Day: January 13, 2011

Squeezing an elephant in a tube of toothpaste

Okay, so the title gotcha! What I’m talking about is: preparing for midterms and finals. My school asks us to spend 3 days of class time to review with our kids. (Of course, because we had a snowday today, that number goes down to 2 days!)

(found here)

I constantly am torn between various models of studying. The three standard ones are:

A. Prepare a giant packet and have kids do it in class (requiring — or recommending — certain pages be done on certain nights). The packet covers the entire course.

B. Prepare review games.

C. Let kids study on their own, focusing on what they need to work on. They have all their assessments (and reassessments), their skill lists, handouts, and home enjoyments (our corny word for homework). Let them sift through their material, organize it in a way that makes sense to them, and let the teacher know what they’d like to cover. The teacher prepares some (optional) mini-lectures, but pretty much lets students use the class time on their own.

I’ve tried A and B, but I’ve found them lacking. The big issue is that each kid has different areas they need to target with their studying. Games —  though fun! — end up being less about learning and more about letting students know they don’t know something. They don’t really give students the time to remediate. Also, a game can only cover so much material.

The packet thing feels a bit coddling to me. I want students to learn to study without everything being so spoon fed. But a small voice always seems to be squeaking: am I railing against that because I don’t want to take the time to write a giant packet? And am I afraid that the students, even though I tell them otherwise, will feel like doing the packet is enough?

So I’ve tended to do C. I let my kids spend the class time any way they want. I give them a list of topics (or because I’m doing SBG in calculus, I give them a list of skills) and ask them to classify them as “know” “kinda know” and “don’t know”

I then have them make a concrete plan of action, to show them that reviewing everything is manageable. Finally, I have them pick 3-5 they most want me to give a “mini lesson” on. I compile the data, figure out the most requested topics, and prepare short lessons on each topic. During class, my kids can listen to the mini lectures they are interested in, or work alone or with a partner on whatever math skill they want to work on.

The point is: I want kids to spend their time on what they feel they need to work on.

Other things I do/have done:

1. Have students each write their own study guide for a topic, complete with problems and solutions. These get put online electronically for others to use.
2. Have students make a general outline of the course, so they can see what we’ve done in a big picture flow-chart-type-thing.

I guess what I’m wondering from you is: What do you do to review for midterms and finals, and why? And does it work? I’m just not totally happy with anything I’ve done. I want the most kids to get the most out of a short amount of time. I feel I’m not there yet.

Quarter II on SBG

We’re at the twilight of the second quarter in my calculus class. Standards Based Grading has become normal. The most exciting thing about SBG is seeing students who are traditionally unsuccessful turn that around. They can get it, but they realize they have to conquer their weaknesses. The Giant Specter that Haunts All Calculus Teachers is the deficiencies we see with our kids’ algebra abilities.)

Students will use the quotient rule to get something like \frac{(x+1)(2\cos(x))-(2\sin(x))(1)}{(x+1)^2}. And then, then, *shudder*: \frac{2\cos(x)-2\sin(x)}{x+1} because, you know Mr. Shah, you can just cancel the x+1.

Students simply can’t get by without fixing their algebra deficiencies. But they have lots of opportunities to fix them. It’s really hard to unlearn bad algebra, but many are doing it.

The flip side is possibly the MOST FRUSTRATING THING ABOUT SBG. Yes, all caps means I’m yelling. It’s the students who just sit there, don’t reassess, and *hope* everything will turn around. I encourage (of course I encourage!), but I am only going to go so far. They’re not freshman. They’re seniors. They know what they’re doing. They’re making choices. It saddens me that students who have been given the opportunity to learn would rather languish.

It simply highlights my biggest pet peeve. I really really dislike it when I am confronted with a student with SO MUCH POTENTIAL and SO MUCH ABILITY but they flounder because they don’t want to work. They don’t want to put in the effort it takes. It angers me because they don’t realize that THEY ARE SO LUCKY TO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN. They’re squandering opportunities and closing doors and that saddens me.

However, those students are few and far between.

In terms of the number of kids reassessing this quarter:

Week 1: 6
Week 2:  8
Week 3:  11
Week 4:  15
Week 5:  15
Week 6:  17

TOTAL:  72 reassessments

Making the change this quarter that students can only reassess on Fridays (and they have to send me their form email demonstrating they’ve remediated by Tuesday at 5pm) has been amazing, in terms of my own self-preservation. I generally spend (closer to the end of the quarter) an extra 4 hours/week writing, grading, and recording the reassessments. It feels worth it, so I do it.

I was hoping that the number of reassessments would decrease in the 2nd quarter, once students began to recognize what was required of them to do well on the assessments. That isn’t the case (Quarter 1 had 70 assessments). I have two conjectures about this:

1. The material is harder, and way more algebra heavy, so students are struggling more.
2. Students have started to view the reassessments as their safety net (or their crutch, depending on the student), so they aren’t adequately preparing for assessments

I also wonder how senioritis will affect things in the 3rd and 4th quarters.