With the implementation of AB705 coming in Fall 2019, I am currently teaching elementary algebra for the last time. I am using a flipped classroom approach, and I am really proud of how hard my students are working. (I’ll blog more about that in the near future.)

This is a short-term class, and the plan was to teach new material for three weeks, then devote the fourth week to the midterm exam. I was going to review on Tuesday and Wednesday before giving the exam on Thursday. I am always looking for ways to make the review sessions more meaningful and impactful, so I decided to stray from my original plan.

On Tuesday I devoted the first hour to having the students take an exam on topics from the first two chapters. For any problem they got correct, they get credit for that objective on Thursday’s exam. For any problem they missed they will get a second chance with that objective on Thursday. We spent the second hour going over those problems so students would know which problems they missed as well as what went wrong. I posted the results in a Google Sheet, giving each student a code name.

On Wednesday we will repeat the same process for problems from Chapters 3 & 4.

After we went over the solutions and any questions, I took the time to explain the concept of retrieval practice and how today’s work is an example of that strategy. Students worked on problems without any resources, and they were able to determine which topics will require further study. It is better that they struggled today while the consequences were low. We also talked about how these mistakes can lead to better understanding.

Overall, a pretty good day. The results were strong, and I think the students got a lot out of this process. I’ll let you know how the next two days go.