#MyFavFriday - Virtual High Fives

Another week has zoomed by!

While I'm super glad that February is going much quicker than January, part of me wants to yell, "Slow Down!!"  I have so much more to teach and the days just continue to fly!  I am going to really miss this group of kids and it's hard to believe that we only have a few short months left together. 

On a different note, I am so glad I decided to start documenting these weekly moments.  It's so much fun to look back at previous weeks and really celebrate the favorite moments of the week.  Feel free to join in the fun yourself, just use the hashtag #MyFavFriday on Twitter or post your link in the comments. 

Now on to this week's favorites...


My Favorite Student Response:

Each Monday, my AP Stat kids do their Multiple Choice Monday, which consists of 5 MC questions from throughout the year.  I go through them on Monday evening, score them and write feedback.  Then, on Tuesday, the students do an analysis / reflection over the questions.  This week, one of the questions was a probability question over disjoint / independent events.  At this point, most of the questions on the MC Monday still from 1st semester concepts and the students started a new notebook this semester, so the only 1st semester reference they have is their "yellow sheet", which is the cheat sheet they created for their fall final.  This student's response just made me smile - especially the part of "this error has been fixed".  :)

My Favorite Lesson that Flopped:

In Geometry, one of my lessons this week was about similar right triangles and geometric mean.  I was so excited about this lesson because it is one that I definitely struggled with as a student.  I had this grand idea of making triangles, cutting them apart, color-coding them, then taping them together as an overlap to make a manipulative....

And we did all that and I thought it was going beautifully...

Until it wasn't.

Wow - this lesson was definitely one that worked better in my head than it did on paper.  After Tuesday's lesson, I took to the Twitters, asking the wonderful #MTBoS for advice before teaching this lesson again on Wednesday.  I received multiple responses, including an awesome idea from @DamionBeth about a table of Short Leg / Long Leg / Hypotenuse, which did help some kids, but overall, this lesson still was a beast to teach.  Definitely back to the grindstone for next year! :)

My Favorite Formative Assessment of the Week:

I hate grading.  Like, I *REALLY* hate grading.  I will procrastinate for longer than I should on grading because I'd rather devote my time to creating lessons and activities for tomorrow's lesson.  However, I have decided that it's not so much the grading I hate, it's the actual assigning of a grade that I hate.

Let me clarify... We just finished up Sampling Distributions in AP Stat and we have a cumulative test scheduled next week.  I really didn't want to give a quiz over Sampling Distributions because I didn't want the grading burden right before a big test.  However, I also didn't want the first time I had actually seen their individual work for this topic to be on the test.  We had spent time on block day doing the question stack you see above, but in that situation, they have an "answer bank" available to them and it was purely about practicing the proportions / means identification and formulas, not a complete problem.  So on my way to work on Thursday, I decided that I would give a "Quick Check" that day in class.  A "Quick Check" is like a mini-quiz, just one or two problems that allow me to give feedback without the pressure of an actual grade, which uses the strategy called "Comments Only Marking".  I love using this strategy because the kids actually focus on the comments and not on the grade.  I was able to write quality feedback on every kid's paper and return them today without stressing about grades or make-up work! :)


My Favorite Moment of Kindness this Week:
My kids know that Fridays are "High Five Fridays" and I stand at the door to greet each and every one of them with a High Five.  However, yesterday I started feeling a bit under the weather with a runny nose, so today on the Promethean, I had a "Virtual High Five" for my students because I didn't want to pass on my cold to anyone.  Apparently a virtual high five wasn't good enough for one of my Geometry classes, as two of my students decided to be my proxy and went around the room to give every student a high five since I couldn't.  I can't tell you how much this warmed my heart - those two students were determined that it just couldn't be a Friday in my class without a High Five! :) 



Until next time.... Happy Friday and Happy Weekend to you!  *High Five*