I'm not lost...
... but I'll soon be covered in papers! This past week the math department had a meeting. During this meeting we were given a new plan for how to do our classes. Our student's math scores are not up to par, so we're "trying something new." Now we must grade every problem we assign for homework for accuracy and give "more feedback" to our students. In addition, we need to have an "exit slip" in which the students have to answer a problem or two to test and see if they understood the day's lesson. Now, I must say that while I can see the benefit in some of my classes of collecting homework and grading it (I think I have 2 or 3 classes where the students may not feel comfortable asking a question b/c of the behavior of their peers). But I feel like with math, they need more practice than I can grade! One of the other teachers asked about assigning 20 problems and grading 5 of them and we were told, "If the student understands how to do 3 of them, why should they do 20?"
So, I want to take a poll. I know many of my readers may be "math minded" and if you leave a comment and vote, let me know if you consider yourself a math person or not. Do you think students need to do more problems than a teacher can grade or do you think limiting the homework to an amount that I am capable of grading is a better option? Or do you have other suggestions. Again, let me know if you like math or not. And if you do, do you want a job grading papers?!?
posted by Ashlee @ 12:50 PM
2 Comments:
I would imagine that more problems is a better plan fo rteaching math but not necessarily, grading all of them. That's just me, though. I never took Calculus but I do have a background in analytic philosophy which is heavily math-y.
I think the more practice that students can get, the better. I agree with the your fellow teacher's opinion of assigning x number and grading y of them. At the same time, you don't want to overwhelm the student. We all remember what it was like when we had tons of homework. You've got to find that balance between enough to give the students plenty of practice and experience while not giving them so much that it overwhelms them and hurts their other classes, their social life and family time.
Personally, I liked math. I enjoyed it when I could fly through the problems, each one increasingly difficult but not so much so that I was pulling my hair out. That's why I didn't like Dr. Harris' math classes at G-town. He would assign us 5 problems for homework, but they would each take forever to do. My learning style was one of repetition, do more of the easy problems and less of the harder ones. Of course, each student learns differently...
Well, those are my thoughts. Good luck!
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