I guess videos are not magic bullets. The results are in from the first test in math and they are not all that surprising. The students who I expected to struggle struggled and the students who I expected to do well did well.
So what did I learn from this:
Well the videos only work if you pay attention to them and watch them closely. Some of the students were more behind than I thought at the start of the year. And I need to work on building up the students enthusiasm for the subject.
So how am I going to fix this, well I have started a three pronged approach.
First, I had a pretty frank discussion with the students about my expectations for them watching the videos. After checking the counter on YouTube I mentioned to the students that it was pretty clear some of the students were not watching. Unfortunately that sets up a problem because the students who are most invested in the class and are probably doing the best are watching the videos and already understand how to follow the procedures. So I either bore those students by going over the material again in class or have to work with 4-5 students who did not have the time to watch a 5 minute video. So I think I am going to start including a problem at the end of each lesson that the students have to complete that follows the steps outlined in the lessons. My hope is that then they will immediately get some practice and at the same time will be more invested since there is an actual grade for handing in the completed problem.
The second part of the plan is to help the students figure out what they are doing incorrectly and fix it. So five of the students who were not happy with the test scores will get a chance to re-take their test. But they first have to write out what they did that was incorrect in each problem they made a mistake on and then figure out the correct answer. Hopefully this will allow the students to think more about what they did incorrectly and then they might do better the next time around. I do not really care how long it takes them as long as they figure it out in the end.
To increase their enthusiasm in math I am going to totally ditch the regular material at least once a week and work on a problem that does not have a nice easy solution with a clear set of steps to follow. This week the students tried to figure out if they could run one lap around the athletic field at a faster pace than the marathoner who just set the record pace could run 26.2 miles. They could not but they had a pretty good time trying it out. We then had a really productive discussion on how to solve the problem.
So that is my plan moving forward in math. In history I need to get back to looking for material for the wiki to add. I could get lost with all the stuff out there but will eventually start to get the kids involved in it. At least when the kids handed their projects in to me this week I was able to take pictures so I can add them to the wiki for the class.
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