CSP - Reflections on weeks 0 and 1

This last week I had two "good" days in CSP which I feel like means I need to reflect on where I was and where I am going in CSP.

The first week was a little shaky.  Students did not know what to expect, I asked them to take risks without knowing me and that they could trust me, I had one student who was a crab-ball and I honestly did not project confidence in the classroom.  So, next year, I think I want to do some team-building to get to know students before jumping into CSP.  Also, students finished things faster than I was ready for.  I couldn't predict (or didn't understand) how to push their thinking on the content and the combination of both meant the pacing was off.  Also, I didn't have a seating chart for the first week - big mistake.  Groups needed to be split up to challenge students to assume new roles and responsibilities.  I had a few other people add the class and a few drops too.  I also have started pulling in students from out in the hall if they want to check out what the class is about.  I need to make a one-pager so they can get registered in it themselves too.

Buzz is building with some publicity at the Junior meeting and with an article coming out in our school newspaper soon.

This week I started students on the Mobile CSP site for the "I have a dream" app which they seemed to like.  We ran into some glitches with the devices, but I think technology has helped us get that all cleared up.  I will know for sure when we do our next app on it.  I still think it would be good to be able to test the app ON the actual site, but we will see where we go from there.

We continued with our bit sending devices (which went horribly the first time).  This time, I pushed students to make their device have two states and got students to develop a protocol for sending their messages (usually with time as their metric).  This seemed to flow nicely into the internet simulator.  I was pretty impressed with how students embraced the challenge of sending these messages in the simulator.  Speed was how I challenged them further and one team even found a way to send written messages (rather than just As and Bs).

I had students write a weekly reflection - but did not give them enough time or structure in doing so.  That is going to be my goal for next week.

Do more of what you love

Inspired by the recent mass posts that resulted from TMC15, I have decided to take the challenge thrown down by Christopher Danielson to think more about what I love about teaching.  Then do more of that.

I was told by Chris Johnson that a person's vocation is found where the heart's greatest desire and the world's greatest needs meet.  It was after considering this that I determined that what I want to do his to promote collaborative problem solving and that math education was the best place to do this.

Now, for the fun (and challenging) part, how to do more of that:

• Find problems worth solving
• This is an ongoing challenge.  The MTBoS has been a huge help.  I need to identify areas where I do not have problems worth solving in my class and then focus filling in those spaces.
• Utilize team roles.
• I have created these and will be setting them up this week!  I learned this summer about the difference between roles that make people responsible for the operations of the team vs responsible for the content.  I think I have found roles that push people to contribute to the collaboration without making individuals responsible for the content. 
• Identify what is preventing me from doing that 
• Tests (which brings me to the next bullet point). 
• Determine a way to incorporate that in assessments
• I really want to look at assessments differently this year.  After researching on the MTBoS, I developed this one pager for alternative assessments. 
• Force a wrap-up at the end of collaborative problem solving classes
• I believe that collaborative problem solving helps students understand the content, but a wrap-up is essential for a closure to the lesson.  I have not been making space for this in my class as much as I need to.  This is a goal of mine for next year.