Musings from Mrs. Galvan

Here is the presentation from today's faculty meeting - feel free to reach out with any follow up questions.

Here is my presentation with links to ideas and resources on Standards Based Grading, Meta-cognition, and formative assessment.

T his year in geometry, I am striving for a more constructivist approach. Many concepts (like perpendicular or supplementary) are familiar. The challenging part is to write the definitions in polished, conditional form and then integrate them into two column proofs. Approaching new material this way is more engaging and promotes retention. Rather than announcing the definitions from on high, I have been having students discuss the terms and attempt the if-then form in small groups. Sometimes instead of discussion, they investigate the concept using geogebra or math open ref . Then we collect the attempts and discuss as a class. Once we agree on the ideal wording, they add it to their flash card deck with an accompanying diagram. Most lessons close with students using the new theorems along with ones they already know to write a two column proof with their partner. Starting class with more generative activities, making time for retrieval practice (with their flash cards) a...

So tomorrow is the first day of school. I am at the point in my to do list when it is time for me to let some things go - I can't do everything  I'd like to on day 1. I did make a presentation to explain Standards Based Grading. Inspired by Bowman , This prezi gives a basic overview of what SBG is, why I use it and how it will work for my students. Apparently in my post grad school haze I completely missed the TMC15 inspired month of blogging ( Blaugust ). I also missed discussion on all the awesome things people learned at TMC15, including using my favorite read of 2014 - Make It Stick  both to structure class and as a teaching tool.  Julie R . blogged about how she plans to teach her classes strategies from the book and even shared resources for doing so (which I plan on stealing and using). I also missed several Global Math Department webinars including this one on suggestions for the first day of school . So now that I am catching up on what I missed, my...

How does a month go by without reflecting on what is and isn't happening in my classroom? Well this month's excuses include: getting sick, parenting (they still can't prepare their own food, come on, when I was 5...), teaching, prepping and grading for my UCLA class , getting sick again, general end of the year hullabaloo, grading finals, grading final projects ( like this one  and this one ) and spending quality time calculating grades. I did maintain a well used "to blog" sticky note, so there is that. Like last year, I had my students write a self-evaluation-ish reflection as their last blog post for the year. I made small changes to the prompt and gave them 25 minutes to start writing in class. Also, like last year, reading them made me tear up. I would like to share a few of them, but these posts feel a bit personal and I don't want to seem too self-aggrandizing by linking to posts that were complimentary. To sum it up, while not all of my 86 student...

My students recently received their progress reports for 3rd quarter and maybe they need a reminder of why I am trying standards based grading and how I turn their various degrees of mastery into a letter grade.  Before I get into the details,  let's remember why I am making this choice. I want the feedback they receive from me to be just that: feedback on what they should keep doing and what they need to improve upon. I feel that giving letter grades doesn't promote a growth mindset and can be interpreted as punishment rather than an indication of progress. As such, I need to give my students lots of chances to make mistakes, receive feedback and demonstrate mastery of our learning targets . My students take skill quizzes (short, ten minute maximum) 2 - 3 times per week. I check them, given written feedback, track performance with learning targets and return them the next days. Students make corrections as needed and then decide if they want to reassess .  Yes, t...

...as I am catching up on the blog, I am looking at my lesson calendar. For Tuesday, March 17th, I had originally scheduled a Game called the Shamrock Shuffle (truth be told, I only ever had the title and was planning on coming up the the game at some point). What did I end up doing? I gave them a pre-test! Doesn't that sound fun?! So here is the confession: Sometimes I don't know when to make class a fun, white-board, teamed-up game and when kids just need pencil to paper, old fashioned practice. On this day, one day before the big test on solving quadratic functions, I woke up fearing that my students might be struggling with meta-cognition issues. They might think they know what they're doing.. but they might be wrong. So on the board I wrote Meta-Cognition Activity and I distributed yellow pre-tests for them to complete individually... in silence... while I returned emails... #teacheroftheyear To close, I displayed the answer key and they worked with their pa...

After 6 months of using Standards Based Grading, and speaking to colleagues individually, I gave a talk to the World Languages Department about my experiences. I use Active Grade and showed my grade book during my presentation. Obviously, that link won't work in the presentation below. I will add screenshots to the slideshow... eventually.

I celebrated the 100th day of school yesterday by giving my Algebra students a test on factoring. Traditionally this has been a challenging unit and I was anxious to see if the more frequent assessments and feedback via Standards Based Grading would bolster their results. I haven't tabulated results yet, but I noticed students are still struggling to know when to use which rule. General trinomial factoring with a coefficient of x squared was confused for grouping and sums of squares were too often factored into conjugates. The good news is that I will continue to assess these skills (albeit infrequently) through the end of the year. Active Grade will continue to track their progress. I am 2 chapters into Make it Stick and I am already an Inter-leaver! I spent the weekend reworking my assignments to include random "spiral review." Review questions will pop up on skill quizzes and unit tests too. Lastly, I am thinking of reordering the order I teach the concepts. No...

After two days of unbloggable lessons in algebra (lecture and practice with negative exponents), we finally had the skills to play a game. After our routine review of last night's homework, students took a skill quiz. They are getting used to the frequent assessments required by the shift to Standards Based Grading (though I did overhear, "Didn't we take an LTC yesterday ?"). By the way, I purchased a folder holder over winter break, which highly enhanced my reassessment system. Anyways, back to today. The kids love playing color wars . Once they are in groups, all I do is give problems on the document camera and run around the room. Class almost runs itself. I love the high energy, engaged kiddos, running around the classroom, good competitiveness, and overhearing kids discussing how to do math problems. I changed the roles a bit this time around. 

While I was not officially trying to start a 180 blog... more like I was planning on blogging occasionally, I still take a photo of my agenda everyday and photos just need to be published. Hence, my thought to blog occasionally became a secret goal to blog daily, or almost daily. This wishy-washy goal for blogging resulted in almost a month of zero blog action. I can't just blame the weak goal setting - like all of us, my free periods are spent helping kids, planning, meeting, eating, making lists online, making lists on post-its and especially implementing standards based grading for Algebra. Things have improved on the SBG front. I used to grade assessments a page at a time. Now I grade one student at a time which I think helped to make grading the unit 2 tests go faster. But because part of my plan involves frequent skill checks that need a quick turn around for grading and because I am still learning how to use Active Grade, I can't call myself an efficient Standards Base...

Last week was busy in Algebra. I realize that I haven't written much about Geometry this year, so perhaps soon, but for now, I am happy to relay that my 3 Algebra classes are going well with one complaint: Standards Based Grading is taking a lot of time. Grading is always the "one thing" that teachers tend to wish they didn't have to do. Often I hear, "I love being with my students, but the grading is killing me!" I love seeing progress and seeing what they have learned, but like many teachers, I too wish it would happen faster. This year, it seems that I made it take even longer with my choice to give standards based grading a go. Maybe I am doing it wrong? :( Here is my method: I keep a spreadsheet  with students' names down the side and the skills across the top. Each time I see an error, I mark in the appropriate skill column. Then I consider the number of errors vs the number of opportunities and give each skill a score out of 4 (which for the u...

I am still saying that I won't blog very often, yet I find myself with an extra hour this Friday afternoon, so why not sum up the week? Well, maybe just today. Today in Algebra we went over last night's homework on evaluating expressions and solving linear equations then we reviewed solving equations containing fractions. It was a short lesson followed by practice. They learned these skills last year in pre-algebra but are in need of a wee bit of practice. Then they took their first Learning Target Quiz on which they sought to demonstrate... I can follow the order of operations. I can manage arithmetic of positive and negative whole numbers. I can attend to precision by being careful in my work and reading (no transfer errors, no dropped signs, legible handwriting, follows directions).  I just got done checking them and converting their "scores" into my rubric... 0 Undetermined I left the problem blank or wrote something completely unrelated to ...

Today I am thankful for long two year old naps, my husband, kids programming on Netflix (new Daniel Tiger!) and a seamless, early bedtime. Why? Because I had time and made a lot of headway on my To Do List... I updated one syllabus and adjusted my lesson calendar for Algebra. I made a more attractive front page for my Canvas site with colorful links, as well as do a bit of boring file maintenance on canvas, the most interesting of which was creating a Create & Reflect (Blog) module to group all the prompts, tips and assignments. BTW these buttons were NOT easy to make. I used word art in publisher and saved each as a photo. Anyways, the more relevant progress I made was Standards Based Grading related. I am already committed to Active Grade . I watched most of the videos on their helpful Youtube channel . Still though, this decision did not prevent multiple sleepless nights spent with mind racing, consumed by crazy spreadsheets. Tonight I am hopeful that I can go to bed an...

So every summer I make a grand, dream to do list... ...then every summer reality sets in with this dilemma: I want to spend time with my kids and take care of my home (where regularly during the school year, mystery sticky spots on the counter remain for weeks). So the annual question becomes how do I balance my ambition to increase innovation in the classroom and spend quality time with my little ones in a (sorta) clean house (I read Lean In ; I know I can't really "have it all"). Arg. I am (again) running out of time. What should I focus on? Here is the list: 1. Study for and retake the GRE s (my scores have long expired) and start applying to grad school. 2. Plan more PrBL tasks and games for Algebra and Geometry, even more, I want to get better at encouraging students to own the process and ask the questions and discover the concepts (less lecture... oh but what about all those videos I made to flip my classroom a few years ago. Blended learning environme...