Sunday, November 23, 2008

A Spur of the Moment Assignment...

If you read the previous post, you know it's been a rough year at times. In times like this, I seem to lose the creative spark, so I'm always grateful when it returns!

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a lady I used to teach with. "Jane" and I taught Stat together, she had taught it the previous year, so she was my mentor. "Jane" moved at the end of that year and had not taught stat for several years at her new school, until she inherited it again last year. "Jane" asked me about the video series "Against All Odds", which is available for free on the Learner.org website. AAO has a sequel series called "Decisions Through Data" and that series comes with Video Guides, etc. "Jane" wanted to know if I had used these videos and their accompanying guides. This sparked my creativity :)

At the Uni, we are about to take a test over inference, including t-tests, proportions, and chi-square tests. I decided to make the "Against All Odds" series into an assignment. Each student was to choose one of the videos that covered the material we are about to test over and create a "study-guide" that other students could use to help them study for the upcoming test. The study guides were due this weekend and I just finished uploading them all to our class website and I must say, I'm pretty impressed with the quality of their work. I am thinking this may be a great review assignment for my AP kiddos for either their final or the AP exam.

I thought I would toss this idea out there for you guys in case any of you are needing a review idea. My students seemed to enjoy it - each video is about 30 minutes in length and while they are older, they do have some great information in them. I will probably create study guides myself for each of these videos over the summer so I will have them on those days when half my class is gone (like this week! LOL) and project the videos on the Promethean board. Could also be useful for students who are absent or for remediation after a bad test/quiz...

Have a great Thanksgiving!

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