Learning Conference Tasks

Last year, the 6th graders at JBA had End-of-the-Year Learning Celebration Conferences, where scholars presented some of the things they have learned to their parents.  Being a 7th/ 8th grade teacher, I didn't participate, but I heard good things about it.  This website has some general information on Learning Celebration Conferences, and in addition, Sandra and I will be presenting about them this summer, so stay tuned =)


This year, as a staff, we decided that instead of 2nd marking period Scholar-Led Conferences, the whole school would participate in Learning Celebration Conferences (LCC).  To prepare, we had been working in small grade teams to come up with a menu of tasks for scholars to pick from, and during this week's math team meeting, we decided to try out each others tasks to get a feel for what our scholars would be doing.  Although we were in separate grade teams, the 7th grade teacher and I had previously worked together coming up with our LCC menus, so today we actually did each others math tasks.  


We decided that it would be best to work through the 7th grade tasks first, and then the 8th grade tasks.  The tasks are meant to do done without teacher input, but we wanted to be able to ask each other questions as we worked through them.  Some of the 7th grade tasks that I worked on included solving equations and proving the Pythagorean Theorem.  Some of the 8th grade tasks that the 7th grade teacher worked on included solving equations with variables on both sides, and a coming up with a geometric transformation dance routine.  We spent about the whole hour of our meeting time working through the tasks, asking questions, and modifying the tasks when necessary.  


What I am learning about collaboration?
Trying out each others tasks was really helpful for me this week because I had no previous experience with LCC, and the 6th and 7th grade math teachers had.  It was interesting, because several times, the way we approached a task, was different then how the teacher initially designed the task.  For example, the one teacher (as a scholar) set up a proportion to solve a sales discount/tax problem, while I had designed it as a straight multiplication problem.  It really reminded me that just because I am comfortable solving a problem one way, doesn't necessarily mean that that is how my scholars will approach it, and that good tasks have multiple entry points (which is something that came up during my action research last year).  


I think it was not only really helpful, but really important for us to go through each others math tasks during our team meeting.  Collaborating with the other math teachers helped me revise my own LCC menu and gave me a better idea of how my 8th graders will be approaching the tasks.  And although I am still nervous about the conferences, I definitely feel more confident and I am fairly confident that that wouldn't have happened if I had come up with the menu and tasks on my own.

The Digit Place game

For this week's math team meeting, I decided to start us off by teaching my colleagues how to play the Digit Place game.  I had learned about this game during a PD I had gone to in December and thought it would be a simple and fun way to get us started.  The 6th grade teacher was familer with the game, but the 7th grade teacher, and our ICT teacher were not. 


This elementary school teacher's classroom blog has the instructions on how to play.  After I explained the directions, we got a white board, marker and paper towel, paired up and started playing.  We ended up playing for about 15 minutes or so, and then had a discussion on how we could potentially use this game in our classroom and questions we could ask to encourage our scholar's thinking.  As we were sharing, I wrote down the questions that were coming up with on the board.  Some of the questions we came up with to ask our scholars were: "What do you know so far?" "Are there any digits that you are certain are in the number?  What information helped you?" "Have you eliminated any digits?" "What would be your next guess any why?" and "How could it help you to guess a number that included digits you had already eliminated?"  


What am I learning about collaboration?
One of the reasons that I chose the Digit Place game was because I wanted to keep it simple.  I anticipated that we would play the game for a few minutes, talk about it briefly, and then go on with the rest of our meeting, but that was not the case.  After playing each other, the discussion that we had was awesome.  What started out as a simple game, became a discussion on transforming the tasks that we ask our scholars to do to encourage our scholars to use thinking, reasoning, and problem solving skills.  I was amazed at the enthusiasm that something so simple as a game on digit place, could lead to.  


I think one of the reasons that this worked well was because it was something that the teachers could potentially share with their classes.  One of my complaints of past PDs has been the lack of practically.  There might be some good ideas, but I always liked the PDs where I left with something I could bring back to my students and try tomorrow.  A teacher's time is valuable, and nothing makes me more frustrated than feeling like I just wasted time at a useless PD, so I think one way to make collaboration more meaningful is by keeping things practical.  Who knew that something as simple as the Digit Place game could be so productive?