Desmos - Interactive and Engaging Math Tool

 There has been a lot of discussion around the Desmos app this week at my school. Many of the math teachers have been using it for a long time, but, as with many apps, our tech team is unaware so we have to go through the process of having it vetted for regular use. There are so many tools available to educators, but because Desmos is free, interactive, and engaging, a lot of the math teachers I know use it in their classrooms.

Even if you haven't used Desmos activities, you have probably guided students to use their graphing calculator. It's easy to use and creates simple graphs which I've used to build assessment questions for my classes. Last year the Colorado state assessments starting using Desmos as their built-in calculator for testing, and the school encouraged us to expose students to it before testing season.

Desmos activities are a whole other ball of wax. They usually come with some visuals for the teacher to explore and assess before deciding if it's right for their classroom. Topics are arranged by grade-level and at high school level they are arranged by course name (i.e. Algebra 1 or Calculus). Their search bar also makes it easy to browse for a topic and check out various leveled activities. With a teacher guide and a student guide for the activity students can work independently to explore the topic you've chosen on reflect on their learning.

In a school that is spread across the state, where the majority students are virtual, Desmos is a great tool to ensure students have time to explore, create, and reflect on math topics that build foundations for future learning. Would recommend!

Facilitating Online PD Sessions for Educators

 This week I was reminded about how challenging it can be to facilitate an online session for adult learners. My school learning & development department has created an incredible training to support those of us teaching educators. They are working on some updates and revamps, a few of us were asked to participate in some discussion questions so there will be something for newbies to see and respond to when taking the course. The questions go along with some great articles, but of course I didn't even read those until after I answered the discussion questions :D Leave it to me to make things harder than they have to be!

The questions for those taking the training ask them to dig deep and plan ahead - like What brings you here? Participants in the training are volunteers for the most part, so this is such a great question that ensures they know what they are getting into! Then there are some discussions asking participants to provide tips for designing engaging visuals, discuss how their planning changes when it's virtual or in-person, and provide tips on facilitating blended learning sessions.

Just engaging in these discussions made me really think about the skills I have acquired over the past few years and how I can continue to hone them. I'll be honest, I'm prone to using PowerPoint for conveying information, and you may thinking, really?!?! In this day and age? But yes, I think there are some great benefits to using PPT when facilitating a sessions in Teams - they talk to each other. Teams has this great feature called "PowerPoint Live" that allows you to share your PPT on the screen but it also makes it interactive for participants. They can click on links in the PPT and watch videos directly on it during the presentation. I can allow them to move around in the slideshow, or restrict them to seeing just what's currently on the screen. 

'Graphic Organizers' becomes a live link when presenting PowerPoint Live in Teams.

PowerPoint also provides some really great visuals including templates that can fit a theme or just look professional. The Designer button will also give suggestions! I love this feature because sometimes I have an image I don't know how to place well, or have some wonky word spacing. The Designer usually comes up with great suggestions and makes the presentation more engaging and professional looking. 

Screenshot of Designer with the given suggestions.

I didn't think I would go on-and-on about this topic so I will stop here for now and continue later. Check out the features of PowerPoint in your Microsoft suite or create a free Microsoft Outlook account to see the online features (not as great but still really useful)!

One of my favorite templates.

New Year New Goals

 It's the start of the 2024-2025 school year and our school has some new goals. It's not to say that we scrapped the old ones, just revamped how we are attacking them - taking a new direction. This year there is more of a focus on integrating all of the methodologies we've been using instead of taking each one as its own entity.

AI generated me

As a school we have been focusing on SIOP - Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol - as a way to support students who are learning English. This method has 8 strategies that are broken down into steps, and as a seasoned teacher the steps are familiar and SIOP gives them a way for me to organize them and be intentional about using them.

Around the same time we started using SIOP the school became involved with Capturing Kid's Hearts (CKH) as a way to build relationships with each other as well as students. CKH started their trainings with us but quickly realized we are not the typical in-person or asynchronous environment and they have done an amazing job tweaking their strategies to fit our model. The basis of CKH is the EXCEL model, where E is Engage, X is eXplore, C is Communicate, E is Empower, and L is Launch.

Over the summer the school coordinator for the curriculum and instruction took her ideas - plus the research of Hattie and Marzano - and melded it into the EXCEL model. She tried to show her work to assistant principals and everyone quickly realized it is a LOT of information, so they backed off and decided to focus on just the Engage part of the model for this year.

So, our goal... How do we get students engaged with our classes? ...with staff? ...with content? The coordinator has done an amazing job breaking down the Engage model into 13 or so smaller pieces of research-based strategies. Each TOSA (Teacher-on-special-assignment, basically instructional coaches at this point) has agreed to facilitate a session on 2 or 3 of these strategies throughout the school year. The coordinator has also taken on 1 or 2.

We are working closely with our new EdTech team to integrate whatever technology will be best to support each strategy as well. It feels like a lot at this point because we are just getting started, but today was my first day to facilitate the first session I chose and it went well. About 25 staff members attended my sessions and left me some good feedback for the next go 'round.

Here we are, new year, new goals, and it's off to a great start!

Asynchronously Teaching Math

 There is a lot of discussion lately about math discourse in the classroom. And I agree with every bit of it, if we can get students to talk about math with each other they can come to develop their own meanings and understandings about math. We could really make strides towards making math less 'scary.'

My classroom is asynchronous though, so how can I develop that discourse? Students work throughout the day and sometimes late into the night, sometimes they are online at the same time, but most likely not.

Using resources like Which one doesn't belong? and Would you rather? I have attempted to create some type of asynchronous discourse. It's not always successful, but as I continue to use it and encourage those around me to use, students get used to it. They are starting to get better at knowing what to do, and engaging with each a bit more as time goes by.

Here is an example of a WODB discussion post. Students were given the following graphic and asked to pick which one they think does not belong and why: 

Here are some of the responses and interactions I found: 

Student 1 says: I believe B is the one that doesn't belong. The others follow a pattern of being multiplied by 10 each time. Meanwhile B doesn't follow that same pattern and gets multiplied by 100 first.

Student 2 says: I think either B or D doesn't belong im honestly not 100 percent sure which one but i strongly believe its B because it goes from a single number automatically jumping to a 3 digit number when everything else goes by tens.

Student responding to student 2: Your the only other person I saw that also thought two didn't belong ut the the two I thought didn't belong are C and B.

Students 1 says: I think D donst belong to the fact that the pattern shown appears to be all numbers in the 1s place. It may still fit the pattern due to the transition into whole numbers but it doesn't appear to fit properly into the diagram.

Student replying to student 1: I agree that the decimal sets C apart.

Student 2 says: I think the one out of place is C. All the boxes have a right triangle shape and pattern while C does not. If not, D also seems sus, dealing in decimals while the other three are all whole numbers.

I love reading these because the students are using their math vocabulary to describe what they are seeing and to explain their reasoning.

There is still work to be done. I need to continue creating a safe space for making mistakes. In the first example, student 2 is unsure about their choice and states that, as a teacher if I can create a safer space for them, this student would just state their choice and reasoning without feeling like they have to back pedal just in case they are wrong.

Also, the student responses are very short and to the point most of the time. I pulled some better examples above, but when I look at the majority of responses to posts students usually just say 'I agree' and never delve into why.

These fun discussions will continue to be used in my classes, and I will continually reflect on how to make it a better and safer experience for students!

Microsoft OneNote

 Okay, yeah, this is another post about Microsoft products... I can't help it because my school is deeply involved in Microsoft!

But really, OneNote is a tool that can be used at home and at school, so it's a dual purpose here.

It's like having a 7-subject+ spiral notebook right on your computer. You can create different sections (for any subject you can think of) and then create pages within each section to hold any info you may need. This includes links, videos, voice recordings, PDF print outs, and more.

As an instructional coach I have used OneNote to collaborate with a teacher on coaching cycles. All of our notes, links, data, etc. will go into the notebooks so we can reference them throughout the cycle and the school year. It becomes a one-stop shop for me and the teacher, plus they can use the notebook for their evaluations with the principal.

Recently I have used OneNote to help me plan out lessons I am building in Schoology. It has helped me to create a standardized format for the lessons, including colors, highlighting, and outline. It's nice to come back to the OneNote and easily start a new lesson by using the templates I have created. [You could probably use this for Google Classroom too - build your basic course and template in OneNote, then copy/paste into Classroom.]

OneNote can also be a great way to organize yourself at home too. Use it for lists, planning parties, or gathering important documents.

If you have Microsoft at your school, then you should be able to access OneNote in the apps page. If not, it's easy to create a free Outlook/Microsoft account and utilize OneNote from the browser.