Now I begin again. I want to continue my professional development and I think blogging will be a terrific means to do that. Maybe some discussion will ensue.
Last year, I was anxious about getting through all of the material in time for the exam. To my amazement, I succeeded. Not only did my students cover every topic on the AP Statistics syllabus, but we still had two weeks to review before the exam.
However, in reflection, I do not feel my students were served best by zooming through the material. A few of them did tell me that they liked that we covered all the material (and finished the entire book). But depth of understanding was sacrificed for breadth and I hated that.
The students' results on the exam also suggested that some changes needed to be made. The students took a mock AP exam as their spring final exam two weeks before the actual AP exam. Based on their performance on that exam and based on their work all year long, I had expected them to score a bit higher. But, when I think about how hard they worked, and how some of them did not work too hard, I wasn't altogether surprised. Those who did the best had the best work ethic. Those who succumbed to senioritis largely did not pass.
This year, one change I am planning is to not worry about covering every single topic on the syllabus. I teach at an independent school (polite speak for private school) and we have only around 140 teaching days, I think, before the exam. My plan is cover 80-90% of the material, but to go into greater depth. The instructions on the AP exam itself state that they do not expect students to know everything. My class looked at scoring and were surprised to learn that you could get 50% of the multiple choice items wrong and still have a very good chance of scoring a 4 or 5.
Another change is that I am not going to give them very many multiple choice assessments. Last year, I gave the students 10 multiple choice items on every test and they had about 11 tests. And then they had 40 more multiple choice items on the mock exam. But I don't think one needs to practice multiple choice tests. Certainly not to the extent that I did last year. And I detest multiple choice items. So, I plan to give them the 40 problems on the mock exam and then maybe two other multiple choice assessments. That's it.
A third change is that I am going to incorporate more project work this year. When I have taught non-AP Statistics, I have always taught it purely project-based as I feel this is the best way to learn the material and the best way for me to evaluate their understanding. It feels more authentic and it removes test anxiety and the time constraints of tests. I will likely write an entire post on projects later.
But now, I must rest.
Thanks for reading.
Hi! Last year was my second year teaching AP Stat, so we're not far apart.
ReplyDeleteI have always "skipped" some material (chi-square homogeneity, generally, and linear equation inference) in the past, but this year I'm reversing that and making sure to touch on everything. It definitely makes for a tight year! I have around 80 classes before the exam, each one an 80-minute block. It's a squeeze, but last year I think I actually spent a little TOO much time on the reviewing.
One thing that worked well at my school (also an independent school) was my final review system, wherein I required them to do a significant number of FRAPPY-style problems and two complete multiple choice sets (from prior practice exams). http://davidgriswoldhh.mtbos.org/2016/04/28/my-ap-statistics-review-technique-this-year/ . The independent pacing meant that I also had a hard-working / not-as-hard-working divide, but those that wanted to work hard and exceed expectations had the opportunity. It was successful, for sure. I will be doing it again this year, but over a slightly shorter period of time.
I'm using a problem-based curriculum this year, which means we are spending more time exploring the breadth of things but actually gives me even less time for projects. Incorporating more projects is in my plan for next year, when I'm using this curriculum for the second time. It's a worthwhile goal.
To be fair, since this is my second year with the curriculum, I will probably have a somewhat easier time explaining the ideas to the students. For example, I feel like I explained standard deviation and z-scores much better this year and that the students have learned them much deeper. So, maybe I will find that I have more time because the course is more efficient. Did you experience that in your second year?
ReplyDeleteMy thinking is that the students will do better if they have a strong understanding of as many concepts as possible. In order to accomplish this, I think I will have to skip some ideas. I should probably run a probability-based analysis on the free response questions to determine which ideas are most likely to appear in the 2017 FRQ section. But that sounds like too much work. So I won't.
You wrote that you too much time on reviewing. How much time was that? What do you think would be a good number of review days for your students?