Blackjack or Bust

Over three weeks in to the second semester and, unsurprisingly, the seniors in my AP Statistics course are finding it harder and harder to get motivated to do school. That means it’s time for some blackjack.

At Tuesday’s evening class, we dealt some cards, made some bets, and recorded lots of data. I have done a blackjack project several times now and it always grabs the students’ attention and interest. Some students learn the game for the first time while others learn the finer points such as splitting and doubling down. But all enjoy watching their piles of chips go up and down.

While they play, the students record such things as card values, number of hits, wins, losses, pushes, and busts. In groups, the students will then use the data to create their own examples that are meant to illustrate the various probability concepts we have studied thus far. These topics include conditional probability and independence, random variables, the binomial and geometric distributions, and sampling distributions. The groups are tasked with teaching their topics to their classmates. As a part of their presentation, a group will also provide a sample problem for everyone to try to solve.

I have come to strongly value students taking over class and teaching their peers. Explaining the intricacies of challenging mathematical ideas is not easy. And many students have anxiety about speaking in front of the class. But it is so worth it. From my experiences with these student presentations, I have seen my students gain deep understanding of the topics and I think the students appreciate having class led by someone other than their teacher. After reading Jo Boaler’s book, Mathematical Mindsets, I now know that research has shown that explaining work to others creates deep learning.

In addition to the presentation, students have the opportunity to collaborate with others. Group work is another prominent part of my classes. I think my favorite classes are when each group is humming along, discussing ideas, solving problems, checking each other’s answers, and helping one another increase their mathematical knowledge. It provides opportunities for students to explain ideas in a small group setting that might be easier than in front of the whole class. Once again Dr. Boaler notes in her book that the research backs the practice.

The project will give the students the opportunity to review many different ideas. I like the idea of doing review now, even though a little more than three months still remain before the AP exam. I want my students to engage with the material as many times as they can before May. I think it’s a bit silly to think that a student can really learn and understand a concept the first time they see it. The more times they try to reason through a binomial distribution problem, the more familiar they will become with the idea. I have taught random variables ten times now, and I am better this year with them than I was last year.

Finally, projects are such a refreshing change from the in-class timed tests. I like that my students get a chance to show what they know in a much different setting. They are not sitting, working alone, trying to remember when to use which formula. Rather, they are up, working with others, and they can look up information in their books, in their notes, and even on the internet. They can meet with me to talk about their project. The students can choose to spend many hours in preparation so that they can produce exactly the quality of project they want. I am going to try to see if I can test less next year and still prepare my students well for the AP exam. I believe it can be done. Do you? Anybody out there teach project-based AP Statistics course? I would love to hear about your experiences.

Halfway there... a self-evaluation

My greatest concern going into this school year was to effectively teach AP Statistics. Though I have been teaching statistics for ten years, I had never taught AP before and I was worried about pacing and the quality of the lessons and assignments. I was worried about sacrificing pedagogical beliefs for the sake of getting through the syllabus in time and preparing students for the format of the test.

The course is going better than I had hoped. I greatly value projects in lieu of tests. Whereas a test is completed in a set amount of time, contains closed questions, and is done individually, a project is done over a number of days where students can choose how much time to spend on it, is more open-ended, and is done in a group of 2-4 students. Tests have very little value in helping students improve on their knowledge and are limited in their ability how much information they provide regarding what a student knows. Projects can help a student to better understand material and are provide richer information about what a student can or cannot do. My non-AP Statistics course was always completely project-based. I wanted to carry over as much as I could from the non-AP course into my AP course, but I feared the pace would make this difficult. I was optimistic that I could incorporate two projects this year. Happily, the students were able to complete two projects in the first semester alone. I now expect them to complete two more in the second semester at least.

The pace has been fine. While I am going faster than I ever did in my non-AP course, the pace has not been so fast that students are being left behind. The faster pace requires students to be more self-motivated, but, maybe because it carries the AP designation, students have been up to the challenge. Also, I have been able to adjust the pace at times based on feedback from my students. I had concerns that there would not be enough flexibility to adjust the pace mid-semester. But there proved to be more flexibility than I had anticipated.

Back in August, I started this blog regarding my teaching of AP Statistics. I am happy with how blogging has gone. This makes post number fourteen. Though my audience is quite limited, people have been at least clicking on the blog links I share on Twitter. One Twitter user even added one of my blog posts to the Math Education Daily and that particular post had a lot more page clicks. Blogging has allowed me frequent opportunities to reflect on my teaching and that alone has helped me to design a better course. It has provided little so far in professional discourse. I hope to get back to blogging weekly and I hope that my regularity can increase the chances of future discussions about my posts. I have engaged in a couple Twitter discussions with other math teachers. I would like to do more of that going forward.

[Regarding Twitter, I very much want to participate in Twitter Stats Chat. This is definitely a goal of mine. I have yet to figure out how to do that. I know the hashtag (#statschat) and I know that it starts at 6 pm (Pacific Time) on Tuesdays. I have TweetDeck set up for #statschat. But I never see a bunch of posts starting at the specified time in my feed. Grumble.]

In looking over the various assessments I have designed for my AP Statistics students, I am very pleased with the progress they are making. The projects and tests show that they are learning the material at an acceptable rate. Predictably, the multiple choice items have been the least helpful. I do not like such test questions. I have felt compelled to include ten with each chapter test so as to better prepare the students for the AP exam which will contain forty multiple choice questions. However, I am questioning how much practice students really need with such types of questions. This re-evaluation has partly been fueled by Jo Boaler’s book, Mathematical Mindsets, which I am almost done reading. In the book, Dr. Boaler presents research that affirms my views that students do not need practice for standardized tests. Rather, students can actually perform better on standardized tests if they have learned to be confident mathematical problem solvers. For the next chapter test, I have included ten multiple choice questions. But, I have made one adjustment that was suggested by a Twitter user: students can designate a first-choice answer and a second-choice answer. A correct first-choice answer earns two points while a second-choice answer earns one point. However, I think I will include more short answer questions and fewer multiple choice questions on future tests.

The Weekly Menu

This semester, I have started serving something new in AP Statistics: the Weekly Menu. (Click here to see the Weekly Menu for this week.)

After each class meeting, the Chefs du Jour are expected to add one note taken from class. That note can be anything the student thinks is useful or important to remember. Other students in the class can see the notes posted by their classmates and add to them or even edit them. The Topics du Jour and the SMART Board notes for the day are also posted.

One goal of the Weekly Menu is to get students more invested and active in their learning. I am currently reading Jo Boaler’s book, Mathematical Mindsets, and it inspired me to be more intentional in trying to develop student self-awareness and responsibility. Dr. Boaler outlines Assessment for Learning (page 149 of this book) which “teaches students responsibility for their own learning.” I hope that by assigning some responsibility to students to fill in the document, they will take greater ownership of the course. There is also a level of peer accountability since all students will see what the Chefs have or have not added to the document.

Another goal of the Weekly Menu is to provide students the opportunity to reflect more often on what has been covered in class and what they should be learning.

Additionally, I am hopeful the Weekly Menu will serve as a good review tool. They can use it to review for tests and even for the final exam and AP exam. We will also use it to review what we did the previous day and use it to transition to the next topic.

Students can also use the Weekly Menu as another way to see what is coming up that week. And, if they miss class, the Weekly Menu can get an idea of what happened in class that day.

So far, the feedback I have gotten from students has been somewhat positive. We are only on the second week, so it is still in its infancy. Colleagues of mine like the idea, but ultimately it is meant to be a tool to help students, so it is their opinion that I will value most.