I'm taking some time right now to think about the first 8 weeks of the semester. I'm doing this now, right before the big onslaught of graind that is to come next week. There are certainly a number of things I want to do differently next semester.
#1 - Homework: I'm going to try something new next semester. I'm going to make part of the homework for my algebra classes simply copying the examples out of the book. This is first to force them to read the examples and work through them. Secondly, I want to give them the opportunity to circle parts of the examples that doesn't make sense to them that they would like clearified. I also want to force them to compare the examples to their own work that follows. Hopefully, this will help them get into a good routine of using the book effectively instead of just a source of homework problems. Thirdly, I think giving students a full week to do homework is simply an excuse for them to put it off. Only a couple students ever start the homework ahead of time like I ask, and so I need to force the issue a little with them. Finally, I need to assign problems from previous sections with much more regularity than I have been. This will hopefully reinforce the necessity of not forgeting past concepts.
#2 - Grading: I made the mistake of making homework out of too many points. It really only needs to be worth 3 or 4 points. I had a student ask me why she lost 5 points out of 20 when I only marked one error on her homework. My response was that her error demonstrated that she didn't understand a particular concept very well. She argued that she did lots of other problems correctly, and I agreed with her that she did. However, the point is that she failed to grasp one of four or five concepts for that section (which she agreed didn't make sense), and that her grade reflected that reality. However, there's a psychological difference between 15/20 and 3/4 that she had a hard time getting over.
#3 - Quizzes: I might do the quizzes at the beginning of class and schedule class start time 10 minutes after the start of the class. It's a much more regular routine that way. I might also cut it to one quiz per week.
#4 - I want to buy "The Inner Game of Tennis" and read it so that I can potentially send some of that message to the students on the first day of class. Many of the students have already defeated themselves by coming in with an attitude of failure. I've heard this sports psychology book is very good at discussing how players lose before they even begin. I think I'll jump to Amazon right now to do that because I'm done posting.
