Gender Separation?

By now, I am hoping many of you have read my post about my

love-struck freshmen boys

who are now working great and whose grades are improving now that a certain little 14 year old heart throb has withdrawn from my class. One thing my daughter and I were discussing tonight over several glasses of wine is whether or not this situation might make a good case for gender separation in core classes at certain age levels. I'm thinking maybe 7th, 8th, and 9th grade?

I've always noticed a huge difference between 9th and 10th grade boys and sometimes you start seeing more maturity during the second semester of the freshmen year for some boys. So I think the 10th grade year might be a good time to end the separation.


Might it be the case that both sexes could learn better if separated into gender groups? I don't know the answer, but we were enjoying kicking the idea around for awhile. What do you all think?

The Power of Love (or lust) is Now a Scientifically Proven Fact!

If you read my post yesterday about the Power of Love, you will appreciate this article sent to me by my friend Riccochet! Because it was so short, I'm just going to cut and paste into this post. I'm sorry that I don't know the proper ettiquette for giving credit for the article so I'll just give you the link to the story HERE.

Men suffer from significantly reduced mental agility after a conversation with attractive women, a new study suggests.

Dutch psychologists had males and females talk to strangers of both sexes and tested them on word games before and after the interaction. When men spoke to men, or women conversed with either sex, their mental abilities remained unchanged. However, a man gets markedly dumber after he talks to a woman -- and the better looking the woman, the stupider he becomes.

The researchers posit men can't help but mentally exhaust themselves trying to pick up an attractive woman.

This is why, if you value your money, you should never even look in the eyes of the cocktail waitress at the casino, the bikini model at the boat show, etc.

Now I finally know why my 3rd period class has such a high failure rate! Their IQ's have been severely impacted by a 14 year old siren!

The Power of Love (or is it lust?)

I teach one class of algebra I that drives me crazy. Nothing like what my good friend Pissed Off Teacher is going through, but it's enough to make me crave a strong margarita at 9:30 in the morning.

In this class of 9th graders there are 14 boys and 3 girls. That is there were 3 girls. One of the girls withdrew from school yesterday to enroll in a private school. That leaves 14 boys and 2 girls. For an entire year, I have dealt with all types of mischief in this class. One day during the passing period, I entered the room to find one of the boys had put hand sanitizer all over the door handle. I have lots of running, horseplay, getting out of their seats, loud talking, strange bodily noises, and on and on. A lesson that takes 15 minutes to teach in my other algebra I classes, takes 30 minutes to teach in this class because of all the interruptions. On top of that, only about 25% of the class passed for the semester. Isn't that terrible? A 75% failure rate! See, Pissed Off, there are worse things than being the 60% teacher!

I cannot get these lovely children to do a bit of homework. I call home, I send letters, I counsel. I do everything I can possibly think of but no matter what I do nothing changes. I've resigned myself to the fact that whatever we do as a class is all they are really going to do.

But today something strange happened. I was teaching the lesson and I looked out and every single person was writing down the examples on the hand out I had given them. I didn't believe it so I took a stroll around the room in between examples, and sure enough EVERY SINGLE student had written down the first three examples.

I stopped them all right there and declared that the entire class was going to get 5 bonus points on that days assignment because I was so excited that the entire class was on task.

Here is where it gets interesting. This one boy (who is quite outgoing) says to me, "Miss don't you get it?" I said, "No, get what?"

He said, "That girl, that cute one with the curly brown hair isn't in our class anymore. I just couldn't think straight when she was in here. She was so hot that it just took my breath away!"

Immediately all the boys began talking at once. They all chimed in agreeing with the first boy. I heard comments like "She made me dizzy every time I looked at her." And "I just couldn't stop staring at her." This went on and on for about 5 minutes with nearly every single boy making a comment on the mesmerizing powers of this young lady.

By this time I was cracking up. I said, "You mean to tell me that this is why you boys have been acting like idiots since August. Do you mean to tell me that all this foolishness was just to get this one girl's attention?"

The first boy piped up, "Yeah, pretty much."

Now, I don't know if anything will get better or not on a permanent basis, but I sure did enjoy the fact that for one day every single person was learning.

Gettin' Lucky

So yesterday we were learning to factor trinomials of the form ax^2 + bx + c in my math models class. I've taught this topic so many ways, but I have come to realize all of the little "tricks" to help them are useless, because the following year, they can't remember the "tricks". So in order to help them really understand the process, we are doing good old fashioned guess and check. This process was murder for my MMA kids because if they can't arrive at an answer within a few steps, they immediately proclaim "This is way too much work miss, " and you lose them for the rest of the lesson.

Anyway, on each problem, I would write out the possible factorizations and I was getting each row to check a different possibility. The first example went well and our second answer choice was the correct answer. On example two, the first answer choice ended up being the correct answer and I proclaimed, "wow, it's my lucky day!" "I can't believe I picked the right answer on my first try!" Then on example 3, I accidently did the same thing, I picked the correct factorization as my first guess (even though I really didn't want to). I then proclaimed in a very dramatic voice (because I was trying to keep their attention) "I can't believe I got lucky twice in one day!" A hush fell over the room and then laughter ensued. The whole class was beside themselves with laughing. It took me a few minutes to figure out what in the world was so funny. Then one brave student said, "Miss, think about what you just said."

I'm not sure how much they really learned yesterday about factoring. I can see that I will need to spend several more days on the topic. I'm going to try a little group activity today to avoid another "boring" lecture and hopefully more slips of the tongue.

Linear Art Project for Algebra I

For the last two days my algebra I students have been working on a Linear Art Project. Here is the basic idea. Construct a picture of at least 20 line segments that includes at least 5 vertical, 5 horizontal, 5 lines with postitive slope, and 5 lines with negative slope. Sketch the picture onto graph paper, number each line segment and then write the equation of each segment and give the appropriate domain and range for each segment. Some of the pictures have been quite amazing (with 50 or more segments)and most students have really put themselves into the whole process. Some had trouble getting started, but once they did, they were able to complete the project fairly independently. I probably should have made them complete it at home, but I wanted to supervise their work and I'm counting it as their last test grade of the grading period so I didn't want a bunch of kids taking zeros on it just because they didn't feel like doing it, and then having to explain why they are all the sudden failing my class to the parents. The way it is working out now, some who had 65-69 are now going to pass because they have done so well. I have been especially amazed to see how some of the boys have really gotten into this project.

Poker Chip Test Review

I stole this idea from Kate over at f(t) and modified to make it mine. I thought it worked great and would like to share with you.

I don't know about you, but I dread test review days. How do you get the students to take the reviews seriously? You want for them to see the importance of doing the review for the sake of learning, but instead all you hear are comments like "Is this for a grade", or "Do we get extra credit for doing the review?"

I've been trying to collect interesting ways of reviewing for tests and I have shared a few like my Test Review Bingo game. Today we played something called Poker Chip Test Review. I'll admit, it involves a little bribery, but I'll do just about anything to get my math models kids to study for a test and actually do the review.

Here is what you need:
1. 5 poker chips for each group
2. A test review for each person in the class
3. One worked-out answer key for each group

Procedure:
1. Place students into groups of 3-4 and have them appoint a "Chip-Master" and a "Key-Master". I told them that the chip master should be the bossiest person in the group and the key master should be the most responsible person in the group.
2. Hand out 5 poker chips to each chip master, the reviews to each person in the group, and an answer key to each key master
3. The poker chips represent 1-2 bonus points on the test the following day. I made mine worth two since my math models kids usually have such low test grades.
4. The role of the chip master is to keep the group on task and to be in charge of the chips.
5. The role of the key master is to keep the answer key face down and to check the answers for the group after they finish each problem or section of problems. (Be sure the key master understands that they have to do the review also)
6. Teacher circulates around the room answering questions and confiscating chips as the need arises.

Here is what I confiscated chips for (decide what is important to you and make your own list):

1. Group is off task or not following classroom rules. (Today I took up chips for talking about non-math related subjects, cell phone texting, profanity, etc)
2. Copying answers directly off answer key
3. One or two members doing the work and the others copying that work
4. Asking me a question that they had not discussed with the entire group before asking me.

At the beginning of class, I was very strict and tried to confiscate several chips right away. This got the rest of the groups busy . I was amazed to see them actually discuss problems and help each other. With six groups, I was able to easily spend quality time with each group. I would stop by and discuss the set of problems they were working on and talk about what they needed to remember for the test tomorrow. I was also amazed at how seriously some of the chip masters and key masters took their jobs. It really kind of surprised me. They did not want those chips taken away. I only had one group in each class that had the full 10 points at the end, and one poor group only had one-token left at the end of the period.

Overall, it was a successful day and an idea I'll definitely use again.

Ghosts in the Graveyard

Yesterday, I tried a new activity in my MMA class given to me by a colleague. This is by far one of the most successful group activities I have ever done with my at-risk kids. It is called Ghosts in the Graveyard for Halloween, but the activity could be adapted for any holiday. Here is how it works.

1. You will need 8 "Problem Cards" with 3 problems on each card. I made my cards in the shape of Ghosts.

2. You will need 5 black sheets of construction paper to symbolize the graveyard. I put tombstones on mine and hung them on my dry-erase board.

3. You will need about 50 "little ghosts" for each class period.

4. 2 glue sticks to attach the little ghosts to the graveyards.

Procedure:
1. Divide class into groups of 3-4 students
2. Give each group a problem card
3. Every member of the group works the problem and raises their hand when they are done. You go over and check their work and answers. If EVERYONE has done the problem correctly, they get a "little ghost" which they put their group number on and hang in any one of the graveyards.
4. As they finish a "Problem Card", they go get another one. The goal is get as many "little ghosts" as possible to hang in the graveyards.
5. About 10 minutes before the end of the period, I draw for how many points each graveyard will be worth. I use 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100. So if graveyard 2 is worth 50 points and a group had 2 ghosts in that graveyard, they will get 100 points.
6. Tally all the points for the groups and give prizes to 1st and 2nd.
(pencils, pts on a test, candy, etc)

The kids in my MMA class who hate to do work begged to play longer and asked if we could play again at Christmas so I said sure, I could come up with another one. I think it will be something like pin the ornament on a Christmas Tree. I'll make the big "Problem Cards" in the shape of presents.

You can get this activity here