Reply To: Mary's Progress Log

[Mary Manske]

Progess log (as opposed to replies/thinking in type)

-Routines: I made a spreadsheet with some mental math. I’ve done it every day but Wednesday. It’s a start, but I still don’t trust myself here. My last stand & talk went really well but now I wonder if I used the right things/should have done it earlier/etc. (It was on compound inequalities, but I think I could have done interval notation earlier? I used the same line with 4 representations of the same “and” inequality, but now I’m wondering if having maybe 4-6 problems (all “and” instead of _<x<_?) would be better so they would notice and wonder and v or? Estimation I’ve done several times but I have too many things to doooo and I don’t prioritize. Or can’t figure out what to prioritize. Or something. This is driving me nuts. Don’t get me started on math talks…

-Adding in improving Do Nows–I want to get away from doing them related to current content unless we feel like we need that info to group students that day. A mix of WODB, notice & wonder and spiral review topics. I do really the tone the first two set though, because they are acessible and start class off where everyone can/is participate. 

-We’re heading into finals, so I need to look at the next few units and start mapping things out–I should have time to do that once I write an AP final and figure out their review. (Assuming I can grade that many free responses reasonably efficiently). There is no assessment for our next unit (functions), which on the one hand there should be but if there isn’t I can more easily mix it with linear equaitons so I have to decide which matters. I wrote in another post here about thoughts on the Hot Chocolate task and do want to figure out somewhere to do this. 

-WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CHOOSE SOMETHING AND DO IT?? We had an hour to work on this during PD Wednesday and I *think* we’re going to focus on Anticipatory work and not worry about the discussion. It should go as part of linear equations, I pushed for at the beginning, possibly a growing pattern a la YouCubed. Progress is maddeningly slow here.

[We’re also hampered by the disaster that is our Algebra 2 team. In the middle of trying to pick a task they sent the course lead an email asking for the rubric to our stats project. Because they want to do it–but  not as hard. With the juniors. Who all did a…harder version??…as freshmen. It took us awhile to reply “here, they’ve already done it, maybe you can work with Mary to up the rigor”–and then a reply of “we’ll probably include more distributions and let us know if you have other ideas of how to up the rigor”. I’m the only Stats teacher, they have no idea what they are doing, don’t seem super interested in actually getting help (yes, I’ve offered, a lot of times) and are lying about at least part of what they are doing. And I can’t escape the train wreck because Stats. And we’re supposed to write departmental common assessments. (So I guess this one is at least only partially my fault.)]*

*This has gotten CC talking again about breaking our team next year to go fix Algebra 2. Algebra 1 is in a good place. Exponentially better than Algebra 2. But it could be better. Which is the better choice? Really kill it at A1 and set an example? Go get A2 to at least be passable? I can take three preps, but I can’t do a good job at both of the things above at once–I’d have to do Algebra 1 as written.