Coding and Stuff

Today's Google Doodle celebrates 50 years of kid's coding languages. Still, talk to someone about coding and you usually get a pretty binary response; Either they will spout on about the most useful IDEs and how React is the language of the future or they will write it off as something only a special breed of nerds do and that pretty much exists on the same level as the Matrix universe. I myself had no interest in computer science in school and found myself on a steep learning curve in university.

Next year, the new Digital Technologies Curriculum will be rolling out. From Year 1, kids will be exposed to computational thinking and how algorithms work. This is a big deal for teachers. After all, we need to be confident in what we are teaching in order to teach it well. Or do we? Instead we can teach students that we too are lifelong learners who try new ways and methods to solve problems and work stuff out along the way. I already see that a lot of what teachers do is the same type of thinking involved in coding. We break tasks down for students into a progressive sequence of steps. The way we mark and report using letters, colours or symbols is essentially a system of variables and conditional statements. We tell our students "if you do this... then..." and "for the next 10 minutes... we are going to..." - the logic and looping happens for us in real life!

It really is just a small step for teachers to utilise even more coding in their classrooms. On my calendar I create hyperlinks to enable ease of access and direct students to sites I want them to use.

Sample code: Complete a <a href= http://www.hoodamath.com/mobile/games/mathtimedtests.html ><font color="red"> Basic Facts Test </font></a>

All the students see is Complete a Basic Facts Test, but when they click it it takes them to the website link in green. It's a simple copy and paste for me but saves valuable class time which means more time for students to be on task and learning.

Online coding tools such as scratch allow students to share their learning by telling stories and creating their own games or activities. In a way, technology shouldn't even be a separate subject it is ubiquitous these days in all fields and areas of life. It was by far my favourite subject at school as it let me be creative, take ownership of my learning and taught me how to think critically, which were the most useful skills when it came to tackling open-ended engineering projects in university. Coding taught me logic, problem solving and most importantly how to deal with failure and iterate for improvement.

Technology at its core is all about designing solutions and taking up opportunities to grow and develop ideas. Coding shouldn't be limited only to those who elected to take computer science as it is the language of all the digital technologies we have today.  For many of us and our students, the digital world is as real as the physical world. Students will need to understand the language of digital technology so they can not only play and interact with it but also to design and develop it. As their teachers, we should continue to take small steps in our own learning and explore this exciting realm alongside them.

Student Tracking for Motivation and Achievement

Progress can be a big motivator. Seeing positive results or improvement after inputting effort is necessary to build a sense of autonomy as well establish a connection between work and reward. Like many things, Maths is a subject in which if you do more, you will make significant progress in your skills. Many students (and people for that matter) believe that you are either good at maths or you aren't. It can be frustrating and mind bending - for everyone. An attitude of persistence, a willingness to try and almost a dogged stubbornness to solve a problem is the most important thing. I'm still working on encouraging this in my students, too often the fear of failure prevents them from putting in their best effort.

This year I attempted created an economy in my classroom with incentives and deterrents to motivate students to want to achieve.

At the beginning of the year I used the ViTaL spreadsheet to track students work and progress towards learning specific skills. I broke activities down according to learning activity, intentions and curriculum levels and when it was completed I recorded it with a green box. An orange box signalled to the student that it was in progress but they had some minor errors to fix. I left the students anonymous and used their KAMAR IDs in the left most column as shown in the image below.

This motivated some students, some wanted to get as many green boxes as they could. However, I noticed some students completely ignored it and didn't even know their KAMAR ID. Giving students the same activities also made them focus on completion, which meant copying from each other and sharing work rather than focussing on their own skills and learning.


By Term 3 I implemented a points system where students accumulate points by completing their activities and then could trade their points in for rewards such as lollies and lunch vouchers. We also did a shared lunch at the end of the term where students used their points to "buy" food. To track this, I used a similar format of the ViTaL spreadsheet but adapted it so students could see their progress in terms of points and the tasks they could complete.

I aimed to give the students more choices in the types of activities they were completing to promote self-management and student engagement. I based my system on the NCEA rank score calculations with 0-4 points allocation determined by the level of completion of the task. The students were then given a "Progress Score" and a leaderboard with the top students created a sense of competition. This worked extraordinarily well in regards to student motivation (which also helped my own motivation), most wanted to improve their score.


For next year, I am aiming to continue to adapt the ViTaL framework for tracking with my class systems. By using this in conjunction with my Google site, I am trying to personalise student's learning more by enabling students to complete activities according to their level and learning goals so they are rewarded not by meeting the standard they "should" be at but by working to improve their own skills and thinking. Students can gain just as much points by showing class values including participation, persistence, and helping others as they do for work completion.

This has made me reflect on what motivates me and what we as a society reward and incentivise. As a teacher, I am definitely encouraged when my students show an improvement not just in their work but in their attitudes and effort. I have achieved when my students have made progress in their learning and development. As an individualistic society, we possibly attribute too much of a person's success to their own efforts though there are so many other factors at play. A big one is the support and encouragement of the people around us. We are not really true meritocracy. Rewarding values and behaviours, in and out of a classroom, can do more for students' attitudes, society and humanity as a whole.

Sports with Senior Students

When I was a Year 12 in high school, I struggled with calculus. Differentiation and integration were mechanical skills that I could do on paper with equations but I had no understanding of the meaning or application in the real world. It wasn't until we started learning about velocity and acceleration in physics that I made a slight link to why I had to be able to find f'(x) and the squiggly s dx of things. I only became more confident with the concept of differentiation and integration in university, though at that point the math I was faced with raced too far ahead. Today after studying sport science and working in biomechanics I still relate it to movement and speed. We actually do calculus subconsciously all the time to work out how fast and slow to move around the world and manipulate objects. It's bringing it to the surface, clearly defining it and putting it on paper that's difficult, but when you do that's when you are finally able to make observations and understand a problem.

My year 12 class has a few issues. Eating and cellphone use are only superficial problems compared to the lack of motivation, interest and confidence the students have in maths. Recently, in our staff meetings, we have been trying to identify "priority students". As I listed just about every student in my class, the thought in my head was "they are all in need of being prioritised, how do I focus on just a few?". The exercise however forced me to define the issues on paper (or on google docs because we are a digital school). This enabled me to see that I could group students into those with attendance issues, literacy issues or a lack of basic skills (some fell into multiple groups). Bringing these issues to the surface, I could more readily come up with plans of actions for different students' needs and hopefully be a better teacher for them.

Today my Year 12s had a double period of maths. I had just finished covering the five trigonometry skills they need for their NCEA internal. The thing about NCEA is that is doesn't allow you just to be able to do the maths, you have to apply it in context which forces you to do more than plug in numbers into formulae which is admittedly how I got through a lot of my maths in high school. So today I was about to ask my Year 12s to use their skills in context and solve some big, wordy problems. I was worried about how this would be received as I had some who had trouble with the words and others who had trouble with the maths but here I was asking them to do both.

Ready, set go.

We started with a warm up, "simple" skills such as putting sin and cos into the calculator. From this point on I became their coach and let them know that today we are going to get into the game of trigonometry. The skills we had covered in trainings so far would be useful to play the game. I likened the sine, cosine, arc and area rule to skills like dribbling, passing, running and shooting. In the game you use these to get the goal, there is no predefined moment when you have to dribble or shoot, you just do it when you think it's best and the opportunity arises for you to inch your way to victory. Though some of my students had missed quite a few "trainings", I was throwing them into the deep end, hoping that they will develop their skills and understanding of the rules along the way. The engagement was definitely there, students were even working as a team to help each other get the goal. With more time playing the game, they'll hopefully be ready for the big tournament in two weeks time.

Skills may help us win the match. But passion for the game keeps us playing it.

Hidden Field Trip Opportunities

I am a strong believer of learning happening both inside and outside of the classroom. One of the key moments that got me into teaching was a boy who disliked school and extended his dislike to learning in general. The utterance of "I hate learning" cut me deep. So if I can enhance the school experience for my students to help them enjoy and appreciate the process of learning, this would mean more to me than an endorsement with excellence. Though the grades would probably come with the intrinsic motivation. 

When Hidden Figures came out I knew it was going to be a fantastic movie filled with maths, engineering, politics and feminism. Classically me. I had just started teaching but I thought why not try and take my students, it'd be a great opportunity to take them out of the classroom for a rare maths-related field trip as well as encourage a bit of inspiration for the subject. Maybe the students would relate to the struggles faced by the title characters to prove themselves and know that what they know can not only change their lives but also make a contribution to meaningful projects around them. Or maybe they'd just be glad to be out of class.

My first organisation of the trip bombed. I had no idea of the sheer volume of little details and requirements for planning to simply go see a movie. Albeit with around 40 kids. Around the middle of the term I also felt the behaviour of my classes change as they settled in and became more comfortable. So it was rescheduled for the end of the term. A careers unit was planned alongside it and hopefully I'd see some science and math related aspirations. But as more time passes and is lost, priorities come into question and pressures of content coverage come into play.

Towards the end of the term as reports and events piled up, I felt a bit like Katherine running to use the coloured bathrooms. Now as we enter the last week of term I can feel the calm ensuing. I feel a slight sense of guilt missing another double period of maths where we could've been working on problem solving or Pythagoras. But I think the lessons delivered by this film potentially would have a deeper impact. 

Overall it was a brilliant film, very inspirational, poignant and humorous. My favourite character was Mary. Not just because she was an engineer, but I really admired the way she dealt with the problems she faced relating to her husband's opinions and getting into the courses needed for her engineering degree. My students clapped and cheered for two key moments in the film: once when Katherine calculated the landing position in the board meeting with all the white-men and the other when she received a proposal. Glad they appreciated both sides of life, the professional and personal. The way the interactions and relationships between people were portrayed in this movie was another strength. The humility brought about by the knowledge Katherine shared just filled me with awe. It really portrayed the power of the truth numbers can bring. 

I took 36 students out of school for the entire morning and brought all 36 back! The trip was a success not just because of the numbers, but also the fact that the learning experiences of my students could be extended beyond the classroom. Hopefully I took my students out of the classroom not just to get out of maths class but to help them see how far maths can take them. 

Last Friday...

Fridays are tough. I teach period 5 and 6 which has in the past felt like trying to wring soapy water out of a dry dish sponge. The previous Friday resulted in story time about my life after my Year 10 class just could not bear another trigonometry question. Instead they heard about what my teen and uni years were like. Just maybe, they learned a lesson of a different sort, or perhaps they gained a new appreciation for the unambiguity and defined functions of sin, cos and tan after the explanation of my not so traditional path into teaching.

Friday mornings are a battle with my Year 9s. The transition from the freedom of tutor class to the expectations of maths class is difficult without actually transitioning classrooms. But Friday mornings might still be more productive than Monday double periods or after lunch on Wednesdays and Thursdays. We had missed many lessons already because of things like athletics day, Teacher's only day and parent teacher interviews and I was dragging out the number topic in the hopes of providing them with the solid basic skills necessary for survival in a numeracy-based world.

I had planned a lesson to teach them the important skill of finding a percentage of a number, required in life for things like calculating discounts when you're shopping or making sure you are paying the right amount of tax. However, just before the start of the period one of my student's mentioned "Oh miss we have to go down to social studies to work on our projects". I took a deep breath. Now I understood they had a project due on Wednesday and when you have a deadline, it becomes priority. But my priority was their maths. How would they get through life without being able to calculate percentages!

After the majority of my Year 9 class went down to their social studies class. Some stayed behind ready to do some maths. But not the lesson I had planned, the activities they had been working on earlier that week. I had to give them some credit though, at least they were doing maths, just not the maths I wanted them to learn on that particular day. One of the many benefits of the digital age is accessibility, so I knew that if my students didn't learn percentages here with me today, there will be opportunities for them later if they wanted to, they could look up a YouTube video or plain old google how to do it.

I just took it in and appreciated the fact that they were doing maths. They even seemed to be enjoying themselves and helped each other with their work. There were awesome moments of them challenging each other and feelings of pride and accomplishment that comes with learning a new skill. Maths after all is not just knowing how to do the maths but being able to use it to create, invent, solve and understand. And maybe, just maybe, my students will eventually keep on wanting to do more maths, even on Friday afternoons.

My First Month

I've officially been a teacher for a month! It is a strange feeling moving straight from being a "student" to being a "teacher". These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of changes and challenges as I settle into a new job, new environment and new relationships.

There has definitely been many emotions, which if I graphed as a function of time would depict the high frequency ups and downs but an overall stable or upwards trend. The first days had a mixture of excitement, anticipation and anxiety as I met my students, outlined expectations and crammed as many names into my brain as possible. Now, as I am settling into the community of Tamaki College and we approach the middle of the first term, I am feeling a greater sense of belonging making me more secure about my decision to become a teacher. Teaching is something I always enjoyed and found fulfilling. I think the idealism of the potential of education in changing lives really resonates with the dreamer in me. The fact that Tamaki College is a Manaiakalani school with a digital learning environment appeals to my engineering background and the role of technology in learning is something I am very keen to continue to explore.

I had a lot of fun setting up my class website and thinking of the different links and content I could put on it. The vast number of platforms and processes being used has been a tad overwhelming, though I understand the different roles of each. It has made me think more about system design and usability though - how to make things simpler, clearer, faster and overall just as easy as possible. I hope that I can do this for my students when I am teaching them maths. I know that many people view the subject as confusing and difficult but what I really liked about it was how it simply is, there is no difference of opinion or vagueness about an equation. It tells us what is with precision and clarity. I will admit I never considered myself a mathematician, but was more excited about what maths could tell us about the world around us and how we can use it to solve problems and invent solutions. It is a powerful language and way of thinking.

I began teaching to learn more about education, people and myself. Over the past month I have learned more than can be articulated in a paragraph or quantified in a table. As a teacher, I will always have more to learn in order to continuously improve my pedagogy and so in a way will always remain a student.