understanding

With seven teaching days left before final exams, it’s time for review. The big question for me was, “How can I get students to be engaged with review?” And the answer, like usual, came to me in the shower: incentives. I’m not much for the usual pizza parties and gold stars, so my incentive had to be something academic. Do you think, “If you come up with a good problem, I’ll put it on the final,” is a good incentive? I’m hoping that it’s a way to get students deeply involved in the process of final exams. Of course, it take a bit of structure to make it work.

This is where the part about filling up two weeks of class time comes in. Last year I did a lot of student presentations as review. I haven’t done these as much this year as I did last year, but I love getting students up in front of the class and having them teach. I find it works best when they have a lot of time to prepare, a little coaching, and when the presentation is limited to a single thing. So I’m going to have students each present one topic from the course, including examples and a practice problem. They’ll grade the practice problem as their classmates complete them. I’ll pick the best ones from my various classes to put on the final. Hopefully, this turns out to be easy for everyone involved.

Last night, I looked at the state standards and grouped them up or split them apart as necessary to form individual topics. Today, I’m letting students pick their topic from this list and start working on their presentation. A lot of the work comes up front, when they ask, “What do you mean, ‘Area and Perimeter’?” and I reply, “What do those words mean?” This is the moment when they realize I’m not going to be doing the work for them. I’m asking students to go from just the name of a topic to the concept including vocabulary and examples. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this isn’t too big of a challenge.