Algebra 2, the Gateway Course

I’ve been teaching a ton of algebra 2 the past three years.  I squawk periodically, and the admins give me variety for a semester or so, but then the classes come back. Back in 2016, I taught 5 classes, all of them full, over the two semester block courses, or about 160 kids. Last year, I had just one course of 30 kids. This year, I’ve already taught three and one coming up.  I also get a steady flow of trigonometry classes–not as many, but three or four every year.  I’ve requested more pre-calculus every year;  they’ll give me one every so often, like a bone to a cranky dog.

In my early years here, I taught far more pre-calculus. From spring 2013 to spring 2014, I taught five pre-calc courses. From fall 2015 to now, I’ve had three.

Why? Because Chuck got his way. Chuck came to our school determined to upgrade the math department. He wanted to make it possible to get a committed kid from algebra 1 freshman year to AP or regular calculus senior year. As I pointed out at the time, this goal is incompatible with helping more kids attain advanced math. You can increase standards or increase inclusion, but not both.

Chuck knows this, and so every semester, particularly the midterm when we finish a “year” and do the turnover to new courses, he starts noodging us for the lists. Kids are often scheduled in two consecutive math courses, so Chuck wants to make sure that the kids who get Ds or Fs in the first course are removed and rescheduled into a repeat. Every year he sends out an email to the algebra 2 teachers, nagging them to give him a list of kids who are failing so he can get them rescheduled. Every year, I ignore him, because I find this activity unseemly and cruel.

I take this task on far more personally and by age. Seniors are given a C if they work hard but can’t pass the tests. Juniors get a choice: retake the course if I think they have the ability to learn more, or take our stats course  (which is designed for very weak kids, lots of project courses). All sophomores get this conversation: you don’t quite grok this material, and you should take it again. Ideally, with me, but either way, take it again. I’ll give a passing grade so you’ll get the credits. But you’re going to  fail if you move forward, and retaking trig is a waste of time, while you will learn more if you retake algebra 2.

But this year, Chuck turned into a wily bastard and instead of asking me for the list, got it from the counselors. He then emailed a list to me and  Benny , the other two teachers covering non-honors Algebra 2:

Hi, can you tell me which of these students won’t pass, so I can email the counselors?  Here’s all the algebra 2 non-honors students who either have a D or F right now, or who got an NOF at the last notification:

Benny (teaching one class of 30):
list of 12 students

Chuck (teaching one class of 30):
13 students

Ed (teaching three classes of 35, or 105 students):
15 students

(I don’t know why Chuck put his own students on the list, maybe to remind me that he was living by his own rules)

So a student in Benny or Chuck’s class had a 1 in 3 chance of failing algebra 2 with a D or F. In mine, their odds were 1 in 7. I was teaching three times as many kids but kept back half as many as they did combined.

Benny, Chuck, Steve, and Wing, the upper math teachers, complain constantly about the seniors they get stuck with, kids forced into a math class by the administrators, even though they hate math and don’t need the credits. The students sit in class every day and refuse to work. Their parents either support this choice or shrug in defeat. The kids have an F by the first quarter. They get bored and disruptive.  The kids waste an entire semester (our year) in their classes, sitting there doing nothing.

I find this akin to malpractice, and say so–well, I don’t say “That’s malpractice.” But I point out how odd it is that I never have this problem, despite being assigned many seniors with similar objections. Most end up like Wesley, learning more math than he ever dreamed.

I was reminded of this recently when going through my desk, cleaning out stuff for the new semester, and coming across Estefania’s note. I give an assessment test on the first day,  and discovered Estefania ignoring the test, writing on a slip of paper. I took the paper away from her, told her to give that test her best effort. I  was going to toss the note but then noticed it was a form of some sort, and opened it:

Estefania came up after class. “I tried on the test, but I didn’t know a lot of it. Can I have my note back?”

I handed it to her. “I don’t think you should turn it in. I think you should take the class.”

“I’ll fail.”

“No. You won’t. I promise.”

“Math teachers always tell me that, like I’ll finally get math and be good at it. But I’m not any good and I’ve already failed twice.”

“You don’t understand. Come to class. Try. I will give you a passing grade. I don’t care if you fail every single test. I guarantee you will get a passing grade. And odds are really good you’ll also learn some math.” I held out my hand for the note. She hesitated, and then handed it back. And stayed. She did pretty well, too, well enough that she smiled whenever I reminded her about that note.

When I found the note in my drawer, I looked up some of her work on the finals.

Exponential functions:

I forgot to take a picture, but she did quite well on the log questions, understanding that log base 2 of 16 is 4.

Here she is on quadratics, her best subject (she got an A, flat out, on her parabola graphing quiz.):

She received a 60 on the first part of the final, putting her in the bottom third (most of my fails were between 42 and 60). I haven’t graded the second part,  although she clearly knew the quadratics. Girl learned some math, y’know?

Chuck and my four colleagues sometimes suspect that I dumb down my course. In fact, thanks to the epic teacher federalism agreement, my course is considerably harder and more cognitively complex than it was three years ago.

A month ago, Chuck trumpeted the results of his project. Six students entered at Algebra 1 or lower in their freshman year, and succeed in taking  AP Calculus their senior year. (One of them was Manuel.) Eight students entered at the same level took regular calculus. So fourteen students were not identified as honors students, took no honors classes, yet had made it to calculus by their senior year.

Of those fourteen students, I’d taught ten of them twice in their progression through algebra two, trigonometry, and pre-calcululus. Two others I taught once. Of the fourteen, only two had never been in my classroom.

The  road to Chuck’s dream runs directly through Ed.

Now you know why I get all those algebra 2 students. Because our administrators want to sign up for Chuck’s dream, but they don’t want a bloodbath. No one says so directly. They don’t have to. My schedule says it all.

In prior years, I was teaching more precalculus for a similar reason, as far too many students who’d made it that far were wasting their last year of high school math. But when Chuck unrolled his initiative, my principal realized that algebra 2 was going to be the new choke point. Well, not so much realized it as heard it straight from Chuck’s mouth, as in “More kids will fail algebra 2 because it’s going to be a much harder course if we’re going to  achieve this goal.” Rather than tell Chuck no–because it is indeed a worthy goal–our principal threads the needle between achievement and equity by adopting Chuck’s goals but assigning me the lion’s share of students in a critical gateway–or gatekeeping–course.

If I want to teach more pre-calculus, I need more colleagues with my methods and priorities teaching upper-level math. I spent three years mentoring Bart to share the teaching load, an objective I made clear to both Bart and the principal. Bart liked that idea. The principal did, too. But Bart wanted to teach physics, too, and we have a new science initiative, and now Bart teaches freshman physics. I am still pissed about that, but hell, we drink beer together so I can’t kill him.

In the meantime, our department chair is retiring. So I need to request input into the hiring decision for his replacement.

Yet I pause just for a moment to celebrate the Estefanias in my world, and remind everyone again that as teachers, we owe our first loyalty to the students, not the subjects.

As Joe said in All That Jazz when Victoria wanted to quit:

Victoria: I’m terrible. I know I’m terrible. I look at the mirror and I’m ashamed. Maybe I should quit. I just can’t seem to do anything right.

Joe Gideon: Listen. I can’t make you a great dancer. I don’t even know if I can make you a good dancer. But, if you keep trying and don’t quit, I know I can make you a better dancer. I’d like very much to do that. Stay?

Or take this question, which I first asked four years ago:: 

If you teach at-risk, low-skilled kids and don’t struggle with this question, you aren’t really teaching them.

*******************************************************************************

My standard disclaimer: all my colleagues are good teachers who want the best for the kids. I disagree with their philosophy. They disagree with mine. No criticism intended, other than, you know, they still kill the bulls to worship Mithras while I’m Zoroastrian. (Also, all names are pseudonyms.)

The great Ben Orlin recently mused on this, giving birth to my take. Robert Pondiscio argues that education reform’s “underperformance” lies in their assumption that policy, not practice, is the key to drive “enduring improvement”. I don’t know that reformers will get anywhere until they realize that the facts on the ground say we’re teaching kids at capacity and that “enduring improvement” is likely a chimera. (Note: I edited this paragraph slightly to correct my characterization of Pondiscio’s argument.)

Previously, I’ve described my outrage at college policies that abandon remediation , conferring college-readiness on people who can’t manage middle school math. Anyone want to know how I square that needle with what I’m writing here? It’s an interesting question. I’ll get to it later.

The Structure of Parabolas

A year ago, I first envisioned and then taught the parabola as the sum of a parabola and a line.The standard form parabola, ax² + bx + c, is the result of a line with slope b and y-intercept c added to a parabola with a vertex at the origin, with vertical stretch a.   This insight came after my realization that a parabola is the product of two lines (although I wrote this up later than the first).

I didn’t teach algebra 2 last semester, so I’ve only now been able to try my new approach. I taught functions as described in the second link. So the students know the vertex form of the parabola. Normally, I would then move to the product of two lines, binomial multiplication, and then teach the standard form, moving back to factoring.

But I’ve been mulling this for a few months, and decided to try teaching standard form second. So first, as part of parent functions, cover vertex form. Then linear equations. As part of linear equations, I teach them how to add and subtract functions.  As an exercise, I show them that they can add and subtract parabolas and lines, too.

So after the linear equations unit, I gave them a handout:

I don’t do much introduction here, except to tell them that the lighter graphs are a simple parabola and a line. The darker graph is the sum of the parabola and the line. What they are to do is explore the impact of the line’s slope, the b, on the vertex of the parabola, both the x and y values. We’d do that by evaluating the rate of change (the “slope” between two points of a non-linear equation) and looking for relationships.

Now, I don’t hold much truck with kids making their own discoveries. I want them to discover a clear pattern. But this activity also gives the kids practice at finding slopes, equations of lines, and vertex forms of a parabola. That’s why I felt free to toss this activity together. Even if it didn’t work to introduce standard form, it’d be a good review.

But it did work.  Five or six students finished quickly,  found the patterns I wanted, and I sent them off to the next activity. But most finished  the seven parabolas in about 40 minutes or so and we answered the questions together.

Questions:

1. Using your data, what is the relationship between the slope of the line added (b) and the slope (rate of change) from the y-intercept to the vertex?
   Answer: the slope (b) is twice the slope from the y-intercept to the vertex.
   ^b⁄_{2= rate of change}
2. What is the relationship between the slope of the line added (b) and the x-value of the vertex?
   Answer: the x value of the vertex is the slope of the line divided by negative 2.
   ^b⁄-_{2= x value of the vertex}
3. What is the relationship between the y-intercept of the line and the y-intercept of the parabola?
   Answer: they are the same.

Note: I made it very clear that we were dealing only with a=1, no stretch.

The activity was very useful–even some strong kids screwed up slope calculations because they counted graph hash marks rather than looking at the numbers. Some of the graphs went by 2s.

So then, they got a second handout: 

Here, they will find the slope (rate of change!) from the y-intercept to the vertex and double it. That’s the slope of the line added to the parabola (b!). The y-intercept of the line is the same as the parabola.

The first example, on the left, has a -2 rate of change from vertex to y-intercept. Since a=1, that means b=-4. The y-intercept is 8. The equation in standard form is therefore
x² -4x + 8. In vertex form, it’s (x-2)² +4.

Tomorrow, we’ll finish up this handout and go onto the next step: no graph, just a standard form equation. So given y=x² -8x + 1, you know that the rate of change is -4, and the x-value of the vertex is 4. Draw a vertical line at x=4, then sketch a line with a slope of -4 beginning at c (0,1).

This may seem forced, but students really have no idea how b influences the position of the vertex. I’m hoping this will start them off understanding the format of the standard form. If not, well, there’s the whole value of practicing slope and vertex form I can fall back on. But so far, it’s working really well.

By late tomorrow or Monday, we’ll be formalizing these rules and determining how an increase or decrease in a changes these relationships. So I hope to have them easily graphing parabolas in standard form by Monday. Yes, I’ll show them they can just plug x to find y.

Then we’ll talk about factored form, and go to binomial multiplication.

I’ll try to report back.

The Evolution of Equals

High school math teachers spend a lot of time explaining to kids that all the things we told you before ain’t necessarily so. Turns out, for example, you can subtract a big number from a smaller one.  Fractions might be “improper” if the numerator is larger than the denominator, but they’re completely rational so long as both are integers. You can take a square root of a negative number.  And so on.

Other times, though, we have to deal with ambiguities that mathematicians yell at us about later. Which really isn’t fair. For example, consider the definition of variable and then tell me how to explain y=mx+b. Or function notation–if f(x) = 3x + 7,  and f(3) = 16, then what is f(a)? Answer: f(a) = 3a+7. What’s g(x)? Answer: A whole different function. So then you introduce “indeterminate”–just barely–and it takes a whole blog post to explain function notation.

Some math teachers don’t bother to explain this in class, much less in blogs. Books rarely deal with these confusing distinctions. But me, I soldier on. Solder? Which?

Did you ever think to wonder who invented the equal sign? I’m here to wonder for you:

Robert Recorde, a Welsh mathematician, created the equal sign while writing the wonderfully named Whetstone of Witte. He needed a shortcut.

“However, for easy manipulation of equations, I will present a few examples in order that the extraction of roots may be more readily done. And to avoid the tedious repetition of these words “is equal to”, I will substitute, as I often do when working, a pair of parallels or twin lines of the same length, thus: = , because no two things can be more equal.”

First of his examples was:  or 14x+15=71.

Over time, we shortened his shortcut.

Every so often, you read of a mathematician hyperventilating that our elementary school children are being fed a false concept of “equals”. Worksheets like this one, the complaint goes, are warping the children’s minds:

I’m not terribly fussed. Yes, this worksheet from EngageNY is better. Yes, ideally, worksheets shouldn’t inadvertently give kids the idea that an equals signs means “do this operation and provide a number”. But it’s not a huge deal. Overteaching the issue in elementary school would be a bad idea.

Hung Hsi Wu, a Berkeley math professor who has spent a decade or more worrying about elementary school teachers and their math abilities, first got me thinking about the equals sign: 

I don’t think this is a fit topic for elementary school teachers, much less students. Simply advising them to use multiple formats is sufficient. But reading and thinking about the equals sign has given me a way to….evolve, if you will…my students’ conception of the equals sign.  And my own.

Reminder: I’m not a mathematician. I barely faked my way through one college math course over thirty years ago. But I’ve found that a few explanations have gone a long way to giving my students a clearer idea of the varied tasks the equals sign has. Later on, real mathematicians can polish it up.

Define Current Understanding

First, I help them mentally define the concept of “equals” as they currently understand it. At some point early on in my algebra 2 class, I ask them what “equals” means, and let them have at it for a while. I’ll get offerings like “are the same” and “have the same value”, sometimes “congruent”.

After they chew on the offerings and realize their somewhat circular nature, I write:

8=5+2+1

8=7

and ask them if these equations are both valid uses of the equal signs.

This always catches their interest. Is it against the law to write a false equation using an equals sign? Is it like dividing by 0?

Ah, I usually respond, so one of these is false? Indeed. Doesn’t that mean that equations with an equals sign aren’t always true? So what makes the second one false?

I push and prod until I get someone to say mention counting or distance or something physical.

At this point, I give them the definition that they can already mentally see:

Two values are equal if they occupy the same point on a number line.

So if I write 8=4*2, it’s a true equation if  8 and 4*2 are found at the same point on the number line. If they aren’t, then it’s a false equation, at least in the context of standard arithmetic.

So if the students think “equals” means “do something”, this helps them out of that mold.

Equals Sign in Algebraic Equations

Then I’ll write something like this:

4x-7=2(2x+5)

Then we solve it down to:

0=17

By algebra 2, most students are familiar with this format. “No solution!”

I ask how they know there’s no solution, and wait for them all to get past “because someone told me”. Eventually, someone will point out that zero doesn’t in fact, equal 17.

So, I point out, we start with an equation that looks reasonable, but after applying the properties of equality, otherwise known as “doing the same thing to both sides”, we learn that the algebra leads to a false equation. In fact, I point out, we can even see it earlier in the process when we get to this point:

4x = 4x+17

This can’t possibly be true, even if it’s  not as instantly obvious as 0=17.

So I give them the new, expanded definition. Algebraic equations aren’t statements of fact. They are questions.

4x-7=2(2x+5) is not a statement of fact, but rather a question.

What value(s) of x will make this equation true?

And the answer could be:

• x= specific value(s)
• no value of x makes this true
• all values of x makes this true.

We can also define our question in such a way that we constrain the set of numbers from which we find an answer. That’s why, I tell them, they’ll be learning to say “no real solutions” when solving parabolas, rather than “no solution”. All parabolas have solutions, but not all have real solutions.

This sets me up very nicely for a dive back into linear systems, quadratics with complex solutions, and so on. The students are now primed to understand that an equation is not a statement of fact, that solutions aren’t a given, and that they can translate different outcomes into a verbal description of the solution.

Equals Sign in Identity Proofs

An identity equation is one that is true for all values of x. In trigonometry, students are asked to prove many trigonometric identities,, and often find the constraints confusing. You can’t prove identities using the properties of equality. So in these classes,  I go through the previous material and then focus in on this next evolution.

Prove: tan²(x) + 1 = sec²(x)

(Or, if you’re not familiar with trig, an easier proof is:

Prove: (x-y)² = x²-2xy+y²

Here, again, the “equals” sign and the statement represent a question, not a statement of fact. But the question is different. In algebraic equations, we hypothesize that the expressions are equal and proceed to identify a specific value of x unless we determine there isn’t one. In that pursuit,  we can use the properties of equality–again, known as “doing the same thing to both sides”.

But  in this case, the question is: are these expressions equal for all values of x?

Different question.

We can’t assume equality when working a proof. That means we can’t “do the same thing to both sides” to establish equality. Which means they can’t add, subtract, square, or do other arithmetic operations. They can combine fractions, expand binomials, use equivalent expressions, multiply by 1 in various forms. The goal is to transform one side and prove that  both sides of the equation occupy the same point on a number line regardless of the value of x.

So students have a framework. These proofs aren’t systems. They can’t assume equality. They can only (as we say) “change one side”, not “do the same thing to both sides”.

I’ve been doing this for a couple years explicitly, and I do see it broadening my students’ conceptual understanding. First off, there’s the simple fact that I hold the room. I can tell when kids are interested. Done properly, you’re pushing at a symbol they took for granted and never bothered to think about. And they’ll be willing to think about it.

Then, I have seen some algebra 2 students say to each other, “remember, this is just a question. The answer may not be a number,” which is more than enough complexity for your average 16 year old.

Just the other day, in my trig class, a student said “oh, yeah, this is the equals sign where you just do things to one side.” I’ll grant you this isn’t necessarily academic language, but the awareness is more than enough for this teacher.

 

Teaching Transformations

One of the most important new concepts in algebra 2 and beyond is the notion of transformation. That is, given the function f(x), we  can change any function’s position and growth by using the same instructions, much like giving directions from a map.

I’ve just introduced functions at this point in the calendar, so I’ve designed this activity to reinforce f(x) as a rule, that once a mapping is created, the mapping holds for all subsequent calls.

So just create a random table, one that’s simpler than anything I’d do in class. (One of the incredibly irritating things about blogging is that it’s insanely time-consuming to create images for publication that take next to no time at all to do on  a smartboard, but I never think of capturing images while on a smartboard.)

x	f(x)
-3	2
-1	5
1	6
3	3
5	-1

That looks like this:

So then I ask if this is f(x), what would f(x+2) look like? Someone brave will always say “Two to the right”.

At that point, I always say “This is a totally logical guess and one of the most annoying things in math from this point on is that your guess is wrong.” (I originally developed the concept of a parabola as the product of two lines as another way of explaining this confusing relationship. Confusing to normal people. Mathies think it makes sense, but they’re weird.)

I add a column to the table. “We start with x. Then we add 2. Then we make the function call. Note the function call comes after the addition of the value. This is important. Now, we have three columns, but we are starting with our x and that’s still our input value. We graph it against the outer column, the output value for f(x+2).”

x	x+2	f(x+2)
-3	-1	5
-1	1	6
1	3	3
3	5	-1

I’ll ask how we can bring the -3 back in, and after some mulling, they’ll suggest that I add -5 to the table. So I add:

-5

-3

2

to the bottom. But I’ve been plotting points all along, so the kids can see it’s not going as expected.

“Yes, indeed. I’ll be teaching this concept in many ways over the next few months, and I ask you to start wrapping your head around this now. We have many ways of envisioning this. When working with points as opposed to an entire function, it might be helpful to think of it this way: Suppose I’m standing at -3, and I want to add two. This has the effect of me reaching to the right on the number line and pulling the output value back to me–to the left, as it were.”

I go through this several times. Whether or not students remember everything I teach, I always want them to remember that at the time, they understood the concept.

“So if standing on -3 and reaching ahead is addition and move the whole function to the left, how would I move the whole function to the right?”

If I don’t get a ready chorus of “subtract?” I know that I need to try one more addition example, but I usually get a good response.

“Exactly. So let’s try that.”

x	x-2	f(x-2)
-3	-5	NS
-1	-3	2
1	-1	5
3	1	6
5	3	3
7	5	-1

One year, I had a doubter who noticed that I’d made up these numbers. How did we know it’d work on any numbers? I told him I’d show him more later, but for now, imagine if I had a table like this:

x	f(x)
1	1
2	2
3	3

etc.

Then I told him, “Now, imagine I put decimal values in there, fractions, whatever. Imagine that no matter how I change the x, the new value has an entry in the table and thus an output. So imagine I added 50. There’d be a value 50 ahead that I could reach forward or backwards.”

“In fact, we’ll eventually do all this with equations that are functions, instead of randomly generated points. But I start with points so you won’t forget that it works with any series of values that I can commit math on. Which isn’t all functions, of course, but that’s another story.”

“But if adding makes it go left and right, how do we make a function go up and down? Discuss that among yourselves for a minute or so.”

Sometimes a student will see that we’ve been changing x so far. Otherwise I’ll point it out.

“The function call itself is key to understanding this. If you change the value before you make the function call, then you are changing the input to the function. Simpler: you’re changing x before you call the function. But once the value comes out of the function, that is, once it’s no longer the input, it’s the….” I always wait for the class to chime in again–are they paying attention?

“Output!”

“Right. But output is no longer x. Output is”

“f of x!”

At this point, I call on a mid-level student. “So, Sanjana, up to now, we’ve been changing x before making the call to the function. See how the new column is in the middle? What could I do differently?”

And I wait until someone suggests making the column on the right, after the f(x).

x	f(x)	f(x)- 3
-3	2	-1
-1	5	2
1	6	3
3	3	0
5	-1	-3

I’m giving a skeletal version of this. Often the kids have whiteboards and are calculating all this along with me. I’ll give some quick learning checks in terms of moving to the right and left, up and down.

The primary learning objective for is to grasp the meaning of horizontal and vertical translations–soon to be known as h and k. But as an introduction, I define them in terms of function notation.

 

We usually end this activity by combining vertical and horizontal shifts.

What would f(x-2)+ 3 look like? Well, you’d need another column.

x	x-2	f(x-2)	f(x-2)+1
-3	-5	NS
-1	-3	2	5
1	-1	5	8
3	1	6	9
5	3	3	7
7	5	-1	2

I connect them this time just to show that one point is in both the original and the transformation.

Ultimately, this goes to transforming functions, not points. That’s the next unit, transforming parent functions. I have a colleague who teaches transformations entirely by points. I start down that path (not from his example, just because that’s how this works), but the purpose of transformations, pedagogically speaking, is for students to understand that entire equations can be changed at the unit level, without replotting points. At the same time, I want the students to know that the process begins at the point level.

Over time, the students start to understand what I often call inside and outside, or before and after. Changes to the input value affect the x, or the horizontal because they occur before the function is called. Changes to the output value affect the y, or the vertical, because they occur after the function is called. Introducing this on a point by point basis creates a memory for that.

At best, this lesson functions as more than just a graphing exercise, something to introduce vertical and horizontal shift. It should ideally give students an understanding of the algebra behind it. Later on, when they are asked to solve equations like:

Find f(a) = 32 for f(x)=3(x-2)²+5

Weaker students have trouble with understanding order of operations, and a memory of “inside” and “outside” the function can be helpful.

If I were writing algebra 1 curriculum, I’d throw out quadratics, introduce a few parent functions, and teach them function notation and simple transformations. It’s a complicated topic that they’ll see all the way through precalc, at least.

I’ll discuss stretch and its complexities in another post.

Teacher Federalism

A year or so ago, our school’s upper level math teachers met to define curriculum requirements for algebra two.

I’d been dreading this day for several weeks, since we agreed on the date.  I teach far fewer Algebra 2 topics than the other teachers. Prioritizing depth over breadth has not made me terribly popular with the upper math teachers–who of course would dispute my characterization of their teaching. There were three of them, plus two math department leaders who’d take their side. I’d be all alone playing opposition.

Only two possible outcomes for this meeting. I could, well, lie. Sign off on an agreed curriculum without any intention of adhering to my commitment. Or I could refuse to lie and just and fight the very idea of standardization The good news, I thought, was that the outcome would be my choice.

Then the choice was taken away from me.

Steve came into my room beforehand. Steve is the member of the upper math group I’m most friendly with, which means we are, well, warily amicable. Very different characters, are we. If you’re familiar with Myers-Briggs, Steve is all J and I’m as P as P can be.  But  over the years we realized that while our approaches and philosophies are polar opposites, we are both idiosyncratic and original in our curriculum, more alike than we’d imagined. He was interested by my approach to quadratics and his approach to transformations is on my list of innovations to try.

So Steve tiptoed into my room ahead of time and told me he wanted the meeting to be productive. I went from 0 to 95 in a nanosecond, ready to snap his head off, refusing to be held responsible for our departmental tensions, but he called for peace. He said it again. He wanted this meeting to be productive.

I looked, as they say, askance. He asked me if I would be willing to settle for good, not perfect. I said absolutely. He asked me to trust him. I shrugged, and promised to follow his lead.

For reasons I won’t go into, no one expected Steve to run the meeting. But in the first five minutes, Steve spoke up. He said he wanted the meeting to be productive. He didn’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

We all wanted what was best for our students, he said. We all thought we knew what was best for our students. But we had very different methods of working. If we tried to agree on a curriculum, we’d fail. Eventually, someone in power, probably at the district, would notice, and then that someone might make the decision for us.

So rather than try to force us all to commit to teaching the same thing, why not agree on the topics we all agreed were essential, “need to know”?  Could we put together a list of these topics that we’d all commit to teach? If it’s not on the list, it’s not a required element of the curriculum. If it was on the list, all teachers would cover the topic. We’d build some simple, easily generated common assessments for these essential topics. As we covered these topics–and timing was under our control–we’d give the students the assessment and collect the data. We could review the data, discuss results, do all the professional collaboration the suits wanted.

If we agreed to this list, we would all know what’s expected. All of us had to agree before a topic went on the “need to know” list. No teacher could complain if an optional topic wasn’t covered.

I remember clearly putting on my glasses (which I normally don’t wear) so that I could see Steve’s face. Was he serious? He saw my face, and nodded.

Well. OK, then.

Steve’s terms gave me veto power over the “need to know” list.

Wing and Benny were dubious. What if they wanted to teach more?

As requested, I backed Steve’s play.  “We could make it a sort of teacher federalism. The “Need to know” list is like the central government.  But outside these agreed-upon tenets, each individual teacher state gets complete autonomy. We can teach topics that aren’t on the list.”

“Exactly,” Steve added. “The only thing is, we can’t expect other teachers to cover things that aren’t on the list.”

In other words, Steve was clearly signaling, no more bitching about what Ed doesn’t cover.

We agreed to try building the list, see if the results were acceptable. In under an hour, we all realized that this approach would work. We had 60-80% undisputed agreement. At the same time, Wing and Benny had realized the implications of the unanimous agreement requirement. A dozen or more items (under topics) the other three teachers initially labeled eessential) were dropped from the “need to know” list at my steadfast refusal to include them.  Steve backed me, as promised.

While all three raised their eyebrows at some of the topics downgraded to the “nice to have” list, they all listened carefully to my arguments. It wasn’t just “Ed no like.” As the day went on, I was able to articulate my standard–first to myself, then to them:

1. we all agreed that students had to come out of Algebra 2 with an indisputably strong understanding of lines.
2. We routinely have pre-calc students who need to review linear equations. In fact, I told them, this realization was what led me to dial back algebra 2 coverage.
3. Non-honors students were at least a year away from taking precalc, which was where they would next need the debated skills. If some of our students weren’t remembering lines after three years of intense study, how would they easily remember the finer points of rational expressions or circle equations, introduced in a couple weeks?
4. This called for limiting new topics to a handful. One or two in depth, a few more introduced.
5. Our ability to introduce new topics in Algebra 2 was gated by the weak linear knowledge our students began with. If we could convince geometry teachers to dramatically boost linear equations coverage, then we could reduce the time spent on linear equations in algebra 2.

Once I was able to define this criteria, the others realized they agreed with every point. Geometry priorities were a essential discusison point, but outside the scope of this meeting and a much longer term goal. That left all debate about point 4–how much new stuff? How much depth?

This reasoning convinced them I wasn’t a lightweight, and they all knew that my low failure rate was extremely popular with the administrators. So they bought in to my criteria, and were able to debate point 4 issues amicably, without loaded sarcasm.

I knew I needed to give on topics. At the same time I was shooting down topics, I was frantically running through the curriculum mentally, coming up with topics that made sense to add to my own curriculum, making  concessions accordingly.

The other teachers looked at the bright side: I’d be the only one changing my curriculum. Every addition I agreed to had to be carefully incorporated into my already crowded Algebra 2 schedule. I did have some suggested additions (a more thorough job on functions, say), but none of mine made the cut. The other teachers’ courses were entirely unaffected by our “need to know” list.

At the end of the day, we were all somewhat astonished. We had a list. We all agreed that the list was tight, that nothing on the “like to know” or “nice to have” list was unreasonably downgraded. I want to keep this reasonably non-specific, because the issues apply to any subject, but for the curious: rational expressions were the most debated topic, and the area where I made the most concessions.  They covered addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, graphing. We settled on introduction, graphing of parent reciprocal function and transformations, multiplication and division. Factoring was another area of dispute: binomial, of course, but I pushed back on factoring by groups and sum/difference of cubes. We agreed that exponential functions, logarithms and inverses must be covered in some depth, enough so the strongest kids will have a memory.

“What about grades?” Benny asked. “I don’t want to grade kids just on the need to know list.”

“But that’s not fair,” I objected. “Would you flunk kids who learned everything on the need to know list?”

“Absolutely,” Wing nodded.

I was about to argue, when Steve said “Look, we will never agree on grading.”

“Crap. You’re right.” I dropped the subject.

In a justly ordered world, songs would be sung about “That Day”, as we usually call it. Simply agreeing to a federalist approach represented an achievement of moon walk proportions. Then we actually built a list and lived by it, continually referring to it without the desire to revisit the epic treaty. Stupendous.

I  didn’t write about the agreement then because I worried the agreement would be ignored, or that other senior math folk would demand we revisit. Instead, our construction of the  “Need to Know” list shifted the power base in the math department in interesting ways.   Our point man on these discussions did indeed express displeasure with the Need to Know list. It’s too limited. He wants more material on it. He expected us to comply.

Wing, Benny, and Steve could have easily blamed me for the limits. “Oh, that’s Ed’s doing. We all want more on the list.” Instead, upper math folk presented an instantly united front and pushed back on incursion.  No. This works for us. We don’t want to break the agreement. We like the new productivity of our meetings. Team cohesion is better. Wing and Ben still think I’m a weak tea excuse for a math teacher, but they understand what we’ve achieved. With this unity, we are less vulnerable.

In short, we’ve formed our own power base.  As I’m sure you can guess, Steve is the defacto leader of our group, but he gained that status not by fiat, but by figuring out an approach to handle me that the others could live with. No small achievement, that.

Will it last? Who knows? Does anything? It’s nice to watch it work for the moment. I’ll take that as a win.

We’ve used that agreement to build out other “need to know” lists for pre-calc and trigonometry. They aren’t as certain yet, but Algebra 2 was the big one.  Worth the work it took to update my curriculum.

Our teacher version of federalism has allowed us to forge ahead on professional practices, lapping the lower level crew several times. In fact, on several department initiatives, the upper math department has made more progress than any other subject group, something that was duly noted when hot shot visitors dropped in on our department meeting. The other groups are trying to reach One Perfect Curriculum.

I’m not good at describing group dynamics unless it’s in conversational narrative. But I wanted to describe the agreement for a couple reasons.

First, some subject departments  operate in happy lockstep. But many, even most, high school math departments across the country would recognize the tensions I describe here. .  I recommend teacher federalism as an approach. Yes, our agreement may be as short-lived as some “universal curriculum” agreements. But the agreement and the topics list are much easier to agree to, and considerably more flexible. I’ve seen and heard of countless initiatives to create a uniform curriculum that foundered after months of work that was utterly wasted. Our group has had a year of unity. Even if it falls apart next year, that year of unity was purchased with a day’s work. That’s a great trade.

But in a broader reform sense,   consider that none of the four teachers in this story use books to teach algebra 2. Not only don’t they agree on curriculum, but they don’t use the same book. Some, like me, build from scratch. Others use several books as needed.  Our epic agreement doesn’t fundamentally change anyone’s teaching or grading. We simply agreed to operate as a team with a given set of baselines.  Noitce the words “Common Core” as the federal government (or state, your pick) defines it never made an appearance. It was simply not a factor in our consideration.

Does this give some small hint how utterly out of touch education policy is? How absurd it is to talk about “researching teacher practice”, much less changing it? I hope so.

The Sum of a Parabola and a Line

For the past two years, my algebra students have determined that the product of two lines is a parabola, which instantly provides a visual of the solutions and the line of symmetry.  For the past year, they’ve determined that squaring a line is likewise a parabola, and can be moved up and down the line of symmetry, which is instantly visible as the line’s x-intercept. In this way, I have been able to build understanding from lines to quadratics without just saying hey, presto! here’s a parabola. I introduce them to adding and subtracting functions, and from there, it’s a reasonable step to multiplying functions.

Typically, I’ve moved from this to binomial multiplication, introducing the third form of the quadratic we deal with in early high-level math, the standard form. (The otherwise estimable Stewart refers to the vertex form as standard form, to which I say sir! you must reconsider, except, well, he’s dead.)

At some point in teaching this, you come to the “- b over 2a” (^-b⁄_2a) issue. That is, teachers who like to build on existing knowledge towards each new step are a bit stuck when it comes to finding the vertex in a standard form equation.

(For non-mathies, the standard form of an equation is ax²+bx+c and the vertex form is a(x-h)²+k.  The parameters “a” “b”, and “c” are often just referred to by letter. Vertex form, we’re more likely to talk about the x and y values of the vertex, just like  when we talk about lines in the form y=mx+b, we don’t say “m” and “b” but rather “slope” and “y-intercept”. But teachers, at least, often talk about teaching different aspects of standard form operations by parameters: a>1, a<0, to say nothing of the quadratic formula.  So the way to find the vertex of a parabola in standard form is to take the “a” and “b” term and use the algorithm ^-b⁄_2a to find the line of symmetry,  which is the x-value of the vertex. Then”plug it in”, or evaluate, the x-value in the quadratic equation to find the y-value for the vertex.)

The only way I’ve found until now of building on existing knowledge to establish it is setting standard form equal to vertex form to establish that the “h” of vertex form is equal to the ^-b⁄_2a of standard form, something only the top kids really understand and don’t often enjoy. (they’re much more interested by pre-calc.)

Last year, I was putting together a worksheet on adding and subtracting lines, and on impulse I added a few that involved adding a simple parabola with its vertex at the origin with a line, mainly to add a bit of challenge for the top kids. I could see that adding a line and a parabola doesn’t provide the instant visual “hook” that multiplying or squaring lines does.

It’s obvious that the y-intercept of the sum will be the same as the y-intercept of the line. One can logically ascertain that in this particular case, the right side of the y-axis will only increase—adding two positives. The left side, therefore, as x approaches negative infinity is where the action is. But not too much action, since the parabola’s y is galloping towards positive infinity at a faster clip than the line’s is trotting towards negative infinity. So for a brief interval, the negative of the line will offset a bit of the positive of the parabola, but eventually the parabola’s growth will drown out the line’s decline.

All logically there to construe, but far less obvious at a glance.

This year, I decided to explore the relationship further, because deciphering standard form is where my weakest kids tend to check out. They’ve held on through binomial multiplication, to hang on, at least temporarily, to the linear term so that (x+3)² doesn’t become x² + 9. They’ve mastered factoring quadratics, to their shock. They understand how to graph parabolas in two forms. And suddenly this bizarre algorithm that has to be remembered, then calculated, then more calculations to find “y”, whatever that is. Can you say “cognitive load“, boys and girls? Before you know it, they’re using the quadratic formula for linear equations and other bad, bad things that happen when it’s all kerfluzzled in their noggins. That’s when you realize that paralysis isn’t the worst thing that can happen.

Could I break the process down into discrete steps that told a story?  Build on this notion of modifying the parent function ax² with a line to shift it left or right? Find Raylene a new kidney now that her third husband discovered her affair with the yoga instructor and will no longer give her one of his?

My  first thought was to wonder if the slope of the line had any relationship to the graph’s location. My second thought was yes, you dweeb, “b” is the slope of the added line and b’s fingerprints are all over the line of symmetry. No, no, the other half of my brain, the English major, protested. I know that. But is there some way I can get the kids to think of “b” as a slope, or to link slope to the process in a meaningful way?

(This next part is probably incredibly obvious to actual mathematicians, but in my own defense I ran it by three teachers who actually studied advanced math, and they were like hey, wow. I didn’t know that.)

What information does standard form give? The y-intercept, or “c”. What information do we want that it doesn’t readily provide? The vertex. Factors would be nice, but they aren’t guaranteed. I always want the vertex. So if I graph the resulting parabola of the sum of, say,  x² and 6x + 5, how might the slope be relevant?

The obvious relationship to wonder about first is the slope between the y-intercept, which I have, and the vertex, which I want. Start by finding the slope between these two points. And right at that point I realize hey,  by golly, that’s the rate of change(!).

The slope–that is, by golly, the rate of change(!)–is 3. The line of symmetry is -3. The vertex is exactly 9 units below the y-intercept, or the product of the rate of change and the line of symmetry. Heavens. That’s interesting. Does it always happen? Let’s assume for now a=1.

Sum	Slope from y-int to vertex	Line of Symmetry	units from y-int to y-value of vertex	Vertex
x2 – 4x – 12	-2	x=2	-4	(2,-16)
x2 – 10x + 9	-5	x=5	-25	(5,-16)
x2 – 2x – 3	-1	x=1	-1	(-1,-4)
x2 +6x + 8	3	x=-3	-9	(-3,-1)

Hmm. So according to this, if I were trying to get the vertex for x² +12x + 15, then I should assume that the slope–that is, by golly, the rate of change(!)– from the vertex to the y-intercept is 6. That would make the line of symmetry is x=-6. The y-value of the vertex should be 36 units down from 15, or -21. So the vertex should be at (-6,-21). And indeed it is. How about that?

So what happens if a is some other value than 1? I know the line of symmetry will change, of course, but what about the slope–that is, by golly, the rate of change(!). Is it affected by changes in a?

Sum	Slope from y-int to vertex	Line of Symmetry	units from y-int to y-value of vertex	Vertex
2x2 – 8x – 5	-4	x=2 (-4/2)	-8	(2,-3)
-x2 +2x + 4	1	x=1 (-1/-1)	1	(1,5)
-2x2 +14x +7	7	x=3.5 (-7/-2)	24.5 (49/2)	(3.5,31.5)
4x2 +8x -15	4	x=-1 (-4/4)	-4	(-1,-19)

Here’s a Desmos application that I created to demonstrate it.  The slope–that is, by golly, the rate of change(!)–from the vertex to the y-intercept is always half of the slope of the line added to the parabola–that is, half of “b”. The rate of change is not affected by the stretch factor, or a. The line of symmetry, however, is affected by the stretch, which makes sense once you realize that what we’re really calculating is the horizontal distance (the run) from the vertex to the y-axis. The stretch would affect how quickly the vertex is reached. So the vertex y-value is always going to be the rise for the number of iterations the run went through to get from the y-axis to the line of symmetry, or the rate of change multiplied by the line of symmetry x-value.

Mathematically, these are the exact steps used to complete the square but considerably less abstract. You’re finding the “run” to the line of symmetry and the “rise” up or down to the vertex.

Up to now, I’ve been describing my own discovery? How to explain this to the kids? As is always the case in a new lesson, I keep it pretty flexible and don’t overplan. I created a quick activity sheet.

The goal here was just to get things started. Notice the last question on the back: “Do you notice any patterns?” I was fully prepared for the answer to be “No”, which is good, because it was. We then developed the table similar to the first one above, and they quickly caught on to the pattern when a=1.

I was a bit worried about moving to other a values. However,  the class eventually grasped the basic relationship. The slope from the vertex to the y-intercept was always related to the slope of the line added  to the parabola. But the line of symmetry, the distance from the y-axis, would be influenced by the stretch. This made intuitive sense to most of the kids. They certainly screwed up negatives now and again, but who doesn’t.

Good math thinking throughout. I heard a lot of discussions, saw graphs where kids were clearly thinking through the spatial relationship. Many kids realized that when a=1, a negative b means the slope of the line from the y-intercept to the vertex is also negative, which means the vertex must be to the right of the y-intercept. A positive “b” means the slope is positive which means the vertex is to the left. Then they realize that the sign of “a” will flip that relationship around. he students start to see the “b” value as an indicator. That is, by making bx+c its own unit, they realize how important the slope of the added line is, and how essential it is to the end result.

All that and, you might have noticed, they get an early peek at rate of change concepts.

Definitely no worse than my usual ^-b⁄_2a  lesson and the weak kids did much, much better. This was just the first run; the next time I teach algebra 2 I’ll get more ambitious.

So I can now build on students’ existing knowledge to decipher and graph a standard form equation rather than just provide an algorithm or go through the algebra. On the other hand, the last tether holding my quadratics unit to the earth of typical algebra 2 practice has been severed; it’s now wandering around in the stratosphere.

I don’t mean the basics aren’t covered. I teach binomial multiplication, factoring, projectile motion, the quadratic formula, complex numbers, and so on. But the framework differs considerably from my colleagues’.

But if anyone is thinking that I’m dumbing this down, recall that my students are learning that functions can be combined, added, subtracted, multiplied. They’re learning that rate of change is linked directly to the slope of the line added to  the parabola, and that the original parabola’s stretch doesn’t influence the rate of change–but does impact the line of symmetry. And the weaker kids aren’t getting lost in algorithms that have no meaning.

I could argue about this, but maybe another day. For now, I’m interested in what to call this method, and who else is using it.

Great Moments in Teaching: The Third Dimension (part I)

“How many other dimensions are there?”

“Well, four, according to Einstein, and five according to Madeline L’Engle, if you’ve read A Wrinkle in Time.”

“I have!” Priya’s hand shot up. “It’s a tesseract!”

I was impressed. Not many girls read that classic anymore. “But we’re going to stick to three dimensions.”

“Isn’t real life three dimensions?” asked Tess.

“Yes. But if you think of it, up to now, we’ve only been working in two. We’ve spent a lot of time in the coordinate plane thinking about lines. In two dimensions, a line can be formed by any two points on the coordinate plane. We’ve been working with systems of equations, which you think of as algebraic representations of the intersections of two lines. We can also define distance in the coordinate plane, using the Pythagorean theorem. All in two dimensions.”

Now, no mocking my terrible art skills” and I put up this sketch, the drawing of which occurred to me the night before, and was the impetus for the lesson.

Everyone gasped, as they had in the previous two classes. My instincts about that clunky little sketch proved out, beautifully. No clue why.

“Holy sh**,” groaned Dwayne, the good ol’ country boy who offered to paint my ancient Honda if I gave him a passing grade. He doesn’t like math. He’s loud and foul and annoying and never shuts up. That last sentence is a pretty good description of me, so I’m very fond of him. “What the hell is that? Get it off the screen, it hurts my eyes.”

“That is awesome,” offered Talika, a senior I had last year for history. “How long did it take you to draw that?”

“What is that white stuff spread everywhere? Did someone get all excited?” asked Dylan, a sophomore whose mother once emailed me about his grade, giving me the pleasure of embarrassing him greatly by describing his behavior.

“Ask your mother,” I replied, to a gratifying “ooooo, BURN!” from the class, who knew very well what had happened.

“How did you draw that?” asked Teddy, curious. “It’s not ordinary graph paper, right?”

“No, it’s isometric paper, which allows you to draw three dimensional images. So…”

“This is really stupid,” said Dwayne. “I’ve taken algebra 2 three times and no one’s ever taught me this.”

“Best I can tell, no one’s ever taught you anything , and not just not in algebra 2,” I replied, earning another “Oooooo” from the class and an appreciative chuckle from Dwayne.

“It’s weird, though, because in two dimensions, you start in the middle,” offered Manual, who was consulting with Prabh, another bright kid who rarely speaks.

“That’s a good point! For example, if we were going to plot seating positions in this room in two dimensions, we’d start with Tanya,” I said, moving to the class center and indicating Tanya, who looked a bit confused. “So Tanya would be the origin, and Wendell would be (1,0), while Dylan would be (1,-1).”

“I’m not negative!” Dylan said instantly, talking over my attempt to continue. “You’re saying I’m negative. You don’t like me.”

“Hard to blame anyone for that,” said Wendell who is considerably more, er, urban than Teddy, with pants down to his knees and a pick that spends some time in his hair. Despite his occasional class naps, he maintains a solid C+, and could effortlessly manage a B if I could just keep him awake. “S’easy, dude. It’s like one of those x y things, like we’re all dots on the graph.”

“You’re one down and one to the right of me,” pointed out Tanya.

Dylan was interested in spite of himself. “So Talika’s, like, (0, 4)?”

“Yes,” several students chorused.

“Then I’m negative 8.” said Dwayne, unhappy with any conversation that doesn’t have him at the center.

“More like….(-2,2), yeah,” says Cal.

Ben speaks up, “But how come Tanya’s at the center for mapping the room’s people, but your sketch is, like, from the left?”

“Or right?” Sophie, from the back.

“Or is it….outside?” asks Manuel.

“Yes, it’s kind of like you’re standing on a desk in Ms. Chan’s room and the walls are transparent,” says Ben, more certainly. Ben is repeating Algebra 2 after having taken it with me last semester. Very bright kid who clowned incessantly, confident in his ability to learn without really trying, only to learn that Algebra 2 was different from other nights, and he wasn’t finding the afikoman. I advised him to repeat. The big sophomore not only agreed, but specifically asked to repeat with me. His attitude and behavior is much improved. I ran into him while walking across the courtyard a few weeks earlier, and he said “I just realized I was Dwayne and Dylan combined last semester, and it’s so embarrassing. I’m really sorry.”

“I’m not enough of an artist to know if I could have drawn this any other way. It just seemed intuitive to me last night, when I came up with the idea.”

“See, I knew it,” trumpeted Dwayne. “You’re making this up!”

“Yeah, I know this isn’t in any algebra book” said Wendy, a sophomore whose excellence in math is often hard to discern beneath her complaints. “This is just some weird thing you’re doing to make us think about math.”

I picked up at random one of the four algebra 2 books sitting on my desk (I’m on the textbook committee) and walked over to Wendy’s desk, opening it to the “Three Dimensional Systems” chapter. She looked, and said “Ok, maybe not.”

“So just as we can plot points in two dimensions, we can plot points in three. Take Aditya here,” my TA, who was watching the circus in amusement. “How could we represent him as a point on my graph?”

Teddy said instantly, “Yeah, I’ve been working that out. I can’t figure out which the new one is, and what do we call it? Where’s x, where’s y?”

Sanjaya said, “I think the part along the ground is x. Like if you go along the bookshelf?”

“Like this?”

“Yes,” Sanjaya said, confidently. “That has to be x. So you could count to Aditya, right?”

“Count which way?”

“The bottom!” “The bottom line!” “the bottom..axis, thing. The X!” comes a chorus of voices.

I start counting, and while I do, Sophie objected. “But hang on. I still don’t see what the new thing, direction, is. What’s the third?”

“Up! said Calvin, who rarely participates and often tunes out so far he can’t keep up. But he was watching this with interest. “You know how the class map with Tanya was going north and south and east and west. But it’s all flat, like. This picture has an up.”

“Yeah!” Ben got it. “Cal’s right.”

Dwayne has begun to grasp this. “So you can’t just draw a line? You have to follow along the…things?”

“The axes.” I finish counting along the “bottom” axis and go over to my bookshelf in the furthest corner of my room. “So the sketch starts here…QUIET! One conversation at a time, and I’m the STAR here. The origin starts at this bookshelf. I am walking along the wall, hugging it, on my way to Aditya. Does everyone see how they could track my progress on the axis?”

“YES!” from various points of the room.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dwayne is watching me carefully hug the wall.

“Everyone except Dwayne?”

“YES!” much louder.

I walked along the wall to the table where Aditya sat (fourth along the wall) and stop.

“So now what?”

“You’re there.”

“No, not yet.” countered Nadine. You have to go out….” she waved me towards her. “this way.”

“Yeah, towards Aditya,” this from Talika.

I stepped out 2 steps or so. “That all?”

Josh frowned. “Yeah. You’re there. Except…”

“UP!” Sophie shouted from the back. “That’s the third axis!” General approval reigns loudly, until I wave them all quiet, or try to.

“You go up 4!” Teddy shouted.

“OK. So Aditya is about 40 units out along the wall, 2 units out towards…the door, and 4 units up. Yes?”

“Yes!”

“So let’s draw that.”

Of course, while I’m drew this, general mayhem is ongoing with my back turned. I shouted “QUIET! or “Could someone stick a sock in Dwayne?” a few times.

“Wow, so it’s a…cube?”

“A prism, yes. So here’s what we’ve done. We’ve taken the two dimensional x-y coordinate plane and extended it.”

“We extended it up,” from Sophie.

“Yes. And now, instead of a rectangle, we have a three-dimensional rectangular prism. And we can describe things now in three dimensions. But we can do more than that. So let’s step away from my classroom sketch….”

“Whoa. What’s that?” Dylan.

“Man, that’s f***ed up. I just started to get this, and now you’re….” Dwayne, of course.

“No, it’s fine,” Manuel said. “It’s just like the whole thing moved to the center.”

“Oh, I see. It’s like there’s four rooms, all cornered.” Wendell.

“Yes, exactly. Except now, you want to stop thinking about it as a room and think of it as a coordinate plane. As Sophie says, the new plane is the up/down one. So the old x is now here. The old y is now here. The z is the straight up and down one. I think of it as taking the 2 dimensional plane and kind of stepping back and looking down on it.”

“That’s just….”

“DWAYNE BE QUIET. One thing to remember: when you see a 3-dimensional plane, they may be ordered differently. There’s a whole bunch of rules about it that make potentially obscene finger orientations, but I promise I won’t test you on that.”

“So let’s say we’re plotting the point (8,4,5). I’m going to show you how to do it first. Then I’ll go through why. Start by plotting the intercept along each of the planes.”

“Man, does anyone else get this?”

“YES. Shut up, Dylan,” says Natasha.

“The trick to remember when you’re graphing in 3-d is to stay parallel to the axis you’re drawing along. So never cross over the lines when plotting points. Now let’s add the yz and xz planes.

“What? This is weird. Why are you drawing so many rectangles?” Patty, frowning.

“What you have to visualize is that it’s like we’re drawing sides. So far, I’ve drawn,” I look around and grab three of my small whiteboards, “the bottom and two of the sides. Hold this, Natasha, Talika.” and I build the walls. The kids in the back stand up and look over.

“Oh, I see,” Teddy again. “You’re drawing the prism again.”

“Right. It’s just looking different because the axis is in the center.”

“You do all this just to plot one point?” Sophie, ever the skeptic.

“Yes, but remember this is more just to illustrate, to see how you can extend the dimensions. So after you draw the three sides, joining the intercepts for xy, yz, and xz intersections, you extend those out–again, along the lines.”

“So the point we’re graphing is going to be at the vertex, the intersection of the three planes, the furthest point from the origin–just like in two dimensions, the point is at the intersection of the two lines.”

“That’s really complicated.” Wendy sighed.

“No, it’s not” “Don’t you see the…” Ben, Manuel, Teddy, Wendell and others jump in at the same time, while Dwayne bellowed, Wendy and Tess were asking questions of the room, and, as the writer says, pandemonium ensued. It was a shouting match, yes, but they were shouting about math. The Naysayers, the Doubters, and the Apostles were all marking their territory and this was no genteel, elegant, “turn and discuss this with your partner”, no think-pair-share nonsense. This was a scrum, a brawl, a melee conducted across the room with the volume up at 11—but just like any good fight, there was order beneath the chaos, a give and a take at the group level.

And for you gentle souls wondering about the quiet kids, the introverts, the shy ones who need time to think, they were enthralled, watching the game and making up their mind. It may not look like everyone gets time to talk, but pretty much every time you read me call on a kid, it’s a quiet one. And I shush the room. Then the quiet kid sits there in shock as he or she realizes oh god, I’ve got the mike and I can’t be a spectator anymore.

Anyway, the story goes on with a second great moment, but I’m getting better at chunking and this half had too many details I didn’t want to give up. I’ll stop here for dramatic effect. Because oh, lord, I was high as a kite in this moment, watching the room, realizing I was riding a tremendous wave of energy and excitement. Yeah. ME. On Stage. Making Drama.¹

Now I just had to come up with a good ending.

*********************
¹I’m not congratulating myself, saying I’m proving kids with the great moment. No, the great moment is mine. I’m standing there going oh, my god, this is a great moment in teaching, in my life. For me! The kids, hey, if they liked it, that’s good.

Assessments with Multiple Answers

Multiple Answer Math tests are my new new thing, and I’m very pleased with how it’s going so far. I thought I’d talk about some of the problems in depth, see if anyone has suggestions.

Most of these questions come from an A2/Trig test I wrote this weekend, focusing on systems of equations, but my tests are always cumulative.

One of the things I really like about this format: I can combine free response and selected responses very easily. So here they had to graph the plane, then answer questions which may or may not have to do with the graph. So I could both test their ability to graph a plane see if they understand how distance works in three dimensions, check out their attention to detail, and see if they remember what a trace is. Query: is “slope of a trace line” acceptable? I’ve never taught 3-dimensional systems before, and the book only said “trace”. But when I was teaching it, I kept forgetting and say “trace line”. I wanted them to demonstrate they could visualize the plane in three dimensions and see the slopes of the lines forming the plane, and I couldn’t find any sample questions. Probably an oddball question.

“a” and “e” contain typos. I originally had a different line, until I realized it’d be too hard to graph on the coordinates I provided. So I changed everything, or tried to. Missed two things. First, I intended “a” to be correct, but forgot to change the constant. That’s okay, it will allow for attention to detail. But “e” is just a kluge question, since I changed the points but forgot to change the distance. Before, it was a test of evaluation; now it’s a more obvious wrong answer.

This question makes me very happy. Transformations, function operations, evaluation, and then a transfer of knowledge test! We’d never done any problems like “e” before. No one squawked, and I even saw some kids solving it graphically.

(I stole this graph from online, but can’t find it any more. If it’s yours, let me know and I’ll provide a link.)

I tiptoed conceptually into linear programming, but we did a lot with feasibility regions and of course, systems of inequalities. I describe my approach for Algebra II, but I step it up a bunch of paces for A2/Trig. I expect them to be able to graph lines and inequalities. They get review during the modeling section, but that’s all.

Another one I just think is elegant because it approaches the absolute value from so many different angles: algebraically, graphically, and then a function conceptual question for good measure.

I use this on both Algebra II and Algebra II/Trig. We math teachers try to beat into the kids’ heads the idea that a function can be defined or expressed in four ways: verbal, algebraic, graphic, and tabular. If this were a multiple choice question, students would just test one value and see what happens. But it’s multiple answer, and plugging in numbers takes a long time. Plotting the points and sketching the lines, on the other hand, works very nicely and very quickly—if you know how to graph those lines.

Every so often you can really mess with the kids’ minds, like this:

None of the “obvious” answers are right. The kids really have to trust their abilities.

This is almost pure concept. I introduced the algebra of rational expressions; we’ll do the graphs later. Well over half the kids correctly selected e, but a lot missed b. Ack.

Here’s a couple that work for either pre-calc or algebra II. The quadratic runs the gamut from conceptual to technical. The circle question is more purely technical, but that’s because there’s a lot to test.

I’m having a much easier time grading these now, once I realized I was actually creating True/False tests.

Still to be resolved, however: I have to distinguish between “left the problem blank because I didn’t know” and “not true”. Right now, I evaluate the test to determine what the student is doing, but in the future I think I’m going to have a field they can mark “T” or “F”. If it’s blank, it’s wrong.

So, for example, take a look at this question again:

Answers A, D, and E are true. The others are false. I give this question 14 points, 2 for each letter.

Almost all my students correctly select A as true, because they’ve built the equation themselves as an exercise and understand the parameters. They likewise know that B is false. Some of them read “maximum” as “initial” and wrongly select C, but many otherwise weak students with good attention to detail get it correct. So even my weak students are likely to get 6 points on these three letters.

Then we get to the tougher ones (they aren’t always in order of difficulty). Students have to understand what elements of the parabola equate to max height, time to max height, and zero height. Obviously, I cover these extensively, but kids have a harder time with this. I don’t just teach them a method. I expect them to know that max height is the parabola’s vertex, so that the x value is time to max height, and the y value is the height.

I had at least 12 students who correctly factored the problem, thus correctly NOT selecting E, but also NOT selecting D. Strong technically, weak on the concept of a “zero”. I gave them partial credit (a point) and yelled at them on the paper: things like “Noooooooooo!” and “Arggggghhhh.” and arrows and question marks and “Yo! What do you think (2t-3) means, exactly!?!”

The vertex questions E and G give students the most trouble, but that seems to be less about concept and more about a reluctance to work with fractions. My algebra II students actually do better than my precalc students because we spend a whole unit on this, as opposed to a few days in precalc.

So an average weak student will get 8-10 points out of 14. Very few students get all 14 points, maybe 8 out of 60. Most get 10-12. If they show their work and I can see they were on the right track with just an algebra error, I give partial credit. Other times, I can clearly see their math was terrible, even if they got the right answer. In those cases, I mark the question correct and then dock them 2 points for bad math.

While I don’t normally review tests, I always go through these and give the correct answers and discuss grading decisions.

I strongly recommend giving these a try. They’re lots of fun to make and again, typos are a lot easier to hide.

Assessing “Upper Level” Math Students on Algebra I

A2/Trig

I am teaching Algebra II/TRIG! Not Algebra II. First time ever. Last December, I gave the kids a packet with the following letter:

Hi! I’m looking forward to our course.

Attached is a packet of Algebra I review work to prepare you for our class. If you are comfortable with linear and quadratic equations, then you’re in good shape. If you’re not, it’s time to study up!
Our course will be challenging and fast-paced, and I will not be teaching linear equations and quadratics in their entirety—that is, I expect you to know and demonstrate mastery of Algebra I concepts. We will be modeling equations and working with applied knowledge (the dreaded word problems) almost constantly. I don’t just expect you to regurgitate solutions. You’ll need to know what they mean.
I’m not trying to scare you off—just put you on your toes! But you should put in some time on this, because we will be having a test when you come to class the first full day. That test will go in the gradebook, but more importantly, it will serve as notice. You’ll know if you’re prepared for the class.

Have a great holiday.

Reminder: My school is on a full-block schedule, which means we teach a year’s content in a semester, then repeat the whole cycle with another group of students. A usual teacher schedule is three daily 90-minute classes, with a fourth period prep. I taught algebra II, pre-calc, and a state-test prep course (kids killed) last semester, and this semester I have A2/Trig and two precalcs.

(Notice that I am getting more advanced math classes? Me, too. It’s not a seniority thing. It’s not at my request. It’s possible, and tempting, to think they noticed the kids are doing well. I know the first decision to put me in pre-calc last year was deliberate, a decision to give me more advanced classes because they wanted a higher pass rate. But I honestly don’t know why it’s happening. Maybe they cycle round at this school, moving teachers from high to low and back again.)

So I said the first full day, and today was a half day, but the kids had a whole packet to work on and I wanted to understand I wasn’t screwing around. If they’d done the work, they’d do fine on the test. If they were planning on cramming, too bad so sad.

I was originally going to do a formal test, but decided to just throw a progression of problems on the board. Then I typed it up for next time, if I teach the class again.

How’d they do? About a third of them did well, given the oddball nature of the test. A couple got everything right. Most of them stumbled with graphing the parabola, which is fine. Some of them knew the forms (standard, point slope), but weren’t sure how to convert them.

Another three passed–that is, answered questions, showed they’d worked some of the packet. The rest failed.

Of the ones who failed, easily half of them had just blown off the packet but have the chops. The other half of that third I’m not sure of.

If you are thinking that kids in Algebra II/Trig should know more, well, they were demonstrably a step ahead of my usual algebra 2 classes. And I think some of them just didn’t know I was serious. Wait until that F gets entered, puppies. Like I told them today: “There’s a lower level option here. Take it if you can’t keep up.” Whoo and hoo.

Pre-calc

I’ve now taught pre-calc twice. The first time, last spring, I was stunned at the low abilities of the bottom third, which I didn’t really understand fully for two or three weeks, leaving some of them hopelessly behind. I slowed it down and caught the bulk of the class, with only four to five students losing out on the slower pace (that is, they could have done more, but not all that much more). So when I taught it again in the fall, I gave them this assessment to see how many students could graph a line, identify a parabola from its graph, factor, and use function notation. If you’re thinking that’s pretty much the same thing I do with the A2/Trig classes, well, yeah. Generally, non-honors version of course is equivalent of honors version of previous year.

I don’t formally grade this; the assessment happens while they’re working. I can see who stumbles on lines, who stumbles on parabolas, who needs noodging, who works confidently, and so on. I was able to keep more kids moving forward in the semester/year just ended using this assessment and a slightly slower pace. One of the two classes is noticeably stronger; half the kids made it through to the function operations before asking for assistance.

This assessment also serves as a confidence booster for the weaker kids. Convinced they don’t understand a single bit of it, they slowly realize that by golly, they do know how to graph a line and multiply binomials. They can even figure out where the vertex should be, and they might have forgotten about the relationship between factors and zeros, but the memory wasn’t that far away.

While I just threw together the A2/Trig course, I put a huge amount of thought into this precalc assessment last fall. I think it’s elegant, and introduces them to a lot of the ideas I’ll be covering in class, while using familiar models.

Part II is just a way of seeing how many of them remember trig and right triangle basics:

If you’re interested in assessing kids entering Algebra (I or II) or Geometry, check out this one–multiple choice, easy to grade, and easy to evaluate progress.

Multiple Answer Math Tests

As previously explicated in considerable detail, I’m deeply disgusted with the Common Core math standards—they are too hard, shovel way too much math into middle school. If I see one more reporter obediently, mindlessly repeat that [s]tudents will learn less content, but more in-depth, coherent and demanding content my head will explode.

Reporters, take heed: you can’t remove math standards. The next time some CC drone tells you that the standards are fewer, but deeper, ask for specifics. What specific math standard has been removed? Do students no longer have to know the quadratic formula? Will they not need to know conics? No, not colonics. That’s what you all should be forced to endure, for your sins. In all likelihood, the drone has no more idea than you reporters do about high school math, so go ask Jason Zimba, who reiterates several times in this interview that the standards are fewer, but go deeper. (He also confirms what I said about algebra, that much of it is moved to middle school). Ask him. Please. What’s left off?

Pause, and deep breath. Where was I?

Oh. Tests.

So the new CC tests are not multiple choice, a form that gets a bad rap. I give my kids in algebra one, geometry, and algebra two lots of multiple choice tests—not because I prefer them, and they aren’t easier (building tests is hard, and I make my own), but because my top students aren’t precise enough and they need the practice. They fall for too many traps because they’re used to teachers (like me) giving them partial or most of the credit if all they did is lose a negative sign. Remember, these are the top kids in the mid-level or lower math classes, not the top kids at the school. These are the kids who often can get an A in the easier class, and aren’t terribly motivated. My multiple choice tests attempt to smack them upside the head and take tests more seriously. It works, generally. I have to watch the lower ability kids to be sure they don’t cheat.

We’ve been in a fair amount of PD (pretty good PD, at that) on Common Core; last fall, we spent time as a department looking at the online tests. The instructors made much of the fact that the students couldn’t just “pick C”, although that gave us a chuckle. Kids who don’t care about their results will find the CC equivalent of picking C. Trust them. And of course, the technology is whizbang, and enables test questions that have more than one correct answer.

But I started thinking about preparing my students for Common Core assessments and suddenly realized I didn’t need technology to create tests questions that have more than one answer. And that struck me as both interesting and irritating, because if it worked I’d have to give the CC credit for my innovation.

On the first test, I didn’t do a full cutover, but converted or added new questions. Page 1 had 2 or 3 multiple answer questions and 3 was free-response, but on that first test, the second page was almost all multiple response:

I had been telling the kids about the test format change for a week or two beforehand, and on the day of the test I told them to circle the questions that were multiple answer.

It went so well that the second test was all multiple answer and free response. I was using a “short” 70-minute class for the test, so I experimented with the free-response. I drew in the lines, they had to identify the inequalities.

I like it so much I’m not going back. Note that the questions themselves aren’t always “common core” like, nor is the format anything like Common Core. But this format will familiarize the kids with multiple answer tests, as well as serve my own purposes.

Pros:

• Best of all, from my perspective, is that I am protected from my typos. I am notorious, particularly in algebra, for test typos. For example, there are FIVE equations on that inequality word problem, not four. See the five lines? Why did I put four? Because I’m an idiot. But in the multiple answer questions, a typo is just a wrong answer. Bliss, baby.
• I can test multiple skills and concepts on one question. It saves a huge amount of space and allows the kids to consider multiple issues while all the information is in RAM, without having to go back to the hard drive.
• I can approach a single issue from multiple conceptual angles, forcing them to think outside one approach.
• It takes my goal of “making kids pay attention to detail” and doubles down.
• Easier, even, than multiple choice tests to make multiple versions manually.
• Cheating is difficult, even with one version.

Cons:

Really, only one: I struggle with grading them. How much should I weight answers? Should I weight them equally, or give more points for the obvious answer (the basic understanding) and then give fewer points for the rest? What about omitting right answers or selecting wrong ones?

Here’s one of my stronger students with a pretty good performance:

You can see that I’m tracking “right, wrong, and omit”, like the SAT. I’m not planning on grading it that way, I just want to collect some data and see how it’s working.

There were 20 correct selections on nine questions. I haven’t quite finished grading them, but I’ve graded two of the three strongest students and one got 15, the other 14. That is about right for the second time through a test format. Since I began the test format two thirds of the way through the year, I haven’t begun to “norm” them to check scrupulously for every possible answer. Nor have I completely identified all the misunderstandings. For example, on question 5, almost all the students said that the “slope” of the two functions’ product would be 2—even the ones who correctly picked the vertex answer, which shows they knew it was a parabola. They’re probably confusing “slope” with “stretch”, when I was trying to ascertain if they understood the product would be a parabola. Back to the drawing board on that.

Added on March 7: I’ve figured out how to grade them! Each answer is an individual True/False question. That works really well. So if you have a six-option question, you can get 6/6, 5/6, 4/6 etc. Then you assign point totals for each option.

I’ll get better at these tests as I move forward, but here, at least, is one thing Common Core has done: given me the impetus and idea for a more flexible test format that allows me to more thoroughly assess students without extending the length of the test. Yes, it’s irritating. But I’ll endure and soldier on. If anyone’s interested, I’m happy to send on the word doc.

Note: Just noticed that the student said y>= -2/3x + 10, instead of y<=. It didn't cost her anything in points (free response I'm looking for the big picture, not little errors), but I went back and updated her test to show the error.