Back and feeling full

Hey everyone, I trust you all had excellent Thanksgiving breaks. I actually went to my girlfriends house in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving where we dined on delicious egg rolls, fish, and fried rice. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll get turkey and mashed potatoes next year. In school-related matters, this week is "Critique Week" in the Hartooney Team and we'll be focusing on providing feedback and encouragement about all of our hard-working students' Egypt projects. In math Ms. Gavan and I have finally implemented our new "Hey Math" program. This means that the students alternate days between visiting me for the Hey Math online lesson and visiting Ms. Gavan for the extension activities and project. It also means that our students can access the math lesson on the Internet at any time (after school, at home, in Starbucks) in case they need to review the principles covered in class. We are really hopeful that this new format for Math class will allow our students greater individualization in the way they learn new math concepts and are anxious to hear feedback both positive and negative from students and parents alike. Let me know if you have any questions or need clarification on the new format. Cheers! -Mr. H

Happy Turkey Day! (almost)

Well, I hope nobody was too confused by the sudden addition of an early day to our Pre-Thanksgiving week. It seemed to go fairly smoothly from my perspective, although I did spend most of the afternoon huddled in front of my computer in the back of the building. Today Ms. Looney and I were able to give the students an extended amount of time to work on their Egypt projects. I'm happy to see that a few of the students have selected Egyptian geography as a component of their project, as it will assuredly aid them when we start learning about plate tectonics, exothermic and endothermic processes and erosion after Winter Break.
You'll all be happy to know I've enrolled myself in an online mentorship program with UC Santa Cruz and have been asked to undertake a lesson related to data collection and plate tectonic movement as my first assignment. We should get started on it as soon as we find the time. With my Master's classes at SDSU taking up their own share of my time, I wasn't terribly anxious to undertake further self-education courses, but I took the chance that such an opportunity might be doubly effective in giving me some insight into my own teaching methods and the students an effective lesson to boot. I suppose we'll all see soon enough.
Be sure to check in with your student this Thanksgiving break about their Egypt projects, I know a fair amount are planning on using at least a small portion of their time off to get work done. Critique Week begins the Tuesday after we get back, so there will only be a small amount of time for the students to assemble the work they've already completed before presenting it to the class. Every student has also clearly stated exactly what they expected to have accomplished by Critique Week, and a failure to reach the stated goals will be reflected in their final grades. More importantly, Critique Week serves as an opportunity to receive both positive and negative feedback about the work each student has completed before the work is actually turned in. This gives them a chance to make adjustments where necessary and realize successes early on in the project process.
Finally, Mrs. Blair (mother to the latest addition to the Hartooney Team) came in this morning and volunteered a couple hours of her time to help out students with their projects and just be of general assistance in the classroom. If there are any other parents who have the time to come in and help out at all, the second half of the day (12:30 - 3:30) would be an ideal time to show up. No need to RSVP or phone ahead, just check in with Toni at the Front Desk and start doing some students some good. Have a happy holiday break! -Mr. H

Test 2.2 and Egypt

Hello everybody, sorry to take so long posting here again, it's been a busy few weeks for me but there's a lot to cover so I won't take too long telling you all about it. The first item to address is our second attempt at test 2. The scores the first time around were so abyssmal that I decided to have the students take the test a second time. Similar to Test 1 taken earlier in the year, the vast majority of mistakes made on our second test were due to careless errors rather than a failure to understand concepts. In an effort to reduce the amount of careless errors during testing we spent time creating "mistake cards" in class that detailed each mistake the student made on their first test 2 try. Then I gave these cards to the students when they took the test the second time (the test was not identical, I just changed the numbers), the idea being to learn from past mistakes. I also awarded the students points on the second try for making an estimate of the answer to each question before actually solving it, the point being to think generally about what their answer should be, so absurd answers can be eleminated using common sense. The strategies seemed to work pretty well as the scores I have now for Test #2 are quite high. I haven't entered them into PowerSchool yet, but I think the average will be around a B.
The second item to address is the Egypt Project. This is the first full-blown project we've done this year so far, meaning it began with a student-created proposal, will take time for critiques, and will conclude with a post-project presentation and reflection. Ms. Looney and I are giving the students 90 minutes at the end of each day for independent work time on their projects, and while technology issues have hampered their progress so far, we're hoping to get a lot of work done this week in preparation for critique week when we return from Thanksgiving break.
The final item to address is our new math approach. I've discussed this before with some of you personally, but Ms. Gavan and I have been working together this year to try and find a system with math that will better serve the individual needs of our students, and we think there may be some potential with online math resources, such as HeyMath!. Our current vision includes time for all students to participate in both my class and Ms. Gavan's, getting an Internet-based lesson in the former and engaging in extension activities in the latter. We originally planned to begin the new system this week, but with the delay in my class due to the Test 2 retake and Thanksgiving break approaching, we decided it would make more sense to begin the program after we return from vacation. Hope all of you are doing well, I'll have more news for you later this week I'm sure. -Mr. H