Day One in a Math Class

Here's a blog from my old Wordpress site, where I share my day one philosophy and strategies. Hope you enjoy!

On the first day of class, especially in a developmental math class, our students are full of fear and anxiety. They feel that math is their worst subject and it’s beyond their reach. They know few, if any, of their classmates. This is not the time to start lecturing. This is the time to start building a community of learners!

I do not lecture on the first day of class. (As a rule, I teach classes that meet 4 times a week for 50 minutes at a time.) I start in a pretty traditional way – I take roll, read through the syllabus, and make sure that everyone understands how the class will go. Then I give my students a survey that allows me to collect information about them. Most of the questions are designed to help the students understand their strengths and weaknesses, and alert them to future potential problems such as working full-time while taking 18 units and taking care of 3 children. (If you would like a copy of my survey, just let me know.) I also ask my students to tell me something that is special or unique about them – it’s a great way to show your students that you are truly interested in them (and their success).
Once the surveys are complete I form groups of 4, giving each group a folder. I ask each group to share their stories with each other, including their response to the special/unique prompt. I then ask them to put their names on the front of the folder and to come up with a group name. It may sound a little juvenile, but it really encourages students to talk to each other. Some groups will sit there and stare at each other, but when I let them know that I will name their group and that they will most definitely not like the name I choose they start talking.

I use these folders to take roll during the semester, and find that it really helps me to learn my students’ names quickly. I also refer to their surveys as I take roll, so I get to know them.
The goal here is to get students to be comfortable with at least 3 other students in the class. As I figure it, connection to classmates leads to connection with the class as a whole, which hopefully leads to a connection with me and the material.

What is your Day 1 like? Do you have something unique that you would like to share? I encourage you to leave a comment on this blog, or reach me through the contact page at my web site – georgewoodbury.com.
-George
I am a math instructor at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA. Each Wednesday I post an article related to teaching math on my blog. If there’s a particular topic you’d like me to address, or if you have a question or a comment, please let me know. You can reach me through the contact page on my website – http://georgewoodbury.com.

Sampling Activity (with StatCrunch)

During the first week of my Statistics course we covered sampling techniques. Some of my students were getting tied up in knots over systematic sampling, specifically applying the formula to find the ith individual to include in the sample. I created an activity that helped my students to understand that the goal is to actually come up with the sample, as well as to help them with StatCrunch.

On the first day of class I had my students fill out a survey I created in StatCrunch, and I ended up with 76 responses. (If you'd like to see the survey or the data, just let me know.) I then printed out a sheet of the numbered responses for gender and age. My students were supposed to select a systematic sample of 10 students to estimate the percentage of female students and the mean age. They computed k (76/10 rounded down to 7), selected a random number p between 1 and k, and obtained their sample by including every 7th student beginning at their value of p.

They then repeated this task using random sampling. They had StatCrunch generate 10 unique values between 1 and 76, and used these numbers to determine which individuals were to be included in the sample. They again used these results to estimate the percentage of females and the mean age.

Finally, I had them load a data set from our StatCrunch group which contained 76 responses for smoking status, iPhone ownership, and this semester's costs for books and supplies. I then gave directions for how to use StatCrunch to sample from these columns, and they selected a sample of 20 students. They used these to estimate the appropriate percentages and mean expenses.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the results. My students seemed to have a better understanding systematic sampling. They saw that working with StatCrunch was pretty easy, and I even got them to create pie charts and compute the mean.

If you'd like a copy of the activity, as well as access to the survey/data, you can reach me through the contact page on my website.

- George
Math Instructor at College of Sequoias (Visalia, CA), Pearson Author