Have You Heard of "Twice Exceptional" Students?

I read this account (via Quartz) of a NYC public school student who is exceptionally gifted intellectually, but (in part because of his intellect), was really struggling with attention on class, interacting with and understanding his peers emotionally, and otherwise doing "school" activities. Ordinarily, these behaviors would sound alarm as a child probably in need of an IEP and special accommodations, but because of his strengths elsewhere, the necessity for services and supports are either masked or compensated for by the student, or ignored by his teachers.

This boy's experience was a representative anecdote for what educational psychologists are calling "twice exceptional" children - children who may be traditionally "gifted" in one area, but in desparate need for interventions and supports in areas of the school environment. (Special Ed Manual from Idaho Dept of Education) This boy's story went on to recount bullying the boy ended up enduring even in a "gifted" classroom and a general dislike and failure of school. He had taught himself to read before he was 4, but was regressing in a classroom setting he struggled to adapt to and cope with.

Do you have any students like this?

Have you ever assumed that a bright student must also work well and lead in a group setting? If you've seen the Steve Jobs biopic or are familiar with his story, you've experienced this fallacy)

Have you ever been surprised that a student on your IEP list in a co-taught special ed classroom might be need the most support emotionally or behaviorally, but ALSO be the most gifted intellectually? (That IEP stigma can stick hard, can't it?)

Do you ever find yourself giving "gifted" students a free pass on other aspects of learning and growth? 

Thinking through my own experience working with these students (and maybe even reflecting on myself as a student), let me share with you some tips for supporting the needs of "twice exceptional" students and engaging them in your classroom.

1. Don't assume that your "smart" or "honors" students must also have the best behavior.

Honors students may need your PBIS measures and expectations reminders, too.

If you're struggling with a student's behavior, you may be particularly frustrated that he or she isn't being a "leader" for the others. Thy may really WANT to be "good," but be unable to for some reason (and this probably frustrates the student, too.)

2. Focus on educating the WHOLE student. 

Kids that are exceptionally gifted in one subject math give up or accept that others are (and will always be) weaknesses. As the student stresses one and ignores the other, the divide between strength and weakness will only widen. Find nuggets a student can mine and go further. If you really believe that your students should be life-long learners, then no matter how bright your student may be he or she STILL has things to learn - things to learn from YOU.

3. Have a conference with parents early I'm about ways they would like to see their child receive extra support or be challenged to improve. 

Whether or not they can EXPRESS it in edu-speak, they have goals for their child's interventions. One of the most shocked/delighted reactions I can remember at parent-teacher conferences was when I told the parents of a student with a 36 on the math portions of the ACT that I was really wanting to work on his writing and communication of all the math he could perform operationally. 

4. Let the genius/crazy happen as it wants to.

Resist the urge to fit your twice exceptional students into whatever mold you want to see them in as "successful." If they're introverted, don't force group work on them. (But find ways to force interactions on them in more digestible nuggets). If your student has noise or sound sensitivities, be prepared to adapt your lecture/lesson to that student being able to isolate themselves when they're overwhelmed, but still continue learning activities. Give a student's work time to bloom and come to a full realization before you shoot it down. I've dismissed several "bad" drawings from my 4year old in this manner that after I listened to her explain it, I saw her reasoning and artistry more clearly.

5. Be proactive in your support. 

Conference ithat he student and acknowledge that you understand and are aware of their needs, but also that you have a plan of x, y, z for them as a student in your classroom and in your subject. Engage them in that journey.

Relevance and Engagement: Where Is the Teacher/Student Demarcation of Responsibility?

I picked up two sections of our Applied Math course this semester. According to the curriculum guide (and practically), it is a bridge in our sequence between Geometry and Algebra 2. Following the textbook, MathMatters3, its a fairly even distribution between Geometric and Algebraic concepts. 

And, of course, we try as best we can (given the aforementioned parameters) to make what we do applicable and relevant to our students. 

We're in linear equations, graphs, and domain and range, right now, and I chose to have the students look at senior portrait packages. A quick Google search for "st. louis senior portraits" got me here: a real-life company that takes real-life photos of real-life St. Louis people.

www.nordmannphoto.com

Posing as the photographer, I gave them print options with prices, told them I wanted them to design packages for themselves, spending at least the minimum investment amounts listed on the Nordmann website for each session type and let 'em loose. After most everyone had chosen an a la cart package of prints to fulfill the amount they had to spend, I refocused what we were doing to the stated objective of graphing, domain, and range.

I had to generalize our package information down to an average cost for print, but we had a cross-curricular discussion into science class as we were setting up our graph.

What's the IV here?

What's the DV here?

(Some disagreement...discussion...people that were wrong figured out their error)

How much would 0 prints cost?

(Insert y-intercept and fixed costs reminder here)

So, nothing in this lesson was exceptionally rigorous (although some of my students get very frozen when you tell them to make some choices for themselves and tell me what they come up with so I can know the answer), and the standards in this mini-lesson were at best middle school level, but in terms of relevance, it should have been spot on.

And yet, I still had a student (a senior) ask,

"What do senior portraits have to do with our lives? I mean, this is applied math..."

And I had students that exhibited a similar level of engagement to boring days when all we do is direct instruction (that is, little).

The question is this:

Where do our best attempts to draw in our students with relevant topics end, and where do we stop beating ourselves up we students make deliberate choices to do anything but the day's activity?

Leave your comments below; I'd love your input!

Return on Investment: What Messages Are Your Classroom Tech Policies Sending?

I had a new student in class today; he transferred from a different high school in the area. His old district is very similar to ours demographically and economically, but I think our leadership has made courageous, difficult decisions on where to invest budgets, and it has paid off in higher academic success for our students.

We got the iPads out first thing, and this is how it went.

Really big left arm unintentional... LOL

I don't know much about this student than his name and a vague description of what he was doing in Algebra 2 at his old school, but I know he knows that our district values equity in opportunity for our students. I'm unsure how he feels about his past, but I hope tonight he feels optimistic about his educational future.

Stop Posting Your Homework Assignments (As Often)

I've blogged before about my struggles with missing assignments and communicating work with my students and parents. ("Get the Homework Monkey Off Your Back"). Now I'm going to say, you're doin' too much.

If you're supremely organized, or teach a dual-credit or AP course that requires a complete syllabus from day 1, then this strategy will be much easier to implement and adapt for your situation. The basic goal - keep your homework assignment from getting lost here.

You know this backpack too well...you probably trip over it every day.

Another plan for keeping your students and (more importantly for everyone's success) parents up-to-date and informed on class assignments and tests is to share your planning calendar with them. Before you think, "I tried this once before - updating the calendar function on our school's webpages," hear me out.

Your first step is to begin using Google Calendar for your planning. My favorite function in Google Cal makes me feel like it was made just for me. To change the date of an event, simply click and drag it to another day.

Once you get your lessons mapped out you have TWO options: embed the calendar or share it. I do both with my small AP Stats class. Sharing the calendar is the same process as sharing docs with your students or colleagues. Enter their email and they can have whatever level of sharing/editing/viewing control you desire.

The beauty of sharing the calendar that you're already working with is that there is not an extra step to sharing updates with your students and parents. You update, they see it. You've probably run across one before, but here's what my embedded calendar looks like.



Within 2 days of sharing my AP Stats calendar with my students, I had this conversation:

Hey, Mr. Baker, I'm going to be gone next Thursday for a field trip. What are we going to do?
Um...well... ::trying to come up with a helpful answer::
Oh! I'll just check the calendar!

Your students will be amazed at your organization (and you'll surprise yourself, too).

 

More Reflection on the Flipped Classroom

Found an infographic today about the Flipped Classroom (or reverse instruction). I thought a lot through it last year in this post, and still wish I could make it a reality for my own classroom. Last year one of my problems was inequity among my students of internet access at home, which I'm perceiving is less of an issue this year. But, with three preps this year I feel like the load of online lecture creation is too heavy to really make it happen.

I have had a measure of success this year with Edmodo.com getting my kids logged on to ask me questions, share resources, and complete some assignments. The kids have gravitated to it much more than I expected. It largely replicates what I share on my class facebook page, so I thought kids would use that primarily to avoid having another website to login to, but perhaps the fact that its NOT facebook is the appeal.

Here's the infographic - check out the failure rate decreases cited toward the bottom.

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Using Perudo to Explore Probability

After playing the dice game Perudo at a friend's house several NYE's ago, I've been trying to find a way to work the game into a classroom setting to explore and practice everyday application of simple probabilities.

Summer school is usually a good setting for these types of explorations also, but I just never got around to it in there.

Finally this year in my 6th responsibility I have a class of 9th graders with the only guidelines for the class being to provide a structure and support system for these at-risk students. In addition to enforcing organization and study skills from last semester this semester my team of core area teachers are also each taking a day a week as enrichment for our area. Here's a link to today's (and perhaps next week's) activity. Paraphrase of rules courtesy of this ehow page.

I'll report later how it goes.
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Day One:
The intention today was to go through the rules, have the two groups play through once, and then reflect on the discussion questions.  We got started a little later than I thought we would, so we only had time for both groups to play through once.

Here are my thoughts:
Preparation:

• This really started out as an idea the morning of before I left my home because I wasn't feeling 100% ready to successfully begin a podcast/mathematician research project I've been gathering materials for.  Because of that, my fellow core teachers in the class had no prior warning and I don't think I was able to use them as successfully as I could have.
• Having the rules as a handout for the students to look at individually was very helpful as we walked through a practice round.  
• Having experience myself playing the game was also helpful - I'm not sure how much - but it helped me coach the students through game-play and secretly leading them to the exploration I had in mind.

Execution:

• Because two students were absent, the numbers worked out that a teacher was able to play along with each using the sets of dice I had.  This helped in monitoring on-task behavior, in coaching through game-play, and I'm sure in facilitating the discussion for part two.
• My only regret is that because I had not met w/ my teachers before the lesson to share my intentions, the 2nd group was given an intro to the probabilities behind decision making in the game as they played along.  Perhaps this was actually a better way to immerse the learning into the game, but my concern is that it will affect the true discovery moment I was envisioning.

Future planning:

• Since we didn't get to the reflection questions, they are delayed until next Friday when it is math day again.  Reflecting the next day would have been okay, but I'm afraid some insightful nuggets will be lost throughout the coming week.
• Fred coaching the other group on probabilities could end up being to our advantage, however, because that group now has prior knowledge to contribute to the discussion once we get to that this next lesson.
• When we play next time I want the kids to be very mindful of the probabilities behind the game and using them to make good decisions based on the number of dice in play, but I have two options for accomplishing that:  (1) Have the students create their own probability charts to reference while playing, or (2) Distribute a chart I found online and teach them how to use it.  This option would take less time, I think, but I don't know if that really matters.

DAY ONE Conclusion:

Overall, I was very pleased with how my admittedly under-planned lesson turned out.  The kids really enjoyed the game and were engaged the whole period; even once they had lost all of their dice.  I think this was a great intro to probabilities.  My only foreseeable problem for future math days is this: How do I follow this up with the next game exploration?