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.