New Look First Day

Chris Conrad from Allegan joining late. A2: 1st day lessons will rock b/c set tone for group work and failing forward. #miched
— Chris Conrad (@conrad_chris) August 14, 2014

There I said it. I feel weird quoting myself, but the #michED chat on the 14th made me throw the gauntlet down at my own feet. I usually start the year going over my syllabus and my rules and every year I am sooooooooo bored with myself. I can feel the energy that I usually feel in my classroom not there on the first day. The. First. Day.

I know that rules are important. We need the expectations for how to behave. We need to know how grades will be given. But what about the tone? The feel I want/need in class for the students to be successful? Where is that?

I got my rules down to 5 min and they were:

1.  Respect. We can't feel safe to make mistakes if we don't show each other respect. We can laugh and joke and have a good time, but we don't laugh about mistakes. We learn from them.
2. "If you need something ask!". I had an autistic student last year that struggled with how to interact socially and finally figured out that if he has questions he should ask. I told him I wished all my students could learn that lesson. He made me a poster. It will hang in my room forever.
3. "No Headphones". At least right now. I'll ease on up this rule, but we need to learn to work together before we tune out.
4. "Bathroom Passes". You will always be able to go to the bathroom. Try to make going during class for emergencies. Don't make our class your habit.

Done. Is that everything? Nope. But I can fill in the pieces later. Let's see what we can learn about my classroom expectations through learning activities. 

Calculus

Today's project was to get a foundation for the concepts of limits and rate of change.

Rather than talk about it, we went out in the hall and rolled tennis balls. First, everyone recorded the end time. (Later in the year I'll call this the average rate of change over 25 m) I asked how we could know what's happening at the 9 meter mark. They said we'd need to take measurements closer together. So we did it again and collected the data. When we looked at the data they suggested the graph looked like a root function. We thought about what would happen if we moved the points closer and closer together, what might that look like? We made connections between this activity how a speedometer and a radar gun work. While we will continue to do projects this year--I AM setting the tone--we have a great base to start from as we get into the mechanics of doing calculus. Great first day. Students are involved. Students are comfortable asking questions and sharing. We saw how we all can work together to learn the material. 

Geometry

One of the things that I hate about the Common Core is the complete lack of discussion of other geometries. If I am not doing my traditional day of laying down the law, that gives me a day to explore what Euclidean Geometry isn't so they could better understand what it is later on. We did a counting activity that helps support problem solving and how we can support and reason through the process. Students did well to draw examples, become comfortable making mistakes, and generally have fun learning.  They found it is fun to share and ok to screw up.

So it turns out that my students learned my expectations through working properly in my class with each other. I think the lessons went well...I've already made notes about what I'd like to do better next year, but I already feel that many in class are already wondering "what's gonna happen next?"

I have them right where I want them. Wanting to learn!

Have a great school year!