Having made the decisions about how the groups would operate, it was time to write the discussion questions. Much as I really like the discussion questions we have for running the classroom in a more authentic Harkness format, I knew from the previous spring that remote learning wasn't really conducive to it.
So instead, I condensed the questions we had from 48 down to 16 questions per unit, rewrote them as needed make them flow more smoothly, and then broke them up into sets of four so that the "information delivery" portion of the class - which was really more discovery-based - would be completed in four regular-length class days during the first week of each unit. These sets of questions were then placed on Google Slides, and the students needed to take pictures of their hand-written work, place the work on the corresponding slide, and turn in the slide for feedback. If we ended up being at school, the slides would be a good way to organize their work. If we ended up working remotely, the slides would be a convenient way to see how the groups were handling the material. Win-win.
The second week of each unit was used for two purposes:
(1) Practice the skills covered in the slides. This was done using MyMathLab, a Pearson product we use in our upper-level classes.
(2) Create exercises that demonstrate a solid understanding of the material. I gave the students some requirements, and their task was to create as few exercises as possible that met them.
The third week of each unit was used to allow each group to provide written solutions to the exercises they created, and then explain their reasoning by making a video for each exercise.
Notably missing were tests. Honestly, the exercises they created, answered, and explained were more difficult than anything I would normally put on a test, and I got more information from the written solutions and videos than I would have with a multiple-choice or short-answer test. Plus, with these "mini projects", there was no make-up test to worry about.
We ended up being in-person for the entire year, but even the kids who were out for a few days due to illness or quarantine found the format easy to work with, and no one fell behind because they had missed school. In fact, I ended up having a better feel for how well each student was doing day-by-day - so much so, that I'm planning to use the slides again this year, and have already created a set of slides for honors geometry, which as I've mentioned will be a new prep for me.
Next up: Getting the kids acclimated.
