top of page

Quiz: Lesson 1.1 to 1.5

Chapter 1 - Day 8

Handing in Homework

Students handed in the 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 homework today.  We are going to try to make it a routine that homework is due on quiz day.  Of course we would like them caught up on homework by the time of the quiz so that they can do well.  It will be student’s responsibility to manage this.  If they have a soccer game one night and don’t have time for homework, they might have to do two assignments the next night.  Remember that we carefully choose 5 problems for homework each night.  No busywork.
 

Upon reflection, we wished we had done some homework checks earlier to provide students with feedback about the expectations on homework.  This would also serve as a formative assessment, so that we better understood the ability and motivation levels of each of our students.  Mental note for next year.  Next year we might have students hand in each assignment just for Chapter 1 to establish expectations and routines.

The Quiz

We wanted our quizzes to model what students will be seeing on the tests, so we wrote a quiz that included some multiple choice and some free response.  Students finished the quiz in 35-55 minutes (there was quite a lot of variability in the amount of time to finish).  Upon grading the quizzes, we recognized that there is an extreme amount of reading and writing that is expected of students in this class (and very little math).  Students will need a lot of practice to improve their reading and writing of statistics.

Grading Assessments

There are two important ideas related to assessment that can really improve student learning.  (1) Promptness and (2) Feedback.  For promptness, graded assessments should be returned to students on the day after they are taken.  On the day after, the questions are still fresh for students and they still care to figure them out (learn from mistakes!).  A week later, you will get much less traction.  For feedback, this is not simply marking questions wrong or taking off points or writing “Good Job”.  It is underlining missed ideas, asking questions, circling the misunderstanding, or underlining good ideas.  Students should be learning from their assessments.  Promptness and Feedback are critical for these formative assessments to be effecting.

bottom of page