Welcome to my first ever podcast! My name is Erin and I am a high school math teacher. I just started my 12th year of teaching and my first week using the Modern Classroom Project! I am starting this podcast to share my experiences during my first year implementing the Modern Classroom Project with my high school Algebra 1 class.
If you want to learn more about the Modern Classroom Project, you should check out their free course. On their main page, they have a video that is around 5 minutes long that is a great overview of the model.
Below I have linked the resources that I used during my first week of school:
- Name tents
- 1-100 activity
- Collaborative poster – click here to see my students’ work
Podcast Transcript
Hi, and welcome to my first ever podcast! My name is Erin and I am a high school math teacher.
I just started my 12th year of teaching and my first week of using the modern classroom project. I’m starting this podcast to share my experiences during my first year implementing the Modern Classroom Project with my high school Algebra 1 class.
Modern Classroom Project is a self paced, mastery based, blended learning instructional model. In traditional teaching, its often a one size fits all approach. Where I teach, Algebra 1 feels like there’s a new standard to teach for each day of the school year. We often feel like we have to move on, even if our students aren’t ready so that we can get through the material in time for the state mandated test. When I first heard about the Modern Classrooms Project, it felt like I had finally found the answer I had been searching.
It is my hope to update you weekly with how it is going, what is working for me and what is not.
I just finished my first week and it was amazing. We are back 100% face to face. My Algebra 1 class currently has 29 students. It was really important to me to begin the year with community building activities.
Every year I start off with Sarah Van DerWerf’s name tents and 1-100 activity. Students make a name tent. It help me with their names the first week of school but it also helps them get to know each other names. On the inside of the name tent, they leave me a comment every day for the first week of school and I respond before the next class each day.
We then moved on to Sara’s 1-100 activity. This is a great resource that creates dialogue between students. Basically each student has a different color marker or highlighter and the students take turns highlighting the numbers 1-100 in order. I give them 2 minutes and see how each group did. Then we did it again. The groups were able to get to a higher number the second time. Between rounds they discuss if they have noticed a pattern, what is working for their group, and what is not working for them. We then did a third round. After the 3rd round, I explain the pattern to the class and we do one more round. By this time, most groups are able to get closer to completing the task. We had a wonderful discussion about what good group work looks like and sounds like.
The next day I wanted to put those group work skills to use and we did a collaborative poster from rise over run. That day I had 21 students in class so I asked each student to color 2 different sheets because the puzzle is 42 pieces. At this point they just thought that they were coloring, I did not tell them it was a puzzle. When they were done coloring, I had them cut out their pieces and revealed that it was a puzzle and that they had to work together to put it together. While they were trying to put the puzzle together, we had discussions about what we had learned the day before about good group work. The entire class was involved and engaged. When they finished putting it together they were so proud. They took turns posing and taking pictures with it. Seeing them having fun in math was a great feeling, especially knowing that some of these students had not received in person learning since march 2020.
On Thursday and Friday we started Unit 0. I created this unit based off of Kate Gaskill’s exemplar shared on the Modern Classrooms Project’s website. It is an introductory unit for students to learn about how this instructional model works, where they can find everything they need in my classroom, and the classroom expectations.
I began by saying, raise your hand if you ever felt behind in class. All of their hands went up. I talked about how that would not happen in our classroom. They wanted to know how since Algebra 1 is a class that requires the state mandated test. I explained how we are a modern classroom and what that meant. They got started with the Unit 0 and the feedback that I got on their name tents on Thursday was overwhelming positive. My students are SO excited to begin math content on Monday. My students are excited. They are ready to learn. They did PHNEOMINAL in Unit 0. Most of my students even complete the aspire to do lesson, a lesson that wasn’t required.
If you want to learn more about the modern classrooms project check out their website at modernclassrooms.org.
If you want to see my classroom set up you can follow me on Instagram @erinessentialequations
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Thanks for listening!
