Take One! A standards-based lens for examining your teaching

KNOWING YOUR STUDENTS and SETTING LEARNING GOALS Session Two

Remember the Five Stages?•Stage One: Identify KNOWLEDGE of STUDENTS and THEIR NEEDS

•Stage Two: Plan SETTING HIGH GOALS for THESE STUDENTS

HOW DO WE GET THESE DOWN IN WRITING? WHAT IS VALUED?

Sharing Our Writing• One way to look at each other’s work:

sharing a single question or topic. • A Take One! portfolio entry is one

teacher’s journey toward more effective teaching– so it cannot be examined for things that are “wrong” or need fixing.

• What we can do is read and ask questions about things that aren’t clear or believable—or think together about how to demonstrate standards-based teaching.

Follow the “Three Cs” as you write and review your colleagues’ writing:

•CLEAR

•CONSISTENT

•CONVINCING

What are the relevant characteristics of this class that influenced your instruction?

Most of the students in my class come from broken homes. They need a great deal of love and lots of hugs. Of the 18 children, 14 are African-American, 3 are Hispanic and one is mixed race. About half of them live with a grandmother or aunt and not too many even know who their fathers are. Most of them are on welfare. They don’t have cars to get to school on time, I have to adjust my instruction to wait until they all get to school. They live in apartments, and sometimes they have to move suddenly and leave my class. But new students will move in until I reach my limit of 22.

What are the relevant characteristics of this class that influenced your instruction?My kids are a mixed bag. Lots of the boys don’t

really care about Math and most of the girls are insecure. They might think they know the answers but are too busy worrying about what the boys think to answer. They all trust me because I’m one of the “cool” teachers and because I pass out candy for correct answers. A couple of the kids in this class are repeating it, because they failed it last time. The principal hopes they’ll like me better than the last Math teacher they had.

What are the relevant characteristics of this class that influenced your instruction?

There are 27 students in this class. Twelve are boys and 15 are girls. Two are in special education—one is learning disabled and the other is emotionally impaired. The LD boy may be reclassified after his IEP in January. One boy has been diagnosed with ADHD and leaves to take his medicine right before this class begins. His medicine has been re-adjusted twice this semester. Two of the girls go to “Homework Hall”, our student tutoring program. Six are in Jr. National Honor Society. Three of the boys are on the basketball team and are wearing ties because it’s game day. Eight get free or reduced lunch. Half the students are on the honor roll, two of them made the all-A honor roll. The students come from three different elementary schools, they live in very different neighborhoods. About a third of them live in a trailer park and another third live in small mansions.

What are the relevant characteristics of this class that influenced your instruction?(From a middle school Language Arts teacher:)

The students in this class have all been identified as “gifted” in Math, and are scheduled into all of their core academic classes together. This is an instructional challenge, as their language arts skill levels are much more diverse. Some come from homes where English is the second language, some are already excellent writers, but all are motivated to learn.

Student Characteristics

LIST three things about your students that influence the way you set learning goals for them, and plan instruction that will meet their needs. What would another teacher need to know about this class to understand its “personality?”

Share with a partner…

Setting Learning Goals

•What are some examples of high and worthwhile learning goals that you have set for your students?

•What makes a learning goal useful, for teachers and students?

•What makes a learning goal worthy?•How specific does a learning goal need

to be?•Can you identify some inappropriate or

lower-quality learning goals?

 In this lesson, I want my students to fully understand

linear equations. Linear equations are an integral and vital part of the 8th grade math curriculum. They represent the rigorous content that my students will need to know to become scientists and mathematicians. Linear equations have only recently been added to the standard 8th grade curriculum; they are now part of the state curriculum benchmarks and are referenced in the NCTM (National Council for Teachers of Mathematics) standards. My students will need to know linear equations on the state tests (MEAP), and will have to have this content mastered to meet the new state High School Merit Curriculum Standards, which incorporate four years of formal mathematics coursework, so it’s very important that they understand them now.

This is the first lesson as we begin a unit on linear equations. My goals for this lesson include having every student set up the problems correctly, and then explore the concept of scale. I want them to notice how changing the scale will give the graphs a different appearance without changing the function. My goal is experimenting to find scales that fit our data points best. It will be messy work at first, kind of trial and error. An abstract concept like linear function is really tough for 8th graders who have been working with arithmetic and more concrete problems, so another one of my goals is to get to a feeling of hands-on and play, and make the students feel comfortable and competent about working with the tools of graphing.

NING—Our networking site

•Questions and discussion•All PPTs will be posted there•Issues can be public or

between two people•As we begin to write, entry

drafts can be posted or shared

•Very helpful if you miss a meeting

Questions? Our next meeting is Wednesday, December 9. Have a lesson (and classes) for taping in mind. In the meantime, we’ll be talking about what makes a lesson a good choice on Ning.

nflanagan@comcast.net