ECST Mathematics Department
Newsletter
March 20-24, 2023
Newsletter
March 20-24, 2023
ACTIONABLE ITEMs
Please fill out the form linked below as we collaborate together to name our Mathematics Competition. Thank you to Mr. Arenstein as he helped us use ChatGPT to generate some sample names!
In addition, please make sure we sign up for AreteLabs. Again, if anybody needs any help, please feel free to reach out.
Thank you!
Justin Bevilacqua
Hi ECVT Math Team!
After Dr. Milou's PD on Friday, Zack Arenstein and I decided that a Twitter campaign would bring awareness to our preference for students to have access to the Desmos calculator on the NJGPA & NJSLA. If you do not have a Twitter account, then share this message with a friend or family member who does.
College Board and 40 states use Desmos as the online calculator. New Jersey is not one of them. Join us in influencing change by posting the following message on Twitter on Tuesday, March 21, 2023 between 3:00PM and 4:00PM. Then, repeat Tweeting the message every Tuesday at 3:00PM.
I want #DesmosCalculators on #NJStateTesting. @NewJerseyDOE @Desmos @AMTNJ @NCTM @ddmeyer @DrAllenMcMillan @GovMurphy @drMi
Also, fill out the form from the Desmos Testing page:
"If Desmos isn't on your state assessment yet, and you're interested in changing that, please let us know! "
Thank you for supporting this campaign!
ATTENTION!!! Do you have any broken or unused calculators in your closets? Maybe they are in the back of one of your closets from a teacher who previously occupied the room. Maybe you just don't want to throw away the broken calculators. What ever the reason - please call Ms. Landis at extension 2267 so she can arrange to pick them up for refurbishing.
REMINDERS & IMPORTANT NOTES
March 27 - April 6 - CYCLE 3 BENCHMARKS (SGO BENCHMARKS)
APRIL 7-14 - SPRING BREAK
WED., APRIL 19 - APRIL DEPARTMENT MEETING Please bring your book!
TUE., APRIL 25 - SAT School Day (11th grade only)
May 15-19 - NJGPA (9th: ALG1 or GEO, ELA9 ; 11th: Sci11)
MATHEMATICS FOR EVERYONE
ECST will celebrate IDM on Wednesday, March 29th. This will also be the day the we will begin the ECST math competition, MATH MADNESS. We will be using the Arete Labs platform which will simplify the time and location constraints. I will be meeting with Mr. Bevilacqua, Ms. Antoine, and Mrs. Lopez-Cassano to discuss the logistics of getting started. More detailed information will be shared via email and this newsletter.
Some of the TI Rovers are in the buildings now. I will continue passing them out this week. These are the math team members who will be providing "garage space" and support for the TI Rovers in your buildings:
WCT: Arenstein & Tanion
NT: Lucas & Tewelde
PT: Shin, Zimmerman, Vodrazka, & Lopez-Cassano
THE LAST TWO CHAPTERS!!!!
Questions to reflect upon before we discuss chapters 13-14 at the April 19th department meeting:
Ch13: Has the way you use formative assessment changed over time? If so, why - what happened that prompted the change?
Ch13: Does the way you currently use formative assessment encourage or inhibit thinking?
Ch14: Can you think of instances where the grade your evaluation practice produced did not match with your judgement of what a specific student deserved? Did you change the grade? Whether you did or did not, what does that say about your judgement? What does that say about your evaluation practice?
Ch14: Does the way you currently have your students take notes encourage or inhibit thinking?
PROFESSIONAL/INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCES WORTH SHARING
I recently read three relevant and timely articles that may interest you. They are all short and easily digestable.
We have purchased the subscription! Stay tuned for more information on creating an account.
Document links
New! Slideshows with real-time scoring
//www.problem-attic.com/realtime
New! Scramble multiple-choice answers on PDFs
//www.problem-attic.com/pdf-scrambling
Support for interactive question types
//www.problem-attic.com/interactive-questions
Splitting and merging documents with My Database
//www.problem-attic.com/mydatabase
Shortcuts - Navigation Panel & Random Selection
//www.problem-attic.com/shortcuts1
More information about key features
With the new year came an important milestone for Problem-Attic: it now has upwards of 350,000 questions! In this email we’ll highlight the new content, starting with titles which were already on the main Select page.
State Assessments. All questions released through summer 2022 should now be in the database. (If we missed something, please let us know.) This includes about 1000 new questions each from CO, MD and NC, and another 3000 from AZ, MA, ME, MS, RI, and PA and TX.
NY Regents and NYS 3–8. The database has all exams through last August, including Spanish translations for Algebra 1, Living Environment, and Earth Science. 450 new Spanish Competency questions are there, too. (Look in World Languages.)
NC Math Contests. For NC State, WCU and UNCC, we added about five years’ of questions, or 1500 total. We’re now caught up with all tests (pre-COVID), and a topical sort will follow soon.
On the main Select page in Problem-Attic, you’ll also see these new titles:
Illustrative Mathematics. We created a separate link in the top-right panel because the database grew so large! We added more than 8000 questions for grades 3–5 and high school, both lessons and practice. (Middle school was already there.) This is an excellent curriculum—math teachers, please check it out.
UT Austin Science Olympiad (ATXSO). This is the start of a big move into SciOly! We’ve got two years covered so far, 2021 and 2022, with nearly 6300 questions for Divisions B and C. They’re organized by level and subject.
NASA Space Math. These questions, about 3000, are for teaching applications of math through space science. They’re organized by original source or “booklet”. (A big thank-you to the main author, Dr. Sten Odenwald!) Our plan is to re-organize all or most of the questions by topic or NextGen Science Standards. If you’re interested in working on such a project, you can get details here.
There’s a new feature in Problem-Attic which is connected to the growing database of questions. It’s called Public Frameworks. Briefly, it gives you a way to customize the database for a specific purpose. Currently, there are more than 20 frameworks available for you to install—and you can easily build your own. We’ll tell you more about this in a separate email. But you don’t have to wait. There’s already a re-alignment of questions to MA, TX and VA science standards, New Visions Math (NY), and two math textbooks. See this page to get started.
Everything described above is freely available when you sign up for Problem-Attic. For teachers at subscribing schools, we’ll quickly mention two updates: the Pre-Alg to Pre-Calc database has roughly doubled in size, to about 19,000 questions; and, on the panel called Additional Math and Science, you’ll see a new title, IM Paired Practice Questions. It has about 4700 original questions to go with the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum. To learn more, click the info button on the panel.