Making the Grade - Brian Cohen

Photo-a-day 118: ELA Fieldwork

3/22/2017

I know I've been slow. I apologize. Next week's photos will likely explain why.

On Thursday of last week we had our ELA Fieldwork for the Spring. Our 12th grade students went to go see an educational play called X: Or, Betty Shabazz vs. The Nation which was all about Malcolm X and his history. It focused on his later years in life and his death, with the conspiracy theories abounding. While I thought the play was interesting, yet not that engaging, the workshops afterward were more to my liking. Representatives from the play's educational staff came to our school and ran workshops with the kids based on the play and Malcolm X's life. It was wonderful to hear the students dig deeper into themselves to share their thoughts and experiences.

Photo-a-day 117: Awards

3/15/2017

As a senior Crew leader I have been learning a lot about the graduation process. One of the things we get to do is nominate students for various awards that will be given out at the ceremony. There are a whole host of them (63!) that may be awarded but not all have to. The most important ones are listed at the top of the spreadsheet and include what I have made into a screenshot below. I look forward to deciding who the awardees are going to be!

Photo-a-day 116: Snow Day

3/14/2017

After all the hub-bub concerning a blizzard over the past few days, it seems the snows were a bit underwhelming. I don't fault the meteorologists - it's really hard to estimate the amounts and types of precipitation in these situations. In the end, I got to have an enjoyable day home from work to relax and catch up on some things for home that have been piling up. Thanks, weather gods!

Photo-a-da 115: PBAT Sticker Chart

3/13/2017

It is that time of year: PBAT season for a lot of courses at my school, Algebra 1 included. Every year my students learn all about data, scatter plots, lines of best fit, and residuals during class, after which they research their own question and present the data they collect in a small group roundtable. One component of this is to ensure students demonstrate mastery on a variety of skills before they are allowed to present - thus solidifying their knowledge and making sure they can have these skills in their back pockets. I am pleased that this class is so far along, despite only having worked on these items for four days!

Photo-a-day 109 through 114: Variety

3/13/2017

I was unfortunately remiss during the past week in taking photos and posting them to this blog. It was a very stressful week with my tenure portfolio due at the same time. Finally, that application is complete and I can try to get back into a rhythm of making these posts. Luckily, I did take two of Crew situations. The first is my final, winning bananagrams board that I competed with a number of my students last week. The second photo is two of my Crew students I happened to see giving a presentation as I passed their classroom while preparing for my own class. It was a pleasure to see them display their knowledge well!

Photo-a-day 108: Math Data Expedition

3/13/2017

I know I'm many days behind so I'm going to try to catch up all at once. After all, there is a snow day tomorrow so I don't have to worry about planning!

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The photo below is from March 2nd, our Spring Semester Math Expedition focusing on Data and its analysis. My Algebra 1 students went all over Manhattan to learn how data is used by organizations and companies to learn, make policy, make profits, and more. This is from the Center for NYC Affairs in which they analyze data of all types, including income of neighborhoods and the associated income of local schools. It was pretty fascinating and the kids enjoyed finding their own school in their home neighborhood.

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Photo-a-day 107: Students working together

3/1/2017

I really can't get enough of seeing my students working together. This is a group of 10th grade boys who sometimes have trouble answering questions and discussing but when you give them an action to take hold of, they do great! They are preparing for their expedition tomorrow by calculating heights of buildings using the tangent function. It's pretty cool!

Photo-a-day 106: Timers

3/1/2017

My coworker and I try to make sure we keep the students going with a sense of urgency by using our phones as timers. We find it good for pacing and to make sure how much time we have spent on a given task. This is an example of doing so while students were working on using triangle congruence theorems. Remember geometry? It's fun!