MathsClass

In 2009, Year 9 got their DER netbooks and now they are in Year 10. This year’s Year 9 does not have their netbooks yet, and so this gives teachers a little time to get their heads around the inclusion of netbooks into the classroom. This year, I’m teaching a 5.2 pathway Year 10 class (and a Year 9 5.2 class).

The one thing I learnt from using netbooks with Year 9 in 2009, is that their inclusion is best done as a whole lesson activity. An additional or alternative activity at the end of a lesson is not effective due to the time for login and dealing with technical issues.

However, the problem with consuming a whole lesson for a laptop activity is that it has to be worthwhile. I think this is where many teachers will struggle. If they have an effective lesson already, why change it? For me, my lessons may be effective, but how do I make them more so with the laptops? Does having a lesson using the laptop near the start of the unit establish a better foundation for the rest of the unit?

To start planning for the inclusion of netbooks, here’s a summary of what I’ll be covering in 2010. At the moment, some topics have nothing beside them – hopefully they will be filled in later. Feel free to share in the comments how you will be tackling these topics with the laptops.

Trigonometry

Over the summer holidays, I took an online course called GeoGebra: A Dynamic Approach to Yr 9-10 Trigonometry. Whilst a little pricey for an online course, I have attended the presenter’s (Richard Andrew) courses in the past and appreciated the practical nature of them.

Basically, this course suggests a number of ways of using GeoGebra in place of something you might already do in the classroom. For example, using GeoGebra to investigate the ratio of sides in a right-angled triangle and finding the relationship by recording the results in Excel.

Other ways the course suggested using GeoGebra was for demonstration purposes, but also getting the students to create their own files which demonstrate the solution to a problem. I see using the netbooks with my class to be a benefit for problem solving, an aspect of trigonometry which they would normally struggle with. GeoGebra will make it far more visual, and maybe a little bit fun.

Consumer Arithmetic

There’s the obvious spreadsheet work that can be included.
I might try to include a research activity, for example, looking at the Award for various occupations.

Ratios

Rates

I’ll definitely include the World’s Fastest Clapper

Scale

Similarity

Congruence

I’m going to re-read Kate’s post Triangle Congruence Theorems. This is what I like about teacher’s blogging, Kate plainly states “Triangle Congruence Theorems are so boring, and there is no nice way to teach them” and then throws around some ideas and seeks input.

Reasoning in Geometry (Angles)

Data Representation and Analysis

Probability

Graphing Linear Equations

This post will hopefully be updated as I go.

For NSW DET teachers, I’m sure you know of TaLe, and hopefully have seen some of the resources for the DER that have been published there. One category of resources has been called Laptop Wraps (they are also available publicly).

New Laptop wraps from the Centre for Learning Innovation (CLI) provide online and offline tasks to support student investigation, collaboration and creation of content.

Each Laptop Wrap gives a couple of ideas for using the netbooks and their suite of software in the classroom.

At the Staff Development Day (SDD) at the start of term, I encouraged my faculty to review some of these resources. Much like any resources I come across, the ones I looked at will require some modification to use in my classroom.

So, I put together a simple structure for us to use when reviewing these resources:

• Consider some of the ideas given in the Laptop Wraps.
• What activities (even if they require modification) in the wrap would you use?
• Select an activity(s) you’d like to do with your class.
• What modifications to the wrap are required?
• What do you need to learn about in order to use this wrap with your class? (The UCreate and Tools4U resources may be helpful)
• What resources do you need to create to use this wrap?

(I’ve supplied this in a printable form below)

I’m hoping this provides a simple way to encouraging the sharing of found resources and the creation of new resources in our faculty.

I really appreciate having my own classroom for many reasons, but one is the ability to place student work (the fun stuff) around the classroom.

Here’s what my classroom currently looks like. Definitely needs a paint though…

Click through to Flickr to see a larger version, and annotations on the photo.

A couple of the activities shown:

• Personality Bar Graphs, from Dan Meyer
• Pie Charts – Movie Posters, also from Dan Meyer
• Brisbane Broncos Number Plane Design

I just posted on my personal blog about how I use the web, looking at how the various technologies (RSS) and tools (Google Reader, Delicious, Twitter) fit together.

You can read the article over there: Using the Web, but I made a diagram of how I use the web that I think is worth sharing here as well (click for a larger version).

Image caption: Using the Web by Simon Job, shared under a Creative Commons BY NC SA License

That’s how I use the web. How are you using these various tools? Do they have their own place like they do for me, or do you use them more in a mix? Have you done away with RSS or blog reading? Do you still not give a hoot about Twitter?

This is where I hope I’m headed in 2010.

Ability to learn

I want to continue to better understand the style of learning that works for the kids at my school. Mathematics as a subject that is accessible, meaningful and useful.

I loved using Pie Charts – Movie Posters with my two Year 8 classes in 2009. The end results hang, laminated, on the back wall of my classroom to encourage me to be using rich, meaningful tasks that are accessible to my students (oh, and they look great).

Be Less Helpful

In March 2009, Dan Meyer posted A Fifth-Year Teacher’s Creed in which he said,

And so I tell myself:
Be less helpful.

This rattled around my head in 2009, and started to lock-in at the end of 2009. As it’s my fifth year of teaching this year, I hope it establishes itself as a part of my teaching.

Turn interesting into challenging

A must read for maths teachers: How Do You Turn Something Interesting Into Something Challenging?. I need to be finding, doing and sharing more stuff like: World’s Fastest Clapper.

Create

I want to continue to create some relevant and engaging activities, suitable for my students, and preferably making use of the DER machines.

Share

I want to continue to share resources on this blog. I want to continue to catalogue great online resources in the Maths Links section of this site and I want to make that experience even more useful that more teachers would use it and contribute to keeping the collecting.

I’ll start the year as the acting head teacher of my faculty, so I want to encourage the active sharing of ideas and resources within my faculty and make sharing something that my colleagues find natural, easy and worthwhile.

Problem Solving

The students at my school falter when a question involves more than one concept or skill, also their literacy levels are not great. It’s been easy to ignore ‘problem solving’ type questions because the kids won’t get it, but that is not good enough.

I went to a professional development course during the year on Newman’s Prompts, I probably should revisit that.

Network

Twitter is a great way to network, but I really enjoyed meeting with teacher’s of Year 6 from the local Primary Schools. It’s really helpful for us high school teachers to understand how the students we will see in the following year are learning, but it’s equally as helpful for the primary school teachers to understand where high school is expecting the level of mathematics of incoming students. There are lots of side benefits too: improving the reputation of our high school at the primary schools and encouraging generalist primary school teachers in their teaching of mathematics.

What’s next

Having worked in a 7-10 school for four years, and starting the year as the acting head teacher (and needing to consider whether to apply for the head teacher position when it is advertised), it’s time to consider what’s next. Where I work is a tough school, but the kids there as much or more than any others need good quality teaching.

Have you considered some aims, goals or general ideas for 2010?

Afterword This post started out as one where I considered the challenges that lie ahead in 2010, and quickly spiralled into a navel-gazing rant about the shortfalls of the system and the frustrations created by some people. But, that’s not really where I want to focus in 2010. The one thing that the Digital Education Revolution (DER) has done, at least in NSW DET schools, is to get us all talking about the system, it’s many shortfalls, strengths and weaknesses. For that discussion head to Stu Hasic’s post How many light bulbs does it take to change teaching?. My realm of influence, as a classroom teacher, extends to the students in my classes on a good day. On a bad day, that influence may only be some small percentages of those students. So, I re-wrote the post, and focused on what I can do.