Chapter 10 Quiz (Days 76-77)

Today is December 7th -- which happens to be my 41st birthday.

In both Calculus and general Statistics, I gave the quiz. This is the first quiz I've given since my visit to the main campus. Thus I've decided that today's the day to practice teaching lessons the way that the veteran teacher does it there. The lesson contains four parts -- giving the quiz, going over homework, teaching the material, and doing a group activity. Recall that for Calculus, I'm considering using his methods in the second semester -- and in period 5, I'm definitely using his methods as the class switches to Trig.

In Calculus, this quiz is nearly identical to the one the teacher gave at the flagship school, but my students take much longer to complete it. The quiz took about 15-20 minutes at the flagship school and about 40-45 minutes at our school -- with some still having not finished. On one hand, the flagship students are accustomed to these weekly quizzes and are thus quicker at completing them, so it's not unexpected that my students would be slower. On the other hand, the AP exam in May isn't going to slow down. My class needs to improve their speed if they expect to finish the timed AP exam.

I proceed with going over the homework. On Monday, I assigned a dozen problems, and today I go over four of them. Then I changed the due date from today to Thursday. Not only does this give me the opportunity to practice going over problems in Calculus class, but note that these questions are related to trig -- and so I also get to practice doing trig homework in preparation for the second semester Trig class.

As for the main lesson, today is the Tuesday after the first Saturday in December -- and if you recall from the old blog, that means it was Putnam Saturday. This year, I do question A2 from the 2021 Putnam exam, which is on finding limits. (I might mention this problem in more detail later this week on the blog, after I've shown a Putnam problem to all of my classes.) So today's problem is also an excuse to review limits from Chapter 2.

And as for the activity, I do attempt to show them the same group activity from the flagship school, where the students are divided into groups of two or three, and each student works on a different problem to discuss with the rest of the group. But after the lengthy quiz, I'm definitely running out of time by the time we reach this activity. I divide the class into groups by having the students guess my birthday age, and the one who is closest chooses her partner for the activity. The students try the first derivative problem, and then suddenly it's almost time for the end of class.

In Stats, I try to follow the same pattern. The quiz is tricky -- originally I was going to do it on Illuminate as usual, but then the wi-fi was moving very slowly, and so I had to give it on paper instead. I give this class Putnam problem A1 (the easiest problem and indirectly related to trig) instead of A2, and I try to give the groups the full "Who Am I?" game (described on the old blog, where "guess my age" is followed by "guess my weight," and then some questions relevant to math).

I do see two of my Calculus students during tutoring today. Neither was confident on today's quiz.

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