FabuAssessment

I have been worried about my Grade 10s. Yes, I've only had them for 3 lessons so far, but you know that feeling a teacher gets? I knew something wasn't right, so I decided to throw an assessment at them.

Today they wrote a short test on exponents. It had 5 questions and was worth 15 marks. When it was finished, they passed it to the front and I took a photo of each test and, much to their surprise, I passed it straight back to them.

On the back of the test, I asked them to write down the following headings:

(Yes, I have a chalk board. And yes, my handwriting leaves much to be desired.)

The learners had to answer the first 3 questions on their test paper before they marked their own test. I told them they needed to explain their answers, but that their answers would also be considered as private.

After giving them time to respond, I explained the basic difference between formative and summative assessment. This test was a formative assessment, in other words, it was designed to inform us on their progress in the section. I added that if they just looked at their mark and made no effort to find out where they went wrong, then they'd probably never get a better mark in this section than that one. The responsibility falls on their shoulders to choose whether this test will help them improve their knowledge of this section, or just determine all their future marks for this section.

But wait, there's more...

I told them to mark their tests but told them I wasn't going to give them a memo. They could mark them on their own, or ask friends for their opinions, but I wasn't going to help at all. At first they were too shy to leave their seats, but after a few minutes of struggling, they started to get the idea.

This was a great reflective experience and something I want to encourage in all my classes. I want to teach my learners how to think about what they're doing, why they're doing it and how they can do it better next time.

I have spent some time marking their tests (the photos I took before handing them back again) and I'm considering giving them the same test tomorrow. I'd like to see if they've used today's experience to improve their knowledge of the section. They've had access to the memo on the fabumaths.co.za website, so maybe it will be good to see if they made use of it?

Until next time, much love.

Online Courses vs Conventional Teaching Year Plans

Dear Reader

I am busy doing a year plan. Yes, I know, I've already finished one day of school and they aren't completed yet. (Naughty Helen!) In my defense, my website was my year plan and I thought it was pretty amazing... And then I tried to use it to make individual lesson plans and I got overwhelmed.

Online courses give you a wide variety of what you can do. They are designed with the idea that the user has an undefined amount of time to complete the section. On my website, I have embedded short explanation videos for those users with very little time, and multiple links to other resources for those with lots of time.

In class, I only have 1 hour of contact time a day. This requires a much closer eye on the time in order to get through the content. The content was already allocated to weeks in my calendar, so all I needed to do was put this into a spreadsheet.

I have included all of our teaching weeks for the year and any notes for those weeks (like exam time). I have a column for the section of content to be taught, like Exponents, and then a column for the specific content or skills (copied straight from the SAGS/CAPS document) next to it. I've also chosen to include which chapters and exercises from the Mind Action Series suite the content. It's still a work in progress, but you're welcome to check up on it by clicking here.

It's interesting to notice these differences and I think the comparisons could help those who are developing online courses to be used in a classroom environment. For example, in schools where devices are shared, an online course would have to apply similar strategies to cope with the limited contact time.

Well Reader, I have procrastinated too much now. I must get on with it.

Until next time, much love!

Excitement for FabuMaths.co.za

I have just published my website - fabumaths.co.za - and I am so super excited! Let's dissect my excitement together:

1. I set my mind to something and I finished it! ...well almost... I completed the pages needed to teach the content in Term 1. Saying that though, I don't plan to use the website in class at all. The more I work with technology in education, the more I feel the teacher is the most important part of the classroom experience. 
2. I managed to create a website! The website is not anything hugely original and I haven't specifically generated new content to fill the pages, but I am pretty proud of the way I've collate relevant resources to suit the content.
3. I have something to call my own! This is quite important to me. Over the last 4 years, I have contributed to many projects and I am proud of all of them. My name appears in the front of textbooks and in the credits of video lessons, but they are not my personal projects. I can call this my own, and I can design and use it exactly how I want to. #suchfun

To my bosses: don't worry, I have also been doing my conventional planning. I forgot how long it takes to do exercises out of a textbook, but it's been good fun. There is no better self esteem boost than getting an answer right!

Please take a look at my website (fabumaths.co.za) and give me your honest criticism. I need to live up to my name - Helen the Great. (Helen the Average just doesn't have the same ring to it.)

Much love!

Creating a website is like running?

About 2 years ago I decided to try running. I was never any good, but I enjoyed the time to myself and the feeling of accomplishment when I finished my first (and only) 10km race. Running taught me a lot about perseverance.

I'm having to apply those same lessons to this website. But before I get into a progress report, let me remind you of what I'm doing.

Next year I will be returning to the classroom after 3 years of content development.Going back is both exciting and scary. To help me cope with these emotions, I've created a website which collates resources specific to my teaching plan for the year. At this stage, I'm focusing on instructional resources but I hope to do more interesting things in the future.

Progress has been slower than I anticipated. It took a while to figure out how to put equations on the site and to be honest, I also got a little bored. (In fact, I'm writing this post now to try avoid doing more on the website.)

Here is the progress report written as a word problem:
When Fabumaths.co.za is completed, it will have 53 pages. Helen has completed 6 of the pages and another 33 other pages are 20% complete. It has taken Helen 56 hours to do this much work. If she continues at this rate, how many hours will it take her to complete the website? And if she works on it for 5 hours a day, when will she finish it?

I have completed the content pages for Grade 10 Term 1 and have moved on to the content pages for Grade 11 Term 1. Before I go away for Christmas, I'd like to be complete with this and Grade 12 Term 1.

If you would like to see a draft copy of the website, look here.  If you have comments or suggestions for the website, please post them here. (Don't judge me too harshly though, it's very much a work in progress.)

Running taught me that sometimes the action seems boring and insignificant, liking putting one foot ahead of the other, but the outcome is worth the boredom. So with that, I shall go back to working on the site.

Much love.

Putting equations on Weebly

Any Maths teacher can relate to this frustration. I'm doing such cool and exciting things, but I am limited by my lack of ability to code LaTeX and I am limited by Weebly's lack of built in equation editor on their website. 

I've spent roughly a week researching how to get around this and I have FINALLY found a way. MathType.

I have been working on the 30 day free trial version but I will be buying the full product shortly. Anyone who knows me, knows that the product really has to be amazing for me to spend money on it, so this is a huge recommendation.

Anyway, MathType is an equation editor. It looks and feels very much like the equation editor you'll find in Microsoft Word. (And if I'm not mistaken, the equation editor in MS Word is actually based on MathType.)

One of the exciting things MathType will do is copy your normal looking equation as MathJax: LaTeX code. This means that I can paste an equation in a text box on my Weebly site and it will look like I want it to look:

Equations are automatically pasted as an equation that will appear on a line of it's own. The square brackets are what tells Weebly to do this.

The code:

The published page:

Inline equations use round brackets at the front and back. I have to change these manually after I had copied the code from MathType.

The code:

The result:

To get this to work, I had to follow a couple of steps. At first they did feel like Greek to me, but I have summarised them below:

1. Edit the HTML/CSS code in the Design Mode of your Weebly website.
2. Change the 'Cut and Copy Preferences' in the 'Preferences' menu of the MathType program.
3. Set up your equation in MathType, and then copy it into a text box in your Weebly website. Remember that it will display as code.
4. Press publish and view your website for the completed equation.

I hope this helps!

Much love.

Creating a website - exciting new adventures

Well, I have been deeply distracted by the website I'm creating. I used Weebly while working on the Mindset Teach website and found it really user friendly and as result, chose it to use it again. To be honest, I wouldn't know how to work with anything else!

I've arranged the website according to my year plan and have collated relevant resources in each section. I've embedded the videos from Mindset Learn and linked the sections from Everything Maths textbook. I've also aligned all the exercises from the textbook we'll be using in class. At a later stage, I want to include online assessment activities. I might need some advice on how to do that. Any ideas?

Basically, I want this website to match and support my teaching. I will still do conventional teaching in class, but at least the learners have the ability to give themselves extra lessons in the afternoon.

I know that the teenagers will take a while to adjust to this. It takes a while to get used to being responsible for your own learning and I have a feeling they will be resentful about it. By going to extra lessons, you are making your problems someone else's to sort out. This approach forces them to figure out where they are going wrong and finding the right type of help for them. Maybe this is the sort of problem solving skills we should focus on?

Anyway... Once my website has been published, I will post the link on this blog. #suchfun

Until next time, much love.

Year Plan for FET Maths on a Calendar - Use It!

I'm starting teaching again next year after being out of a conventional classroom for the last 3 years. (To see some of what I've been up to, go to my blogs here, here, here and here at Mindset Teach or view the Maths and Maths Lit content at Mindset Learn) At Mindset, we do almost everything on Google Drive, and it's awesome. I don't want to go back to working on paper, and so I've decided to do most of my planning and work using Google Drive and other Android Apps. I've based this decision solely on the fact that these are the platforms most accessible to me. But anyway, enough about that and on to the interesting thing.

I've spent some time putting the CAPS pacesetter on a calendar. I've only focused on FET Maths as this is what I'll be teaching next year, but I have done a calendar for both the inland and coastal school term dates, as well as for the IEB 3 term system. I've made them all public, which means you can copy these dates to your calendar too! Best of all, inside each calendar event, you'll find a link to the CAPS or IEB document which stipulates what needs to be taught in that section. All you have to do is figure out which type of file you need and download it.

CAPS Inland schools
XML: https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/lkcv9rta78d29v9k3iaatnlloc%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
ICAL: https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/lkcv9rta78d29v9k3iaatnlloc%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
HTML: https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=lkcv9rta78d29v9k3iaatnlloc%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Africa/Johannesburg 

CAPS Coastal schools
XML: https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/put9f67i807mag5ab2ojoo6km0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
ICAL: https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/put9f67i807mag5ab2ojoo6km0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
HTML: https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=put9f67i807mag5ab2ojoo6km0%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Africa/Johannesburg 

It appears that there is one week short in term 1 to cope with the content laid out in CAPS. That was an interesting move by the DBE. Sometimes I wonder... Anyway...

IEB 3 term schools
XML: https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/1qftqdu2u4brfnt6235tpf8360%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
ICAL: https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/1qftqdu2u4brfnt6235tpf8360%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
HTML: https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=1qftqdu2u4brfnt6235tpf8360%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Africa/Johannesburg 

I've had to shift around the schedule a bit to make it all fit, so please check the IEB document for the correct order.

I hope these help in your planing. Actually, I hope they help me in my planning!

Much love.