Another Review...

I'm always trying to fine-tune review activities.  I used to be really into review games.  I would spend hours creating games that we'd play the day before a test.  They're fine:  I still use several of them.  But my criteria of what constitutes a good review has really simplified to two things:

1. Students do most of the work/explaining (not the teacher)
2. Students can self-correct their errors

These two objectives led me to a very simple review for my PreCalculus classes that I thought went swimmingly.

The kids were given a study guide to review for their Quarter Exam (kind of like the Quarter Quell...just kidding...sort of...).  The next day, they were to come to class with a note card with a question like one from their study guide but with different numbers and multiple choice. I didn't tell them which problem to work; I asked them to pick one that they felt they needed more practice on.  (Because if one student needs more work on an objective, then there will be other students who need help in that area also.) Additionally, they were asked to fill out this Google Form so that I could have a key to their questions without having to work fifty problems:

I took two days to let the kids work through all the problems (the first day they worked through their class's cards and the second day they worked through the other PreCalc class's cards).  I made slips of paper with the numbers 1-49 (each kid was assigned a number) so that they could keep a record of their answers (and I could grade them easily).  I made them go back and correct the ones they missed.

This was absolutely lovely because I really didn't have to do anything these two days.  Normally I walk around and take questions, but I wanted the kids to be answering their own questions.  If someone would try to ask me a question, I would tell them to ask the person who wrote the question.

This is the rubric I used:

Q2 MC Test Question Assignment (10 points)

2 points: Create a question like one from the study guide with at least medium difficulty

4 points:  Four good multiple-choice options:  one correct answer and three good distracters

1 point: Index card formatted correctly:  assigned number on the top left, question with all four answers, name and hour on back

1 point:  Very clean handwriting

2 points:  Correct answer submitted on Google form (tinyurl.com/Q2multiplechoice) by tomorrow’s class

Things I really liked about this:

• I didn't have to write any more problems.
• Students got practice writing good multiple choice problems.
• Students were the ones doing the work; not the teacher.
• Students got lots of practice with the types of questions that they tend to struggle with.

The only thing I didn't like so much:

• Some kids didn't have a correct answer on their card...but kids usually found the mistake on their own.

I really liked how this played out.  Super easy on the teacher's part, and kids got loads of practice.