This week, the Calculus students were working on multiple choice questions, so most of their work involved some sort of special shortcut, as they won't get nearly as much time per question on the MC section of the AP Test. If there wasn't a good shortcut, I would work through deciding how to attack a question and figuring out what strategy is best for each situation. On Thursday, Mr. Gmerek simply went over the toughest questions in front of the class, so I spent the second period in Mrs. Horne's room. The Algebra II students are working on memorizing the Unit Circle, which is of course a very important part of higher-level math. Unit Circle measures are like the times-tables of high school/college mathematics. For the most part, I was verifying correct answers with students and (if they struggled) going over the process of measuring the distances with trigonometry. There was a lot of talk of the different mnemonics that the students use, which was interesting. What I love about Mrs. Horne's method of introduction to Unit Circle is that she doesn't just introduce radians as a unit for rotation; she actually explains where "radian" comes from visually with picpecleaners around a circle. Each pipecleaner is the length of the radius, and just over 6 and a quarter of them make it around the circle. There are 6.28 radians in a full circles, so this really helps demonstrate the complex concept to students in a very simple way. The poster is a permanent fixture in the front of her classroom.
It was great to be back in the classroom again after so much time away! The Calculus students are reviewing for their AP test in May, so I was just jumping around the room, working with them on recent and old topics to help them remember what they'd forgotten. A big part of this process is teaching them how the AP test is set up, so I also gave a lot of advice for how to approach problems when they truly don't understand what it's actually asking or they only know how to do part of a Free Response. I can see the content coming back to the students, and I hope to see some slow and steady process over the next few weeks!
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