NMHS Week 4: Maths

I liked the format of my week 3 reflections, so I though I would keep it for my week 4 reflections, it allowed for good discussion flow as it focused on subject areas separately across the week.

This week we started on probability. In the very first lesson of the new probability topic on Monday I started by giving the students a pre-test I compiled, which I was expecting to take them 20min, but only took them 10-15min until the whole class was done, at which point I gave them the solutions and asked them to identify any concepts they had struggled with so I could go through them on the board.

In Monday’s lesson, I had planned on going through additional material covering the rest of probability, but I was not expecting the students to get through the material so fast, with so few difficulties, and to be so well-behaved and attentive. This resulted in me running out of material to go through, having covered all the important topics in probability, with 5-10min of the lesson left to go. With the semester change-over, some students had left the class and some new students had joined it and that had made a huge difference. So I ended the lesson with a summary of the different key points we had covered, and told them that for the remainder of the time between then and the test, we would just be doing practice questions and that I would go over each concept again in more detail for those who were still struggling or missed it the first time.

When I planned Wednesdays lesson, I only planned 10min for the pre-test, and compiled a worksheet of many practice questions for them to go through. I also compiled solutions to the worksheets, and uploaded these to Daymap. I also prepared an extension problem for any students who got all the way through all the practice worksheet questions. I got the extension question from nrich.maths.org, and prepared some example solutions with some additional questions,

as well as a more comprehensive solution

For the remainder of the week, I had both classes working through practice questions, and went through numerous examples on the board. The dynamic in the class had completly changed since semester change-over. One class now had nine international students whose maths was all very good, but occasionally struggled with understanding the english in questions to correctly identify what the question was asking them to do. For that class, I focused on key terms that could help identify the type of question, and the response the question was looking for. The other class were so hungry for more material I didn’t need to prepare at all, they would simply ask me questions about the material and I would go through examples and explanations on the board for entire lessons at a time. It was amazing.

The examples got better the more practice I had at going through them, especially as the two classes asked similar questions and had similar misconceptions, so I managed to improve on how I addressed them with multiple attempts. This example with colour was particularly successful in addressing the problematic topic of tree diagrams and conditional probabilities:

Ultimately, I provided both classes with a more comprehensive summary of all the key points they needed to know about from the probability topic for their test next week, which I had also developed with the international students in mind, highlighting key terms and phrases that could be used to identify what questions might be asking them for. I also planned Fridays doubles with this in mind, and with some differentiation between the two classes in terms of focus.