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Showing posts with the label AP

Generate Instant Pear Decks

  I’ll keep this short as the video explains most of you. Any new educational technology can be complicated to dig into from scratch as you attempt to align it to learning outcomes.  Well, a new feature that Pear Deck has introduced has taken a giant leap forward to help educators do just that.  Before we jump into the new features, if you are unfamiliar with Pear Deck and why my students and I consider it the #1 EdTech tool that helps their learning, check out the video in the previous blog post.   But if you are more concerned with why you should even dive into Pear Deck or learn about this new AI generation of Pear Deck sessions to a learning target, check out the video below. Like I said, I’m keeping it short so you have time to watch the video. If you have questions, please contact me at mohammam@elmbrookschools.org or the Pear Deck Learning team at support@deck.peardeck.com . Also, check out the amazing Stacey Roshan's video on this update. 

Navigating the AP Crush

We are a few days away from spring break.  When we come back from break, I will have 4 weeks with my AP Physics students before they take AP Exams in Physics 1 and 2.  After the exam, we will have roughly 5 weeks together before the end of the school year.  Now, I will have no problems covering the content before the AP Exam in either class.  I will definitely be able to teach them all the content.  The issue I have is that there will not be enough time for them to actively learn the content before the exam date. If all of my students were taking the AP Exam, it would be easier to focus the students on a common goal of this exam.  But, only about 50% of my students are taking the exam.  It would be my dream to be able to create multiple paths in the AP classroom, but I’m not there yet. So really the frustration is coming down to two areas.  The first is the amount of content students need to master in a short amount of time to be read...

There are No Stupid Mistakes, Just Stupid Tests.

As we at Brookfield Central finish up our 1st term final exams, I want to tell you a story that helped push me to a realization. A student came up to me the other day to talk about her test in AP Physics.  She said that she would have done so much better were it not for her stupid mistakes.  She went on to show me not how she made math errors in the free response portion of the test, but how she had the correct answer circled in the multiple choice section of the test but then second guessed herself and changed the answer. She went on to show me that all of the 5 multiple choice questions she got wrong, out of 10, were ones where she had first circled the correct answer only to switch it to a different answer. Now, it's important to point out that this student wasn't looking to get points back by showing me this. She was just looking for some sympathy.  She wanted to show me that she knew the material despite her poor grade.  It was frustrating  for me to see ...