Klingenstein Part 2: Growth and Goals

Our awesome math cohort!

As I discussed in my previous post, creating more authentic assessments in order to promote transfer is one area where I see myself needing to continue to grow. I fear that, because I emphasized skills and wrote assessments that artificially categorized these skills, I made it my difficult for my students to make connections and transfer their skills to other contexts. Furthermore, by providing so much support and structure, my students were not given the opportunity to grapple with problem solving, choosing which skills to use in different scenarios, and to develop discomfort with not knowing where to start a problem. I believe that these are all key elements for “doing” math.

My group presenting the authentic assessment that we created together.

In order to continue to grow in this area I will set goals for myself, participate in reflective practices and engage in a new learning experience.

Overarching Goal: Help a large number of students more effectively achieve transfer in my classes.

Question: How can I change my classroom environment and curriculum in order to encourage my students to more effectively transfer their learning?

I would like set these action steps for myself.

1. For each unit in precalculus I want to develop at least one authentic summative assessment to be used instead of a cued unit test. I believe that this goal is reasonable because it is not overwhelming, it is very easily measurable (did I do it or not), and it is based on the result of achieving higher quality transfer in my students. I will try to design these assessments in a way that honors differentiation so that I am able to reach all students. This goal is time bound since I’ll need to have each assessment completed by the time students are finishing up each unit.

2. I will implement more formative assessments that require using skills in new contexts, identifying necessary skills, and grappling with challenging problems. More specifically, I spoke with Varghese about the idea of having a large bank of SAT math problems (out of context) that use the skills that my students have already learned. My school is implementing a new schedule which will give students 45 minutes more seat time in my class each week. I want to use the extra time (once a week or bi-weekly) to have the students work on these SAT problems and think metacognitively about the problem solving process. I plan to have a set of 20 problems together by the start of each unit. I will differentiate by asking students to do many problems as they can rather than requiring a certain number. Furthermore, I will give feedback on the problems but not grade them.

3. I will encourage grappling by improving my one-on-one interactions with students in the classroom. I could create a more authentic problem solving experience for my students by asking more “focusing”/open ended questions, rather than funneling questions that lead them too quickly to the correct answer. To work on this, I want to monitor my use of each type of question in the classroom. Following the example that Danielle gave us, I would like to have a colleague film my class and watch it with me to consider the number of funneling and focusing questions that I ask. I would like to do this one per quarter throughout the school year and compare the frequencies of each type of question.

4. I will seek outside help by signing up to take one of Jo Boaler’s online seminars about using problem based learning in math. I will complete this by the end of the year. I will ask other teachers in the math department at my school if they would like to participate in this class with me.

5. I will include the questions that I drafted during the teaching philosophy session on a mid year and end of year survey so that I can get some feedback from my students about whether or not they are achieving transfer.

In order to hold myself accountable for this goal I will write this down as a checklist and keep it above my desk at school. I will also program deadlines for myself into my google calendar so that I get notifications and reminders about them.