I gave my first official quiz today in my Algebra II class. Since so many of my students have 50% extra time accommodations, I designed a 30-35 minute quiz and let the class take the entire 50 minutes. Usually there are a number of students who finish early.

Before students turn in their quiz, I tend to say “are you absolutely, absolutely sure you want to turn this in? Once it’s in my hands, I won’t hand it back, and it tends to be exactly 1 second after students hand in a quiz that they realized they made a mistake and want to check over the test again.” Except for those with some sense of usually false bravado, they wisely go back and check over their work.

But I’ve come up with a good way to keep students occupied once they’ve finished their test. I put up a problem — somewhat based on what we’ve been doing but *just* different enough that students will be forced to make a new conceptual leap on their own. If they show me the right answer, with correct work, I let them leave class a few minutes early. A luxury, for sure. The solution to the problem becomes their key out of my class.

Today in Algebra II, we had a quiz that covered — among other topics — inequalities. Students learned simple linear inequalities and how to solve them. So, for the challenge problem, I put:

Find and write in interval notation where: .

Two of them got it. Most of the rest of the class wanted to get it. I liked them thinking about problems that are just beyond what we’ve done.

Today we had our upper school faculty meeting (read: high school teachers meeting). The topic: learning styles. It was led by our really wonderful — and capable — and amazing learning specialists.

In the meeting were two activities I want to talk about.

One is we had a panel of students (mainly seniors) come in and give us — without using any teachers’ names — their opinion of what works for them in a class. Some things they noted were that doing problems over and over (drill practice) worked for them in math. And having teachers pause every so often for students to spend two minutes (no more!) doing a “check in” problem, or discuss a new concept, was useful. They also discussed the importance of pacing, and having a really explicit lesson plan (“by the end of today, you will be able to …”).

I thought having students give their perspective was so much more powerful than anything else we could have done for this meeting. (See this previous post for more: A letter sent back in time.) I would have actually loved a bit of a Q&A with them. (I really wanted their candid perspectives of group work; what goes through their head when the teacher says its time for groupwork, and how the dynamic actually works out in most of their classes.)

The second activity was less impressive, and actually a little frustrating. It was an activity where we had to answer questions, and walk around the room, to determine what kind of learner we are: kinesthetic, auditory, or visual. And even though it was mentioned that these categories had gradations, and that no one fits perfectly in any of these categories, we were asked to discuss how our own learning style affected the way we teach.

The problem is, I had watched this video that had been circulating through the blogosphere in August, and I I really buy into the message.

(Read the comments at Eduwonkette for some good stuff.)

So I’m not sure how to deal with the concept of learning styles. And according to the video, I’m not sure that should really be the central focus of how I plan my lessons.