Chapter 6: What's Normal? Continued (Days 43-44)

Today in Stats, we cover the next six pages in Chapter 6, on Normal distributions. These pages take us into the review for the upcoming Chapter 6 Quiz on Thursday.

I'm wondering how prepared my students will be for this quiz. As usual, of the four students in my fifth period class, two of them are definitely stronger than the other pair. One of the students I'm concerned with is, of course, the special ed guy. His one-on-one has pointed out that at least he appears to understand this chapter better than Chapter 5. Then again, Chapter 5 was heavy on lots of vocabulary terms that he had trouble with. Chapter 6, on the other hand, is more about pressing the right calculator buttons -- knowing when to use normalcdf, invNorm, or just the z-score formula without anything else. Sometimes I have to prompt him too much on using the correct function -- and this will be a liability on quiz day.

And the lone girl in the class also struggles with knowing the right formula to use without prompting. A huge part of Stats is using the correct tool at the proper time. I hope she figures it all out in time to do well on the quiz.

As for the lesson itself, I give only a few notes today, mainly on when a Normal model is appropriate or inappropriate to use. Then I go over last night's homework, which involves sketching several bell curves and shading in certain regions. Of course, I assign the even-numbered questions in the review today -- and then I give them time to work of these problems together. Even though we discuss the questions aloud, I have them do this on paper, since they'll have to submit these questions anyway.

Meanwhile, in Calculus, we move on to Section 3.3, on the derivatives of trig functions. As I wrote earlier, this is the last section before their own DeltaMath quiz on Thursday. But so many of the DeltaMath questions on trig also invoke the Chain Rule, which the students don't learn until Section 3.4.

Well, today I find where the non-Chain trig questions are -- under "Product Rule (Type 2)." On DeltaMath, there are plenty of "Type 1" and "Type 2" questions (even in the sections on limits), but it's mysterious what these "types" are unless I click on them. Apparently, Type 1 questions are most polynomials (and hence can be taught after Section 3.2), while Type 2 contains trig functions -- and no Chain Rule. And so I include these on the DeltaMath homework for tonight, and they'll appear on Thursday's quiz.

On the other hand, I haven't fully implemented AP Classroom yet. The students are able to use the access code to reach AP Classroom, but that code is for students, not the teacher. I notice that there's still a part of the auditing process required -- posting a syllabus. So I might have to do that first before I can see my class on AP Classroom.

The three absent students from yesterday all return to class today. Since Section 3.3 is relatively short, there's now time to go over more Product and Quotient Rule questions, just as I did with the three present students yesterday. But yesterday's trio consisted of the stronger students -- today's kids don't sound as confident that they understand Product and Quotient. Again, I hope they figure it out in time for the quiz.

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