It's the middle of July, which means I'm halfway through teaching Upward Bound with WVU. If you don't know what Upward Bound is, it is a program for first generation college students. They do different things throughout the school year, but in the summer, they have the opportunity to come to campus for 3 or 6 weeks and take different classes (some for college credit). The first three weeks I had 18 students (which actually dwindled to 15), and today I started the second three weeks with 7 students (four of which I had the last time).
For the first unit, we learned about correlation - everything from basic correlations to nonlinear regression, and everything in between (correlation coefficient, line of best fit, residuals, etc). This unit involved a lot of discovery learning on the computers and very little lecture, which the kids did good with once they got the hang of the process. At the beginning of the unit, they didn't really know how to progress through the discovery activities on their own (or with a partner) - they would wait for me to prod them along. By the time we finished all of the activities, though, most of the students would move through their packet and discover all of the concepts for themselves.
At the end of the unit, the students worked with a partner to discover the correlation evident in different Olympic-related topics, such as times for different events, ages or weights of athletes, medal counts, etc. For most students, this was their favorite part of the unit. They were able to apply everything they had learned during the previous two weeks to something real-life, and I was super proud of the work they did.
The main issue we had with this unit was a lack of time! Usually I would have had them for 12 class sessions, but due to holidays and such, they were only in math class 10 days, two of which were spent partially on the pre-test and post-test. This meant that we didn't get quite as much time to focus on the more advanced topics of residuals and regression as I would have liked, and the lack of time is evident in their test scores on those portions of the post-test.
The hardest part of teaching Upward Bound is engaging students from the 9th to the 12th grade. There's a broad range of skills and already-learned concepts there, but I think this correlation unit worked out great because statistics is something that many students don't get exposed to in high school. Overall, the students mastered a majority of the skills and had fun at the same time!
For the first unit, we learned about correlation - everything from basic correlations to nonlinear regression, and everything in between (correlation coefficient, line of best fit, residuals, etc). This unit involved a lot of discovery learning on the computers and very little lecture, which the kids did good with once they got the hang of the process. At the beginning of the unit, they didn't really know how to progress through the discovery activities on their own (or with a partner) - they would wait for me to prod them along. By the time we finished all of the activities, though, most of the students would move through their packet and discover all of the concepts for themselves.
At the end of the unit, the students worked with a partner to discover the correlation evident in different Olympic-related topics, such as times for different events, ages or weights of athletes, medal counts, etc. For most students, this was their favorite part of the unit. They were able to apply everything they had learned during the previous two weeks to something real-life, and I was super proud of the work they did.
The main issue we had with this unit was a lack of time! Usually I would have had them for 12 class sessions, but due to holidays and such, they were only in math class 10 days, two of which were spent partially on the pre-test and post-test. This meant that we didn't get quite as much time to focus on the more advanced topics of residuals and regression as I would have liked, and the lack of time is evident in their test scores on those portions of the post-test.
The hardest part of teaching Upward Bound is engaging students from the 9th to the 12th grade. There's a broad range of skills and already-learned concepts there, but I think this correlation unit worked out great because statistics is something that many students don't get exposed to in high school. Overall, the students mastered a majority of the skills and had fun at the same time!