Starting to measure up

This week was a great week for PBL. We started the week by double blocking our classes to support the ELA group doing a reading assessment. This provided us with a great opportunity to go and get some measuring done to start our projects. 6th grade measured the "dining room" because they need to provide a scale drawing as part of the project. Here are some pics of that experience:

We were lucky enough to have our curriculum coaches in the room as well to see the process! (Twitter: @cvulearns).

In 5th grade we also needed to due some measuring to get the base area of our geodesic dome. We happen to have an octagonal sandbox! So we went out (and braved the heat) to measure it. Students did a great job making labeled sketches as well after taking their measurements. Here are a few photos of that:

We ended the week with a reflection. Student "design teams" updated their google sites with two items: 1- a good photo piece of evidence of the work they did this week and 2- the group checklist. 6th graders got check lists filled out and 5th graders got a blank one to set goals as a group for next week.

6th graders then went on to reflect individually on their "Kidblog" accounts. I'm so grateful that Bonnie Birdsall (Twitter: @bonniebird), our Digital Learning Leader, and her support in getting these accounts setup. My long term hope is a quick and easy way for kids to embed those posts on their design team sites.

Professionally I also was involved with presenting a proposal to ISTE about my work with Protean and how that supports our Personalized Learning. I'm nervous and hopeful that it will be accepted. I will find out in December.

Early days of the 1st projects

This week both classes kicked off their projects and it was so exciting! My own level of interest was increased as well by the enthusiasm of the students. 6th graders were very excited to learn that they would be presenting their designs to see who could decorate the Sterling sponsored dance in January. 5th graders were equally excited to hear they would have the opportunity to propose a geodesic dome greenhouse to be built at the school to support the community gardens.

Professionally I was also able to participate in a great Twitter chat on Thursday. The focus was Project Based Learning. It was the #vted chat that takes place every other Thursday during the school year and the topics change each time. Obviously I was interested in the PBL topic. Here's a link to the hashtag on Twitter. I made a lot of great connections, shared some success and struggles about the journey so far and gathered some more resources to use in the days and months ahead.

Lastly, I leave you with two media items. The first is a photo of student work for the week and the second is something I'm super proud of. During a 6th grade class, students were really struggling with how to conceptually understand dividing fractions. I started working with one student and suddenly when I turned around and the class had formed a circle to talk as one large group. Students began debating and explaining organically. I couldn't grab my iPad fast enough. I was able to grab a few minutes of the back and forth.

The 1st 5 day week

Students stamina is a thing. The first 5 day week is generally a long one for them (and quite honestly, for their teachers too!)

Both classes started the week in their design teams. They first thought of names for their teams. For a sampling: No Plan Inc, The King Bananas, and the Deep Thinking Divers. From there, each team began designing a google site (on the new google sites) to build team pages. This will be their landing page for materials, photos and weekly updates. To do weekly updates I'm hopefully using Kidblog. Kidblog is a great tool for class blogging. It's simple, easy to use interface allows for quick beautiful blogging. I'm going to encourage students to use a variety of media when blogging about math this year- I want some Vlogs, some podcast format (mp3 audio), and some traditional blog text and photo. Stay tuned for when that goes live, as I'm hoping for community feedback to the students.

Then we started grade level specific learning. 5th graders pre-assessed then started our volume and surface area unit. Here are some photos of them building a box that holds 12 cubes as many different ways possible:

In 6th grade students were pre-assessed on our fraction unit and we began looking at describing fractions in as many different forms as possible. From there we'll begin operational work with fractions with our goal to be able to fluently multiply and divide fractions. Here is a photo of our entry level task for that.

Wrapping Up the Week

We finished our week of inspirational math today. I skipped day 3 (cutting of shapes) because with 40 minute classes and all the paper needed to prep I decided to just move on. And I'm sure glad I did! Over the past few days we've been exploring the visual number line activity and Pascal's Triangle. In both grades I've been amazed at the level of discourse in the groups and what they've been able to uncover for new learning. All the kids have been working so hard and persevering on some challenging learning activities. I'm including some of our class conversations below to highlight the week*:

*- When summarizing as a class I've been taking pictures with my iPad and loading the photos into an app called "Notability". Once we're done, I export the note as a pdf to my google drive.  From there I use "Airserver" to broadcast my iPad onto the SMARTboard and students can follow along. This allows me to be out of the front of the class and also easily hand my iPad to a student to allow them to draw and manipulate the screen. I'm also including a table group conversation today that I recorded on my phone with an app call "AudioMemos".

Here's the rundown of the learning:
The PDF of our visual math number line.

The PDF of our work with Pascal's Triangle.

Here's the photo of the work students were talking about in the audio recording

And here's the recording of them talking about it:

Week of Inspirational Math

I'm using the week of inspirational math in all my math classes to help students get into the norms and routines of my classroom space. The week long course was developed by Jo Boaler, the world renowned expert in mathematical thinking specifically in regards to growth mindset. The idea that the brain is a flexible muscle that can grow with practice, grit and challenge.

I really appreciate the message that this sends to kids. Her launch videos explain the research and the science behind growth mindset in a way that makes sense to my students. From there we dig into different activities. Today's activity focused on building bridges from the spacial part of our brain to the logic/procedure based side. I'm including a short video that shows a few ways different groups were making connections.