High Expectations

About High Expectations

High expectations in a classroom incorporates showing students that effort plays a large role in the mastery of material. For students to continue to push themselves in class, teachers need to have high standards. These high expectations are part of the reason students strive to improve and grow in classes. Teachers should challenge students as well as show them new ways to complete that challenging material. This is one way that students grow; if they are never challenged, they will not learn new ways of thinking.

How I Taught With High Expectations

Throughout my time at WRHS, I had high expectations for all my students. I demonstrated these high expectations in many different ways. For example, during notes, I would provide example problems that became more challenging as the lesson went on. Sometimes, students had to complete them on their own. As they completed the problems, I would walk around the classroom to look at their progress. If a student was really struggling with the question, I would try helping them remember the first step of the problem. When a student makes a mistake, I always try and point out something that they did right in the problem before showing them how to fix their mistake. Also, I challenged the students by having them try different types of activities that prompted them to think about math in different ways.

Another way I challenged students is through the Slope Intercept Battleship activity (Appendix F: Slope Intercept Battleship). I found this activity on a Maryland high school math teacher’s blog (B., Kathryn). The students plot “ships” made up of ordered pairs onto a coordinate plane and take turns guessing equations in slope intercept form. These equations are meant to intersect with one of the ships’ ordered pairs. Once each ordered pair in a ship is intersected, the ship is sunk. The student to sink all three of his opponents ships first is the winner. I did modify the activity for my classes. Originally, the activity included a record sheet and a reflection sheet. The record sheet was meant to keep track of only the equations that intersected with the ship’s ordered pairs. However, I knew that it would be simpler to keep track of all guesses, so I printed the coordinate plane on both sides of the paper. There was a side for students to keep track of their ships and a side for them to keep track of their guesses. Instead of a reflection sheet, the students and I discussed strategies they used during the game the following day at the start of class. When I first introduced the activity to the class, I explained the directions to the whole class before letting them split into pairs to complete the activity. While some students understood the game at first, others needed a little more explanation given to them individually before being able to start the activity. This activity required students to think about where they wanted a line to go, and then come up with an equation for it. After having one class complete the activity as described, I decided to modify it more. During the first class, I noticed that only guessing the equations made the activity take too long. To help the activity move quicker, if an equation intersected a ship, the students would share the ordered pair. This would allow students to know the whereabouts of the ship. This helped students understand the activity better, although some did still need additional help starting the game.

Another way that I challenge students is through the Do Now every day. At the start of each class, I have a Do Now on the board that consists of three to four problems. Each student has the opportunity to complete the problems before I randomly choose three names from a jar of Popsicle sticks. Whoever get picked must come to do the problem at the board. If they are nervous about completing the problem or are unsure of themselves, I offer to help them through the problem but make sure they still put the problem on the board. The problems are of varying difficulty, so each student should be able to complete at least one of them.

When creating worksheets, I included problems with varying levels of difficulty. One worksheet where the problems were organized well was the practice sheet for Unit 2 Section 3 - Solving Inequalities with Multiplication or Division (Appendix G: 2-3 Practice Sheet). All the problems covered the same types of content, but the odds had larger numbers, so they were naturally more difficult. I had the students start with the even problems to make sure they all grasped the new content. For those that understood the material quickly, they could work on the odd problems for more of a challenge, but I knew there was students that would not be able to complete all the questions without a calculator. For homework that evening, they only had to work on the even problems, so the students who were at a lower level would still be able to finish the homework. The worksheet was developed using Kuta Infinite Algebra Software, provided by WRHS.