13 Life Lessons Sixth Graders Learned

A week ago today, I gave a 3-2-1 summary to my students. I first asked students to write three things they learned about "math or attitude/character." Here were thirteen responses taken directly from the students journals. 

1. "How to be persistent."
2. "I have learned to never give up."
3. "I have learned it's not that I'm so smart...I just stay with problems longer."
4. "To listen to what other people have to say about a problem."
5. "It's better to do something that you really like than to do something for the money."
6. "Never take the easy way out, always go full out."
7. "Just take it step by step. To get to Mount Olympus just make sure every step you take is toward Mount Olympus."
8. "I have the ability to be a leader and I enjoy helping others learn."
9. "In order to teach someone something they should first be confused and have questions to truly learn."
10. "To always try to make math enjoyable for yourself." Or put another way by a different student "Make the most of math class - even if it's not your favorite class."
11. "We must learn from the mistakes of others."
12. "As long as you can practice you can get better."
13. "It's not about the results, it's about the process."   

It was even more powerful hearing the students share their responses out loud because they elaborated and there was such a variety of students who responded. How did these attitudes get shaped in this way? I don't have a quick or easy answer, but there are a few things that stick out.

The Quote of the Day. I believe in all of these philosophies and make them known to the students. By sacrificing some class time everyday to read and explain a quote of the day from a book that I've read, I demonstrated my belief in these philosophies. Some quotes worked better than others and some would have more meaning to certain students than others, but I usually tried my best to make them universal. One student clearly remembered the quote about the young citizen who asked Aristotle how to get to Mount Olympus. For a sixth grade student who has probably never heard of Aristotle or Mount Olympus, it's easy to doubt this would work. Nonetheless as the student wrote, the message was clearly to take your goals in one step at a time, and that message was received and remembered more than a month later.

The Star Student. This was new to this year. I'm not even sure what inspired the idea other than the knowledge of positive and specific feedback was the ultimate means to improvement according to research. Everyday I recognized one to three students who had done something the day before that enforced one of the core qualities listed above. These students were not just recognized in their own class, but in other classes too. And it became a tradition which I actually stole from Allie G (though the students were clueless to this) that we would say "Big Ups" and give a fist bump to the star student. The kid in Block A who was Star Student for instance would be bothered in the hall and in the caf all day by other students saying, "hey I heard what you did in math - Big Ups!" It was funny and a little over the top, but in giving a reason for these students to be stars everyday the message got out about how practice is done, what persistence is, and how to be a team player. Since the students that were stars were in our midst these philosophies did not come across as unrealistic ideals to meet. They were attainable and at some point everyone was recognized.

The Einstein Poster. In the back of my room there is a poster that says the quote that is given in number three. I tell the kids from day one that the word smart is a swear in this classroom after reading what Carol Dweck said about praising intelligence in Mindset. This quote has become my mission statement the last couple of years. Some colleagues and I discussed what our legacies would be as teachers a few months ago (it's a powerful activity to do with three other teachers and nobody watching your every move). I said that I wanted students to leave my class with the idea that they need to stay with problems longer. I revisit this quote with students who come up to me asking for help or with students that praise my own intelligence at least weekly. If I started the statement, It's not that I'm so smart, I'm confident any student that had me as a teacher could finish the statement.

All of this is very nice to brag about on the surface, but in reality I know I came up short in many ways. The responses I got back were gratifying, but also a reminder that there were students, lessons, and moments throughout this year that I was not reaching my potential in helping students recognize their potential. For instance, the majority of students would tell you that they have learned to never give up, but saying it and acting on it were not the same thing. I think the first way in which I will bring these takeaways from this year into the students I meet next year is by introducing them in September. As students start to see these quotes from people only a year older, my hope is that they will commit these ideals to practice earlier and more consistently. 

Day 167 to 169 Calories and Exercise

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.RP.2 Understand the concept of a unit rate a/b associated with a ratio a:b with b ≠ 0, and use rate language in the context of a ratio relationship. For example, “This recipe has a ratio of 3 cups of flour to 4 cups of sugar, so there is ¾ cup of flour for each cup of sugar.” “We paid $75 for 15 hamburgers, which is a rate of $5 per hamburger.”

6.NS.2 Fluently divide multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithm.

6.NS.3 Fluently add, subtract, multiply, and divide multi-digit decimals using the standard algorithm for each operation

Question from Yesterday (as always from a student): How do I know if the answer makes sense?

The Learning Objective: Determine a relationship between calories, weight, and exercise

Assessment: The students were given the chart from Mathalicious. I also had students fill in the chart about the amount of time that would be required to burn off a Big Mac, a french fry, etc.

Agenda:

1. Show the Dwight Howard and LeBron James McDonalds commercial
2. Discuss what factors would determine how long it would take for LeBron to burn off a Big Mac. It was very engaging when the class debated about whether the person's weight would determine how many calories were burnt off or if it was just the intensity at which the exercise was done. 
3. Model for students how to find the number of calories a person burns off with various forms of exercise (basketball, soccer, walking). I showed them with proportions and dimensional analysis. 
4. Students worked with a partner on the packet I modified from Mathalicious. 
5. For the duration of the class I asked students why their answers made sense

Glass Half-Full: At the core of what we should be teaching in math is what I did in step five of the agenda covered above. Students were able to successfully explain to me why Justin Timberlake would born more calories than Selena Gomez (he had more weight and therefore more cells which led to more calories being burnt). What I was noticing though on many papers was that students were unable to look back at their work when they were writing down the calories burnt in one minute. They would get lower numbers for Justin than Selena. I had to point this out to them.

I started on this hunt by accident when I noticed two students had made these calculation errors. It then became the most important aspect of this project. They all will use a calculator in the real world, but the question becomes will they look back on the calculation to see if it makes sense or simply trust the calculator. Even if students had the answers correct, I pointed to one random number in their chart and asked why that answer made sense. Too many of them went back to the multiplication alone for their reasoning. I'm not all out against this idea, but they should have more diverse means of checking their work and faster approaches.

Regrets: Recording the work was painful to grade and painful for the students to write. The modified template needs to include a place to put the work for Justin Timberlake's exercises, Abby Wambach's exercises, etc. because the students did not have the executive functioning skills to carry this out.

Link of the Day: I thought these statistics were alarming regarding homicides in the United States via gun violence. Overall a very informative article on just how prevalent guns are in the country relative to other countries.

Day 158 - Day 166 Vacation Projects

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.NS.2 Fluently add, subtract, multiply, and divide multi-digit decimals using the standard algorithm for each operation.

6.G.4 Represent three-dimensional figures using nets made up of rectangles and triangles, and use the nets to find the surface areas of these figures. Apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.

6.RP.1 Understand the concept of a ratio and use ratio language to describe a ratio relationship between two quantities. For example, “The ratio of wings to beaks in the bird house at the zoo was 2:1, because for every 2 wings there was 1 beak.” “For every vote candidate A received, candidate C received nearly three votes.”

Standard for Math Practice 5: Use appropriate tools strategically

6.W.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

Question from the Project: Why is it the flight to Dublin so much longer than the flight back to Boston?

How do we determine how many miles the hotel is from our activities?

The Learning Objective: Write a check; balance a budget; subtract a decimal from a whole number; calculate miles per gallon and cost of gasoline; find a flight, hotel, and rental car using web based resources; write a story about what your vacation was like or what it will be like; present your story with Google slides, a brochure, a poster, a skit, a rap song, a video, or another means that you prefer; calculate the surface area and volume of your suitcase

Assessment:

Flight, Hotel, Rental Car, Gas Mileage
Check Ledger
Writing Checks
Suitcase
Proportions to breakdown budget

Agenda:

1. Pick a partner
2. Pick a city
3. Pick a flight (start doing the math on the checkbook ledger to ensure a balanced budget)
4. Pick a rental car
5. Pick a hotel
6. Pick out three activities
7. Find how far the activities are from the hotel
8. Write checks for all expenses
9. Find the net, dimensions, volume and surface area of the suitcase
10. Determine what percent of the budget was spent on all items
11. Make a graphic organizer that tells a story about the project
12. Write the story based on the graphic organizer. Here is one story a student wrote about their trip to Myrtle Beach. As you can tell, students sent these stories via Google Docs. 
13. Students presented their vacations to the class 

Glass Half-Full: We did a 3-2-1 summary in the journals after the presentations were completed. The three things they wrote about were things that they never knew about before doing the project. The two was they wish they had tried in their city or things they wished they tried in their presentation. The one was one math skill that is essential to planning a vacation. It seems like all the kids got something out of this based on what they shared and wrote. It also was apparent that engagement was higher during this project than it would be for the typical class. That's not something I find surprising given the autonomy that this project gives and the degree to which students can rely upon their creativity to get excited about the project.

Regrets: This is a massive mess to grade. I tried to give mini deadlines, but my students have trouble self-starting and cannot gain focus regardless of what I do were unable to follow through on these. As a result, most of my energy was geared toward these students throughout the project. Students knew what was expected of them day after day, so for students that were capable of self-regulating the mini deadlines were helpful.

The presentations were similar to the clothes they wear. Once they see someone doing something one way, they all tend to do it that way. I saw way more Google Slideshows than I ever wanted. Most of them just copied and pasted their stories to the slides. I had told them ahead of time, that the slide shows should have no more than three bullet points, but about half of the slide shows were paragraphs anyway. I think this is a hurdle for this age group (I'm not entirely sure because we haven't used Google Slideshows and creative writing alone all year - never mind using both in the same project). Presentations like the video above were few and far between, but I got a few of them and will hold onto those samples to ensure future classes know what creativity could look like for the bold students.

Link of the Day: Supposedly we can create our own visual patterns at Dudamath. Good one to explore over the summer.