Beat the Heat
This summary of recent events and soon to be events is brought to you by the crazy heat wave taking over much of our week. Do your best to stay cool, hydrated, and somehow beat the heat.
Upcoming Conferences and Meetings
This season has plenty of conferences and meetings available to math teachers. California Math Council South conference in Palm Springs (Oct 24-25) will be bring in plenty of talent and brilliant ideas from all around. PUHSD will be represented by a couple of speakers: Chris Mackenzie and Jedidiah Butler. Early registration discounts just ended but there is still time to sign up for the conference and book lodging if necessary.
The Riverside-San Bernardino Math Teacher Association also holds a network and dinner meeting each quarter. The next one is scheduled for October 21, 2014 at Riverside County Office of Education on 13th street in Riverside. Currently there is no set agenda for this meeting, so please visit http://rsbcmta.weebly.com/math-network--dinner-meetings.html to see updated information.
PUHSD is also a leader in educational technology. A couple of edtech conferences include CA GAFE summit in Coronado (Oct 4 - Oct 5), and San Diego CUE Tech Fair in Carlsbad (Nov 15).
Lastly there are two local Ed Camp unconferences coming up. These are free and adapt the desires of the participants. The next local edcamp will be at Ramona High School in Riverside on October 4, followed by edcamp San Diego that takes place in Escondido, CA on October 18. More information on edcamps can be found at http://edcamp.wikispaces.com/.
Parent Math Information Nights
So far these nights have had small groups. There is a presentation prepared on shifts in Common Core Math, particularly with standards and assessment. If you would like the preview the presentation materials please visit: http://goo.gl/VrxWgR The biggest takeaways from these meetings have been get your student to talk more about the math, and apply concepts beyond just one context. A great example of this is in the central park activity featured by desmos. The shift toward a more balanced curriculum that utilizes procedural fluency, conceptual understanding, and application are well modeled in all the Desmos activities.
STEM
PUHSD is lucky to work with Josh Kitzerow as a consultant, particularly with STEM like activities. Some of his current ideas for modeling and applying concepts in the classroom include:
- a large scale (pun intended) balance to compare value in algebraic expressions
- using small cars with fixed variables for speed and/or time to look for a relationship
- lego building with manipulatives (digital and non-digital) to demonstrate examples of linear programming and modeling within specific constraints
- using code to animate visual patterns of growth and make predictions
If you are interested in trying out a STEM activity, Josh will do most (if not all) of the preparation. Contact Student Services or Jedidiah Butler if you want to know more.
TASFair
This year PUHSD hopes to host a local version of the Technology Applied Science Fair this year. Southern California Educator Scott Bedley began this as a local fair with his own elementary students, and now it has grown to even include international participants. All we would need to host an event at PUHSD are willing teachers (and their students) and a small group of volunteer judges. As more information is available we will be getting it out to the district. Please visit TASfair.com to see some of it for yourself.
Supplemental Resources in Haiku
Currently we are rebuilding a Perris Union High School District math resource site through Haiku. This site will be intended for all PUHSD staff and students. There will be materials on this site that is protected by license such that we can’t make the entire site itself public. Material to be included on this site will be also utilize free resources and tools online. This site is currently in rough stage, and I hope to have it polished by end of the month. The site will evolve and make use of our dynamic digital files through Google Drive at PUHSD. As a document, spreadsheet, or presentation is updated, users will not need to download anything. A sample of the type of materials that one could find on this site includes the following spreadsheets (http://goo.gl/klMc5w and http://goo.gl/j9Ym2V). A teacher could use these to find supplemental practice and tutorials as well as additional activities to align with other materials. These spreadsheets align resources we have license to (HRW) and additional resources online.
One reason for this site’s existence is our current license with Holt Rinehart Winston online (my.hrw.com) should be expiring this year. Most of the material that was on this site was also available on disk (PowerPoint, PDF sheets, workbooks, Student Textbook, Teacher Textbook, pre-made assessments). The only items that would be lost as the license expires are the interactive quizzes and videos from good ol’ professor Berger.
There is also a rough draft for a public site that will be intended for parents. The public site will be built to include parenting support for CCSS, to help answer the ever changing task of finding ways to support our students.
MVP Teacher Notes
We have copies of the teacher notes for the Math 1 and Math 2 MVP materials. We are putting the packets into binders and hopefully will have them delivered in the next fews days.
Examview Updates
Recently there has been a handful of teachers at PUHSD school sites asking about Examview. We have a district license for this software, including a license to use it on the newer Apple Mac Airs and iMacs. If you don’t already have it installed, and you have access to install applications on your computer, watch a quick video at http://youtu.be/Azx_aGoqkYc to see how to do this.
Common Core Curriculum
More publishers and institutions are establishing a better student text for updated standards and shifts in instruction. Currently California Department of Education has listed state adopted materials for grades K-8. These include the Pearson text for Integrated Math 1. At the student services center we are also looking through materials from Houghton Mifflin. One major trend in all publishers materials is for the student text to be a consumable item. These student texts are rather large, about double in thickness of a standard textbook, so many of the publishers give the text in a Volume 1 and 2. This fits well with the plan for PUHSD to have semester blocks A and B for each course.
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