Mr. Higgins’ Blog

Honors Algebra II & Pre-Calculus

• I want to improve my delivery of material, especially using the SMART Notebook software.  Basically, all of my notes are prepared using this great piece of software.  Having three complete years of Algebra II and two complete years of Pre-Calculus under my belt, I finally have my notes semi-finalized.  Warning: Anyone that is an effective teacher has to adapt from year to year; therefore, I do realize that my lecture notes are a living document.  This is something that really gets me going; especially when a parent tells me that I do the same thing each year.
• I need to walk around the room and make better use of the Tablet PC / Wireless Projector setup in my classroom.  It seems I have a lot more fun when I can walk around the room and pick on the students.  Some of them need me as motivation!
• I noticed in my student surveys that the students felt I did not review enough.  This will not change; however, I may created review sheets that are printed out for the students to see a list of topics OR have been posted on the moodle / blog.
• I am also very eager to continue to improve and tweak our use of the classroom blog.  I feel that the students have done a great job of presenting material using the Scribe List process.  It seems there will be less time this year to develop some new types of assignments on the blog.

AP Calculus AB

• This is a new prep; however, it is the one I have been looking forward to the most.  It is going to be my biggest challenge yet.  There is a lot of pressure to teach to the test.  Having experienced the AP curriculum, I understand that effectively teaching of all of the proper topics seems to do well.  Sure, there will be review; however, I am teaching the topics I would teach without the AP exam.  We will see how this calculus gig works out in a year.
• These students are going to continue with the scribe process that some of them have been exposed to for two years already.  I am going to have to come up with more Student Focus ideas and be creative post-AP exam.
• I could not ask for a better group of students.  They have really made their parents proud.  Ironically, two years ago I started with basically all of them in a room of 34 students until the administration decided it was too large.
• I have a few chapters worth of notes completed for this up and coming school year.  I realized that after three chapters, I was getting to a point where too many assumptions were being made about how the students would attain material.  I will bite the bullet during this year.
• I look at this class in many different ways:
  • It is for the students that simply love math!
  • It is for the students that want me to save them money in college (bypassing credits)
  • It is for the students that are going into a technical majoring requiring calculus
  • It is for the students that understand my delivery and have realized that my challenging style is teaching them several life lessons AND making them mentally stronger for later in life. (Same way many readers go about teaching)
  • It is for the students that want to “complete the path” of honors math
  • No matter the reason, it is going to be challenging for both teacher and student!
• The giant elephant in the room: This is my first EVER math course that is in a 1-1 Tablet PC environment.  How groovy is that?

AP Computer Science

• Like mentioned above, I have an absolutely great group of students this year.  I feel I have finally figured out how to effectively hammer on the students for four months.
• “Hammer on them for four months”????

  My philosophy in this class is to start from day one and discuss programming code/concepts/examples from bell to bell everyday for the first four months.  I let the students make the decisions regarding programming parameters (project requirements) and this way they learn to appreciate the problem they are presented.  If the only life lesson they learn all year is to APPRECIATE THE PROBLEM SOLVING PROCESS, I have succeeded.

• My success with students of this ability level is very high thus far.  I have been able to narrow myself down to three official weeks of review for the AP exam.  I am still looking for more innovative ways to review.  Last year we used collaboration and all of the students typed their answered to multiple choice practice questions and we took a “class score” using the most frequent answer vs the actual answer.  We made sure to review those questions specifically.  It turns out to be three of the longest weeks of the year for me during the review.

Google Docs

• I am looking to develop a set of assignments which involve Google Docs on my installation of Google Apps
• So far I only have one idea that I know I am going to follow through with:
• AP Computer Science History of Computing Assignment.  Instead of using PowerPoint to create their presentations, I want to give Google Presentation a try so the students can easily embed the presentation on the web.

Moodle

• Both AP Computer Science and AP Calculus AB have moodle courses where I will expect the students to submit work on a regular basis.
• In AP Computer Science, it is great for submitting programming assignments because it is integral that I receive the actual file the student created.
• In AP Calculus AB, I have not determined if we are going to actually turn in homework through the moodle.  I know I am going to require the students to complete some work on the moodle; however, I am waiting until the idea pops into my head.