Division+notes+2010

Thursday ELEM/MS Division Discussion Group Setting a standard for society.

Narrowness of focus can be dangerous on society. Need to place in larger content in the community. MS is ready for a larger community such as the water shed. ·

· Speaker said more about the society attitude towards math and science. How can we shift that within our school? · Community outreach programs and bring out to the community. STEM seems to be really separated from all of the other disciplines. See how it affects change on society. More cross disciplines. · Good for girls as they seem to really be about that social connections · Relate girls to human situations and problems if you want to see them go into these fields. · Field trip where the company comes to the school and does experiments in science. However there isn’t much out there like this in math.

· Invention Conventions

Math ·

Change the attitude about math in schools. Math facts may be hindering students from seeing the whole picture of math facts.

· Everyday math vs. Singapore math What is the difference? Is a different way of thinking that focuses on the understanding over the how. · Isidore Newman in New Orleans is using Singapore and schools are going there to visit to learn how this math course is working in their school especially for transition between 4th and 5th. ·    · Change the attitude about math.

· Help change the transition between 4th and 5th from everyday math type teaching to a normal sort of math class.

· Students being divided into groups based on their abilities causes students to be labeled especially in math courses. ** Differential instruction ** ** · ** Trying to teach students with differing abilities. · School providing a math tutor who learns from the MS math teacher · Sometimes we get caught up in what is best for the system and what is best for the students · Top down vs. bottom up. More changes happen in the Lower school than in the university.

MS Part 1 (Thursday)

How can we develop a passion for STEM in our students? Computer science and reaction to students to program. It is not a typing class, it is computer science. Required a semester in 7th and 8th grade. When teachers are enthusiastic about math and science, then the students are enthusiastic. You need the skills that come out of computer science. There are different units throughout to express themselves in artistic ways: websites construction in HTML and Dreamweaver. 8th Grade is the conceptual side of computer science, started with data modeling.

CPM - curriculum for math program - higher level thinking opportunity. They don't like it at first, but then they understand why it is important. Presenting real-world problems and making connections is a strength.

Math Olympia: 4th-8th grade block. LS teachers get them ready to think and work critically on larger problems. Work in groups. Does group work inhibit students from pressing forward?

Robotics program: Hutchison Core 5 or 6 girls interested in US. MS Robotics not in classes, but competitions to introduce programming. Algebra is in 7th grade, pre-algebra is in 6th grade. Multi-variable calculus in US.

MS robotics at St. Mary's evolved as year-long project in 6th grade. They do not compete but they get involved with the challenges. Elective robotics in US. Small classes in US. Encouraging STEM through special programs.

The Hockaday School 5th grade robotics in classroom, volcano project, fastest combustion current Make math as real as it can be. Geared towards making math real instead of isolated skills, such as teaching slopes. This year did math with word problems. They loved word problems and understood everything about it. Taking out of context was the challenge for them.

Integrated activities - terminology is the same for math and science. Example: Unit conversion

MS has a great opportunity to get students excited about STEM.

Deb Foehring, St. Mary's, uses a project for alternative energy sources to give students things they can relate to in their own world. Paired down content of curriculum to be able to make it relevant for students.

How do we encourage girls to focus on the effort rather than the result?

You have to reward the effort, but we reward the final result. Give kids lots of open-ended questions. Ask good questions. Giving struggling students the opportunity to be leaders is important.

It is OK to fail, but just try again. Develop strategies for the process to visualize and get better. Students become motivated by the excitement of those light-bulb moments in class. They get positive feedback through the process of solving the problem.

Students should be allowed to choose their interest and work on the problem, example, science fair projects.

How can we begin to apply Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset ideas?

Encouragement, tell girls they are thinking like a scientist. Nurture. Don't allow negative comments about math. AHHHHH FRACTIONS...One student can affect the mood of the classroom. Yes, you can do fractions. Exposure: it starts young..like girls with dolls and boys with building blocks. They need opportunity for play.

Split physics program with boys and girls - boys had more experience with projectiles, nerf guns, girls need more opportunities to play

LS Math girls need better spacial reasoning. Boys play and take apart, girls need to build and play. They have tinkering stations and instructions for building are at each station. They can also build what they want to build. They can do silent math as much as silent reading time.

How do we get teachers on board for "tinkering stations" The stations are very student-guided.

The Laurel School, Larry Goodman -Tinkering stations

Need time to do it, not after your work

"Tinkering with toys" - spatial reasoning. Like old VCRS, take things apart,

Build a bike program - service work - kids build a bike and they donate the bike.

Friday 12, 2010 ELEM/MS Division Meeting Silent math is just as important as silent reading. Created Mobile Tinkering Stations Cart -- Sherry Lee at Hockaday slee@mail.hockaday.org Contains rubiks cube, puzzles, Inpact Math – build block structures and then draw a flat picture. Then would reverse the process. First Grade – Frameblocks. Allows you to go from 2D to 3D immediately. 3D projectors and 3D printers. Use 3d printer in science. $750 Makerbot.com. Open source printer “Make Magazine” has cool stem like projects. Talk to librarian to see about a subscription. Paper engineering elective at Hockaday. Patti Black pblack@mail.hockaday.org 3D projectors can show you images just like Avatar. Can show a human heart in 3D. A museum in Dallas will have a 3D imaging table where a students can dissect a frog or human body in a 3D arena “The Ring of Truth” – Series 1986 – Different components – take snippets to show to different grade levels. With Everyday Math are there lots of manipulatives? Hexa Hexa Flexa Guns – six sides and six different faces. When you flex it you go from one face to a different face. Mindware and Creative are publications contains where all sorts of different math pieces like pentaminos can be purchased. Turn puzzles upside down and work the puzzle. Girls time themselves and work in groups like Field Dependent Easier for girls than guys to collaborate. Time and money constraints and buy in from other teachers and administration. CogAT 3rd grade test and it has a spatial testing section in it so we can see where students are struggling in spatial learning. Alternative energy. Redesign campus and build a scale model in 8th grade physics class, Engineering drawing. Showing isometric views. Could use toilet paper tools. Problem is finding time in the students busy schedule, - Have hands on activities for rainy day recess. - Tetrix - Rush Hour Game online - Puzzles.com (logic puzzle tab, stringco, gridworks, ) It is our responsibility to take some of these ideas we have learned here at STEM Think Tank and figure out ways we can get teachers at our schools to buy in to some of the spatial ideas across curriculum. Spatial skills doesn’t only have to be introduced/used/practiced in math and science. Talk to SS teachers incorporate some sort of spatial skills when they do mapping and using globes. Can have spatial skills in other classes not just science and math. Why can’t foreign language class incorporate some form of spatial learning in the form of a project they would be doing anyhow? If the roadblock is getting other teachers to buy into this, then Linda has given us volumes of materials of research to back us up in order to move our schools forward with spatial learning in our classes.

Middle School Notes Part 2 (Friday)

Where are we making spatial connections currently in our curricula? The girls make a map of the school campus. They learn how to measure and work together in the group. They also work on scale. Geography is map-making and it is easy to see which students struggle spatially. 12 students total working together and for taking measurements, they were split in 4 groups. "If you were walking from this point to this point, how do you explain to someone?"

Gifted students in 6th grade create floor plans for houses

Create graphs on the floor - x and y axis or use sidewalk chalk outside. Create a different venue than on paper. You can walk it and visualize it

6th grade math: real life graph with x and y axis. Go find this point and stand on it

Teach slope using motion detector CBL "Match It" (students are getting up and moving)

TI Inspire: manipulate lines

In 8th Grade, teach volume with CM cubes and build. Girls are not familiar with using the cubes and need time to handle and tinker with stuff. They do not have experience with building like boys. Make it 3D

We need to see girls use tools and gears, like shop. Put simple tools in their hands because they like to design and build. Set up tinkering stations with power tools.

Idea for project: Solar cookers - they had to build and test - took about a week and then cooked hotdogs. Relevance and practicality for them to want to solve a problem.

Plants: students had to measure the flower bed and replace with the correct amount of mulch. It's a real applied problem. None of the students got it right, but then they discussed square area and realized why they got it wrong. How deep should much be? Think about putting newspaper down to stop the weeds.

Measure square area of playground - transferring from paper to real world is difficult, but it makes sense after they do it.

Use geometry blocks and tessellation projects

What changes would be more difficult?

Girls are not getting the skills we used to do in the past, like sewing and knotting a thread.

We need to refocus on what is important in our curriculum. For example in teaching, distance and time problems. What is the purpose of it? How do we make this relevant?

The Home of Mathematical Knitting: http://www.toroidalsnark.net/mathknit.html

Knitting can help visualize and develop spatial relations and patterns.

What are the roadblocks to implementation? Time, curriculum restraints, administration, and parents

Parents want to know why they are not learning vocabulary and more of the basics.

If we give them more opportunities to fail in MS, then they will try harder in US. They are scared to get the right result.

To solve the roadblocks: Use electives to solve the roadblocks, center (tinker stations)

Half-day of intercessions - like art day or tinkering day to set up stations

More ideas for spatial opportunities and games: Rubics cubes for the students -

Use clay as you talk about motion or atoms to visualize and focus as they handle in class.

Take spatial assessments in free time and puzzles

Isometric Drawings http://illuminations.nctm.org/activitydetail.aspx?id=125

Google 3D Sketch up

Sheppard Software and brain games http://illuminations.nctm.org/activitydetail.aspx?id=125 Christmas tree: light up the tree from the bottom to the top. All the lights have to go on up to the top and light. Twist and turn the lights.

Math Scrabble and integer card games

http://www.bigbrainacademy.com/ Big Brain Academy on Wii

Let's Play Math! http://letsplaymath.net/2006/12/29/the-game-that-is-worth-1000-worksheets/

UPPER SCHOOL 2 NOTES Sometimes the college counseling or parental push is causing girls to take courses which they would not otherwise take. The problem is that these girls can hold the class back.

College counseling is dictating what girls take. But, with the proper nurturing many of these girls did well.

This can kill an AP program. We got to a point where if we offered it they felt they had to take it. So I jumped from 14 to 32 kids in Calc. The number of high scores remained the same but the average was much lower.

Some think that we should have an entrance requirement for certain courses (testing in) and if you don’t cut it you aren’t in. It seems like a bad idea and it would keep some great girls out.

At the same time I do think there are some kids in the wrong class. My comment to parents is “I don’t think that she is ready YET.” The math dept has split the levels so that all kids can be successful (in terms of grades) in math. This has helped the math morale but it makes the science department seem awful to have the lowest averages in the school.

I really think College Counseling really helps communicate with parents what is best to take for colleges.

We battle our College Counseling for encouraging kids to take the easier math or science purely for GPA sake. But it is true, these kids are going in to a pool of applicants. The college admissions officers that have come and talked to us told us that they definitely prefer the B in BC Calc over the A in regular Calc.

We have too much coddeling and nurturing of our young ones and in some ways that can come back and bite you in a negative way. Our guidance really needs to be able to encourage each group in different ways.

I see a bigger push to sign up for Science Olympiad and Research because of college, not because they want to.

So what can we do to focus on effort more than result?

We are now talking about developmentally for each child.

It takes a brave teacher to be able to say, this may not be the most rigorous class in the world but this is where they are. This is what they can handle so that is what we are going to do.

I thought it was interesting what Dr. H said about the creative degrees that students are coming up with. It is more about your combination of classes. Years ago it was pure degrees but now there are these great degrees that combine disciplines.

We are encouraging more engineers (“Engineer a better Dana” – at Dana Hall) by pointing out that you may not be the best math or science person but you may be a great problem solver. We want students to see themselves as successful under different parameters not just the typical “did you get the problem right.”

Foxcroft was energized last year about integrating math and science. They met for 2 weeks in the summer to set a road map. They decided to start with project based work. They made a matrix of the course topics and compared to decide what would work. They had to move stuff around (moved mostly math to work with the science) to make it work. How is it received by the students? They are a little confused by the grading but as we grow we will add more structure. They combine Chemistry, Biology and Physics with Algebra 2, Geometry and PreCalculus.

=Upper School Division 1=

How do we develop passion? · [|Can-struction] (charity) · Engineering Days o Duct-taping competitions (duct-tape chairs to the wall, stay on it for 3 minutes) · Robotics Competitions o [|FRC] o Worked on "Activity" periods during the school day · How do we draw in participation: o Schedule competitions after required assemblies o Schedules at the school must support these activities? o Structure A and B clubs that split a dedicated club time and ask students to choose between clubs o "Remove" inactive/"weak" clubs if not living up to the clubs charter (which has very specific requirements, like community service) · Make STEM topics part of grading? · Partner with Community Service: [|EPICS] (at Perdue) · Replace College Counselors with CAREER Counselors · Allow students to see/interact with role models/idols (girls seeing women in STEM)

How do we integrate? · Schedule math teachers to reinforce topics taught in the science classes · Lose “math” or “science” courses: call them STEM classes · Have science “funnel” questions to be included on math tests · Gender-segregate?