How Things Change...

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I've been working the past few days on a PD session that I am giving tomorrow to our district's new teachers on Formative Assessment and I finally have it done and handouts printed... which of course means that I will find 20 new ideas between now and midnight that I should have used instead :)

While I was working this morning, I was also involved in a Twitter discussion with @katherine_ruse about various activities for our AP Stat classes and it made me think about how things in my classroom have changed over the years.

One example that immediately came to mind is an activity I blogged about in 2014 - using Quiz Quiz Trade for Sampling Methods:

The original file was meant to be printed 2-sided and used as a flashcard style activity where students would be roaming about the classroom and "quizzing" each other.

But once I used it, I wasn't crazy about it, so Iteration #2 was a Card Sort...

The card sort used the same cards as QQT, but did not have the answers on the back.  Groups were given a mat of sampling methods and they were to read each card and sort the problem based on the method.  Overall, I liked this better and I have used this the past couple of years, but I did have two frustrations... 1) It was hard for me to gauge student understanding in the moment and 2) every student reads and processes at slightly different speeds, so some kids were zooming along and leaving others in the dust...

So this year, to try to fix the issues with the Card Sort, I'm going to try Hold Ups...
Hold Ups is an idea that I learned about from Total Participation Techniques by Himmele and Himmele.  I have used them in Geometry quite a bit, but for Iteration #3 of the Sampling Methods activity, each group will get a set of 7 cards with the 7 sampling methods listed.  As a class, I will present a problem and give think time.  Then as a group, they will discuss which method they think it is and on my cue, they will hold up the card they think it might be - AND - be prepared to defend their answer.

I'm hopeful that Iteration #3 will be *the one* but if not, that's okay, there's always more learning and growing to be done! :)