Final: 20%
Tests/Midterms: 20% (Tests every month)
Quizzes: 15% (One every other week)
Presentations: 15% (Each student will present every two months)
In-class: 15% (presentation exit slips and class dojo)
Homework: 15% (taking notes on video every other week and short assignment from book the other week)
Alright so my bosses trust me and my knowledge of the system to teach pre-calculus. They don't want to give pre-calculus to the new teacher coming in because they don't really know what they are getting. This would allow the other teacher time to get their footing at the beginning of the year and teach classes that have a specific outline of topics given by the collegeboard. I will take this as a sign that my bosses think I am capable and trust that I will do a good job. So this is my idea for the class right now. I will get more specific and add more resources after I go to the mathematics company department meeting on Friday.
First off let me say that there will be three sections of Pre-calc and each section will meet once a week for 90 minutes. There should be about 24 or 25 students in each section of the class.
I am thinking of flipping the classroom and putting all the learning/teaching on them. I know a colleague of mine is doing this with the pre-calculus class here in China. I want to do it too and will talk to him about how he does when I see him at the math meeting on Friday.
My idea is that each week the students watch a video over content. Then they come to class and discuss it in small groups. My hope then is to assign a problem that they should know how to do after watching the video to each small group. Then have one person in each group present the problem to the class.
My plan is that the first 35 minutes to 40 minutes of class the students will be in groups of four discussing what they learned from the video and solving an assigned problem. They will also work on preparing a presentation for the class for the next period. I think I will make each group mixed ability as much as I can. I will try to make the problems fairly challenging so that even the smarter students have to work at it a little bit. I am not sure where I will pull the questions from. I might modify free response questions from the AP site or use AMC questions or problem of the week questions. I am worried I will be searching around forever for the questions though. I will also look in the textbook to see what questions I could use, but I find that those are usually not challenging enough. I will have to decide on what content I am teaching and which videos I will be using before deciding on questions. I will talk to the other teacher who flips the classroom about the videos he uses. Also at the meeting we will be discussing and writing the syllabus for pre-calculus. So I will do a lot more planning when I get back from Nanjing on Friday.
My idea is after the students have discussed and prepared then they will present in the second period of class. So I am thinking that there will be 8 groups of 3 or 7 groups of 3 with one group of 4. I will ask one student from each group to present. I am thinking that the presentations should be at least 5 minutes long so we can get through several in a period. If they go over 5 minutes I think I will just cut them off at 7 minutes. So we will try to get through as many as possible and the ones we don't get to will present the next week. The following week the remaining students will present.
I will have students fill in an exit slip during the presentations. My principal suggested I implement something like this to help keep students engaged during presentations. This will be collected at the end of each day that there are presentations and will be included in the in-class category. It will be their responsibility to turn it in at the end of the day and if they don't they will get a zero. I will read the exit slips and then use the answers to plan review on the days where only a few students are presenting. Then after my guided review I will give the students a quiz.
So that means that every other week the students will be getting guided review and a quiz. The quiz will be multiple choice and be very short. I am thinking only 5 questions.
I hope to have longer multiple choice exams periodically through out the year. I don't know when I will have them. I hope to have them every month or every two months. Hopefully get through three rounds of presentations, which will take six weeks, before giving a big exam. So big test in mid October and then the midterm a month later in mid November. Then have a test at the end of December and the final at the end of January. That means two tests, midterm, and final. So that means I will have two tests and a midterm in that category. The midterm will be worth more points in that category, but there will be three exam scores in the category. Which will make so each exam is around 7% of their grade. If I weight the midterm it will mean the midterm is 10% of their grade while the other tests are around 5% each. That will even out nicely. However it will be hard fitting in more content in between some of those tests. I might need to put new questions over old material on the tests to make them long enough. This will help show students improvement and make sure they are not forgetting anything.
I did the math and this means students will be presenting about every six weeks. I will ask for volunteers in the beginning, but then I will choose the students who will present to ensure everyone presents once before beginning their second presentation.
I will grade the students presentations on this rubric. It is the rubric I use with my calculus class I just took out the focus on the AP test.
General Rubric
Detailed Rubric
I wanted to grade the students notebooks in this class, but I think I will be able to do that better in Calculus since I see them more often. I will teach them how to take notes using the cornell or two column note taking system that I will expect them to use next year. I will have to model how to watch a video and take notes in this format. I will have them take notes on the video and take notes during class presentations following the two column format. I could periodically check that they are taking notes and include this as a homework grade. I could assign the video and expect that they take notes on the video following that format. Then when they will turn in their notebooks. I won't grade the notes as closely as I do with my calculus students. I will just check that they toke notes and hand them back.
Then to prepare them for the quiz that is coming I will assign 10 problems from the book that will be due the following week.
That means every other week I am either checking notebooks really fast or I am grading short assignments from the book. I will try to make the book assignments easy to grade so I can get them done really fast. I want to make this not add too much to the amount of grading I have to do. I want to focus on my calculus class more because the students and company put a lot of pressure on getting good results.
I will use class dojo with this class as well. I will use it more during that period where students are discussing the video and preparing the presentation. This are the criteria I will be using:
Positive:
Different solution method
Critical thinking
Questions
Helps others
Negative:
Unprepared
Speaking in Chinese
Off task
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