numbers, etc. – can students devise a story that will related key features of the graph to the context of the story?
Here is @heather_kohn’s Ambiguous Sports Graph 
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Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down –
Was reminded of this one by my colleague. Basically, you can pose a question to the entire class, then ask for a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down as to if it is true/false, example/noonexample, linear/nonlinear, function/not a function
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Green Pens –
I am super excited that my green pens arrived today! I plan to use Amy’s idea for Bell Work, but integrate into independent practice time. Students will have a brief practice page – when one finishes, I will check – if all good, they will receive a green pen and help me mark other papers. After I have 3 or 4 Green Pen Helpers, I will have time to visit each table group for one-on-one help.
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Give One, Get One –
I believe the first time I ever used this was out of a Kagan book in Geometry. In this unit, I plan to give students graphs of functions. Before we begin, I will ask them to list 3 things they notice about the graph. They will then have 4 or 5 True/False statements to respond to. Here’s the GO-GO: They will write one more True statement about the graph, then go visit someone else across the room, sharing / discussing their true statement, and receiving/discussing/recording their friend’s new statement.
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White Boards & Summary Notes
Individual to practice writing inverse function equations. Nothing new here, I give them the function, they practice rewriting the inverse on the whiteboard, I walk around the room observing and noting… Then I will address any common errors I see. After reading this tweet:
and a discussion a few weeks ago with @druinok about student notes from the teacher – I was reminded… we will discuss big ideas we noticed in our white boarding, then turn to our INBs and generate our own Summary Notes. Since these are 9th graders, I will likely give them a few unworked Functions / Inverse examples to help them get started. Once they have completed their Summary Notes, there will be some time later for independent practice. Maybe even pull out those green pens again!
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Open Sort & Card Matching –
Years ago, I was taught about open sorts from a colleague who had attended John Antonetti training. I plan to use this structure by giving students cards with several types of graphs, in the discussion with their noticing and sorting and support of reasoning – I am anticipating something coming up about dotted / point graphs and connected graphs. In the debriefing of the sorting task, this will allow me to introduce / review the idea of discrete vs. continuous graphs.
The second part of this sort will be to place those cards inside the ziploc bag and get the other color cards out. These cards will have various domains and ranges listed. Again, in the discussion of their reasoning for their sorts and debriefing of the task, I am anticipating someone sorting based on listed numbers vs. intervals, which will allow me to make the connection between the different notations for domain and range.
Finally, the matching task will be for students to match the correct domain and range to the correct function graph. The best way for FA assessment to happen here – is to walk around, listen/observe and ask questions, never telling them, but helping them think on their own.
After some practice and discussion, I feel like this might be another great spot to have students create their own Summary Notes of the ideas shared / discussed.
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2-Minute Assessment Grid
Goodness, this may be one of my favorite student reflections. You can read about it here. You can copy the grid and have students fill it in. However, I like creating a large grid on my board and giving students 4 sticky notes on which to respond. Basically Students are asked to tell ! Something they want to remember. ? A question they still have. @ An A-ah – lightbulb moment and + One improvement they can still make / need ot study.
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Class Closer Reflection
An easy, quick one sentence reflection – have students choose one of these sentence starters and complete it… Something I’ve learned,…, Something I realized…. OR Something was reminded was of…
Follow-Up Action is what matters most.
As with any FA – its not about the strategies – they only provide a vehicle for the information you get from student learning. What happens next is very dependent on what information you receive. In class strategies, you must be present, listening, allow yourself a few seconds to think through their responses / questions before responding to them with a question. With reflections, exit tickets, target quizzes, we have the opportunity to filter through all of their responses, looking for commonalities and misconceptions – that will help us plan our next actions. Do we need to address with the entire class? Are there a handful we need to pull to the side while others are completing bellwork the next day? Is everyone on the right track and ready to move forward?
the radical rational... 