One of my favorite events!

The 7th annual Mock AP exam was incredibly successful.  Over 200 students walked out of the Mock exam with tidbits on how to improve their performance on the May exam.

CBHS Calculus Teams 

For the past 7 years, we gather all of the AP students from across the district to take a Mock AP exam.  In the morning, the students model Mathematical Practice #1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them! The test is timed and this experience truly gives them a "flavor" of the actual exam.  In the afternoon, AP readers guide the students through a self- assessment of the free-response section of the exam.  This year we had the privilege of hearing from our very own AP Readers. John Doherty from South Mountain has been an AP Statistics reader for three years and Sunghwan Byun from Metro Tech HS completed his first summer as an AP reader last year.  They did a fantastic job teaching the students how to evaluate their free response questions, provide feedback to their peers, and make revisions to ensure that lucky number FIVE.  

Congratulations to the following students.  They were recognized for their performance on the Multiple Choice portion of the exams: 

AP Calculus AB (Top three scorers)
1st- Xinyu Li, Cesar Chavez
2nd- Jennifer Hernandez, Carl Hayden
3rd- Gema Trejo, Carl Hayden    

AP Calculus BC (Top three scorers)

1st - Yu Zhao, Cesar Chavez
2nd- Martin Lopez Marquez, Metro Tech
3rd- Louis Mendez, Carl Hayden  

AP Statistics (Top three scorers)

1st- Javier Cruz Camelback
2nd- Anthony Canedo - Camelback
3rd - 4 way tie Vanessa Armendariz - Camelback, Garrett Jones- Camelback. Guillermo Arenas- North, Christopher Granada - North HS

We also recognized the Highest Score from each school and they received a certificate:  

• AB: Cristian Berrera- Camelback, Jennifer Hernandez- Carl Hayden, Xinyu Li- Cesar Chavez, Yasmine Garcia- Maryvale, Sarahy Talin Leon- Metro Tech, John Walkner- South Mountain, and Ramon Uribe- Trevor Browne 
• BC: Yu Zhao- Cesar Chavez, Martin Lopez Marquez- Metro Tech, Julio Melchor- Trevor Browne, and Leocadie Haguma- Maryvale 
• Statistics: - Javier Cruz- Camelback, Guillermo Arenas and Christopher Granada - North

AB Calculus Site Top Scorers

BC Calculus Site Top Scorers

AP Statistics site Top Scorers

Congratulations to the following schools for having the highest average on the Multiple Choice section of the exams!  They will receive their plaques in a few weeks.

·        AP Statistics: Camelback

·        AP Calculus: Carl Hayden

Carl Hayden Falcons

I also want to say thanks to our sponsors:   

·        Immedia:  Thank you for your continued support for PUHSD mathematics and providing the food for the event.

·        Phoenix Union Foundation for Education:  Thank you for sponsoring the AP readers and the beverages for the day.  

·        AP Readers:  Sungwhan Byun (Metro Tech) and John Doherty (South).  The teachers and the students were grateful for the opportunity to learn from the AP Readers experience grading the AP exams.  

·        PUHSD Public Relations:  for providing the medals and the plaques! 

·        Metro Tech and North:  Thank you for hosting the events.  Everyone at the campus was incredibly helpful and each event ran smoothly!

·        Last but not least, thanks to the AP Teachers!  This day would not happen without their continued support and guidance with improving our AP mathematics programs across the district. 

Once again, Thanks to everyone involved for making this a successful event for our students.  

Turn the math dial down?

This year, the PUHSD mathematics teachers have been identifying mathematical tasks to develop specific student understanding.  Our new curriculum is based on developing rigor.  So...what is RIGOR?  I attended the NCTM winter institute last month and saw the picture of the stool as a great representation of our pursuit for implementing and sustaining rich tasks.  We have found when we are aiming for student understanding and our mathematical tasks are missing one of the components, the students struggle to meet the intent of the essential learning standards.  

One of our challenges is how do you implement high-cognitive demand tasks without having students shut down.  To support our work, Dan Meyers was our special guest in January.  He worked with us on how to “turn the math dial down” and when to "turn the math dial up."  This is an odd phrase for a mathematics class, because you would think that the math dial should be up at all times. To create interest and motivate students to be problem solvers and use their math tool belt, sometimes we need to turn the math dial down to open up the task and build interest.  Dan modeled several examples of what this looks like in practice and there are some great examples on the website http://phx15.mrmeyer.com/.

Over the past few weeks, teachers have had the opportunity to practice their new learning and to add a bit of fun (through our love for competition), we hosted a “Math American Idol” competition.  Teachers were asked to submit their “makeover tasks” to SharePoint and Dan Meyers would pick his favorite ones!  

The results are in and the winners are Jeanette Scott, Instructional Leader from Cesar Chavez and Jamie Hayes, Math Teacher from Alhambra HS.  Click HERE to see their tasks and thanks to everyone that submitted tasks.  

Jeanette submitted a task about renting a van and here is what Dan had to say, "Loved the cost of the van problem, especially for including a blank for unnecessary information. That's an often overlooked task that adults do all the time when they solve problems!" 

Mrs. Hayes submitted the area of a shaded region task and Dan said, "I also loved the simplicity of the area of the lawn problems, how she just deleted the measurements and increased the cognitive demand and interest several-fold."