The Beginning of a Blog Post from 10 Years Ago

Many people say learning is messy. While I do not disagree with that statement, I do disagree with its wording. "Messy" is too simplistic. Rather, I believe learning is complex. Looking at the surface does not always reveal the undercurrents of thoughts.

It is the same reason why "popping into" a classroom can lead to a false conclusion.

In my classroom I foster a dynamic community to f learners who are able to learn from each other through the connections they make to their experiences.

I believe connections to prior knowledge to be essential to learning and take a constructivist approach to the way learning experiences are constructed in my classroom.

Student learning does not flow linearly and will often move beyond the teachers expectations so we must be flexible and prepared to move with the flow of understanding.

Teaching a Blended Classroom - Midpoint Reflection

Yesterday I had the opportunity to substitute I in the class for which I made the blended math lessons.

It was only the third lesson I have been involved with during this unit. 

I started going through the anchor problem and one student answered my questions. What I should have done instead was to group the students and have them work out the problems in the group.

I was able to sit with a few students to have them explain how they think through the problems. This included one who didn't have any quizzes completed.

I forgot to record the lesson so I could give them a summary, but the lesson is on video anyway.

I noticed a few things in this lesson: 

• students need to be taught early to allow other students a chance to answer

• teachers need to be intentional about grouping

• I need to update the pacing guide to show pass/try again instead of simply "done".

One other thing to note is that students need to understand that they are taking responsibility for their learning. This means they need to work to really understand what they are learning.

When I was reflecting with the math teacher, she suggested that students should be asked to do all the assignments posted.

I like that idea, but I am not sure that is teaching them to think about what they need for themselves. I wonder if another way would be to do more tests along the way. I would make the tests "redo-able" (maybe this would be less awkward if I wrote "I would allow students to retake tests"). I would like to allow students to try to recognize what they need help with.

AI: Environmental and Humanizing

I wasn't sure how to title this post. Maybe I should do what I used to do when blogging - write the post then titling it. But, Blogger will save the post title as it is and doesn't change it after the title is changed. 

Confused?

We are finally getting started talking about AI at our school. 

Yesterday we were talking about politeness, and I shared two main points. The first was how being polite to AI can actually be harmful to the environment. When we start thinking about being polite to AI, we're humanizing it in ways that might not be helpful. These are two points I think we should at least raise with students when teaching them about AI.

On the environmental side, I didn’t have the exact data with me last night, but I’ve read stories about how much water is used per AI search or prompt. I’ve noticed that I sometimes type “thank you” at the end of a prompt, and then the AI responds with something like, “You’re welcome! Come back if you need anything!” It’s nice—but those extra, polite responses from the AI actually add to its environmental footprint. That politeness might be better embedded within the prompt itself, not tacked on at the end.

The more concerning issue, though, is humanizing AI. I've read about how people are starting to fall into the trap of thinking AI is communicating with them personally. I’m all for teaching students to be polite—it’s good writing practice, and a good habit in general—but if we encourage them to be polite to AI, we need to be very clear why we're doing it. We also need to teach them that AI isn’t alive. Just because a hammer doesn't talk back when you use it properly doesn’t mean it's “happy”—it's just giving feedback based on your action. AI is kind of the same: it responds, but that doesn’t mean it’s feeling anything.

These conversations among teachers are important. The more we talk about these issues, the better prepared we’ll be when they come up with students. Hopefully, students will feel comfortable enough to share how they’re using AI, what they’re using it for, and why. My concern is that they’ll feel the need to hide their usage instead, and that’s when the real risks start—when they’re exploring these tools without guidance.

That’s why it’s so important to bring up these topics. We need to help students understand the various costs of AI—environmental, cognitive, academic, and even social. Every tool has trade-offs. I don’t think we can use AI without some cost. So our job is to help students become aware, to look at the bigger picture, and to consider multiple perspectives.

In a way, it's like playing chess. If you're locked into getting a particular piece or following a single path, you miss the bigger strategy. The same goes for AI—if we're only thinking about the tool in one way, we're not really thinking critically about how it's shaping our thinking and communication.

Here are a few articles related to what I am talking about.

• https://www.greenmatters.com/technology/cost-of-saying-thank-you-to-ai
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/politeness-vs-planet-surprising-cost-thanking-chatgpt-techverx-sjlge/
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-new-discontents/202403/dont-be-fooled-by-ai

Filter Multiple Google Forms to a Single Sheet - Update Main Sheet as "Done"

Part of my goal in this Geometry unit was to collect more data on the students and ease the teacher load at the same time by automating the grading. 

I naturally thought of Google Forms.

We are two weeks into this unit, and (among other issues) I have a progress tracker that should show the teacher where students are and show the students where to pick up from.

I had this sheet with dropdowns that I could select to see where students were at. The problem was that:

• It doesn't show the score,
• It wasn't automatic.

With a little ChatGPT work, I got a formula using the FLATTEN formula. 

=IF(COUNTIF(FLATTEN('Lesson 4 Lesson Snap'!A:AC), A3), "Done", "")

This now gives me something that can automatically mark when students complete a lesson. I still have to go in to see what issues students have and where they need help.

Chat prompt and response

Blended Lesson 1 Reflection

Room a little warm

Sunny day

Second to last period of day

Activity in the hallway

Students getting bored during score problems

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Check map scores about angles

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Google Docs access with first few lessons off

The design was for free use of time. Not sure we will have time for students to redo mastery checks

The conferencing piece to the blended learning is missing

I've been thinking about my blended Grade 7 geometry unit and how to improve it. We're only in Lesson 3 right now, but I can already see that students need more time for conferences. I need to figure out how to make that work since I'm only in the classroom one day a week.

One of the most important parts of this model was to be able to work with small groups. This needs to happen more.

I also think I need to communicate more with the homeroom teacher and better explain how I envision the unit unfolding—something like a clearer program or a visual of student progress. I want to use a student progress tracker, but I need to figure out how to input scores automatically. Checking each one manually every day will be too time-consuming.

Piloting a Blended Model of Learning

I tagged this post with "flipped learning" since I don't have a page for "blended learning". I guess I should add one. (I made a Blended Learning tag.)

Today was one of the first-ish lessons in the unit. I have been reading about the Modern Classrooms Project for a number of years, and have been promoting it while not having my own classroom, but this year I have a chance to work with the Grade 7 Math Team (team of 1) to pilot a unit on Geometry. 

When I was first planning this unit, I thought it would go more smoothly than it has so far.

I should explain what hasn’t gone well—mainly the communication with my co-teacher and the limited time I’ve been able to spend in the classroom. Since this is my first time blending a unit, I didn’t know exactly what to expect.

I’ve done a lot of reading on blended learning and flipped classrooms, and I know it’s normal for things not to go perfectly at first. Still, I think it would be easier if I were in the room and leading. Because this isn’t my own classroom, I don’t have the same authority as the homeroom or content teacher.

At the beginning of the year, I was scheduled to be in this class three times a week, but that has dropped to once a week. So during this unit, I’ve only been in the classroom once so far, and that’s made it difficult to prepare students for what to expect.

I haven’t had the chance to clearly explain to students what they should be doing, and I’m already seeing the effects of that. I did make a video explaining the flow of the unit, but I had wanted to redo it before we started and didn’t get the chance.

Here are a few of the changes and run-ins the students have had:

• The lessons have three kinds of problems - Must do, Should do, Aspire to do - and they are color coded. Students were looking for "Must do" to do - not the color.
• The videos are a support. They are there if the students need them like a textbook. Some students are not using them at all, or are unsure of what to do.
• I changed lesson 0 vocabulary baseline to aspire to do since not many students got to it. This is what I believe to be a crucial part of the unit, and I need to get them back on that.

Lesson 1

• Mini lesson (anchor problem) ended at about 13:05 - giving the students more time to work on math.
• We are still in the weeds with learning how to do the lessons, and one student asked me what would happen if he finished all the lessons early. I said there is always more, but this students was particularly engaged with GeoGebra - my Aspire to do tasks.
• Each lesson has an essential question. I changed this from an "I can ..." statement because I thought they knew what they were. I got a question about what it was and why I was "giving them more work".

Reflection after lesson 1.

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I'm looking through the data I've collected about Grade 7 and the geometry unit I'm blending. There are a number of things I should have expected, but I had hoped things would go more smoothly. I should have known that things wouldn’t go 100% smoothly.

One thing that stands out is that because I wasn’t there and didn’t have good communication with the homeroom teacher, students weren’t properly informed about how the unit runs. In fact, they were misinformed. They weren’t told to complete the exit tickets I call “lesson snaps” for each lesson.

I had to go in last Thursday and explain what to do, but I don’t think many students were really listening. There’s a low response rate to the lesson.

Looking at the data from Lesson 1, the question was:
Kelly says that angle CEB is vertical to angle AEF. Explain why her reasoning is incorrect and name the angle that is vertical to CEB.

A lot of students assumed the angles were right angles. They need to be shown that unless you're told it's a right angle, you shouldn’t assume it. They don't have protractors to measure the angles themselves, so they have to rely on the given information.

Another issue is that this is a two-part question, but many students only answer one part. Which part they answer varies by student. They either need to be explicitly taught to recognize two-part questions, or the question should be split—or maybe both.