PRECALC HONORS

This course contains my favorite content out of all the high school courses and that is because in order to succeed in learning the topics, one must take a conceptual approach exploring the material.  The procedures for solving are just too varied, complex, and frankly weird to memorize them like a cook book recipe.  As a class, we have to understand why the procedures operate as they do and to have a deeper sense of how the procedures were derived.

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The challenge with this course is convincing the students that developing these aspects of their mathematical maturity is ultimately vital to their continued success in mathematics.  At the beginning of the class, the vast majority of the students' demonstrated quick computational skills when presented with tasks in which both the nature of the exercise was clear and the process for solving was familiar.  I wanted to push them to feel successful problem solving more independently on unfamiliar, complex and potentially open-ended tasks.  Initially, a number of the students pushed back because, I believe, the stakes of grading, being "right", and their reputation of being "smart" were too high for them to take risks by making mistakes, to collaborate and to work through the big ideas rather than just find the answer.

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As a class we found some success in developing these learning traits as the year went on, but I have several strategies for the course that I believe will support us as a class for achieving these ends.

First, I want to use Microsoft OneNote to share with the students daily problem sets in which the exercises will progress from largely familiar and skills based to increasingly complex and abstract.  I intend to offer the problem sets up front with minimal explanation and then serve as a guide or facilitator for the students' learning.  I would take time at the end of class to offer brief explanatory lectures to synthesize the ideas derived from the students' initial exploration of the content.  In using OneNote, the idea is that students can collaborate and share information across the groups on that platform so that there were be levels of collaboration both within each group and across groups.

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Second, I want to use a criterion based system for grading that would employ rubrics to give students specific feedback on the learning skills they are demonstrating and to highlight areas for improvement.  Of course content knowledge would certainly be a component, but additionally, I would like to offer students feedback on Investigation and Inquiry, Communication, and Learner Skills.  I would explore tasking students with establishing the weights for each of these grading categories as well as include the students' perspectives in crafting the rubrics.  If you would like more information about my motivations for employing Criterion-Based grading, please read my essay reflection on it here

or you can view my presentation on Criterion-Based Assessment at the San Francisco State University STEM Symposium.

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Finally, I am going to really push the boundaries of the assessment tools I use including various mediums of projects and presentations such as building websites, interview format quizzes and team review tests.  I believe the criterion based rubrics will be instrumental in providing the students with accurate and informative feedback on these varied assessment tools.

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I am very excited to observe how these changes to the course format play out!

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In the meantime please check out our PreCalc* website to view student learning in action, as well as my PreCalc* Youtube Channel to see the kinds of problems we are engaging in the course.