I've gone back and forth on assigning summer work to my Pre-AP Pre-Calculus and AP Calculus students. The past few years I haven't given them anything because I haven't felt like it accomplished what I wanted it to - reviewing skills so I wouldn't have to spend time reviewing them in class. I always ended up having to review them anyway. So I think I'm going to implement some form of Sam Shah's boot camps instead.
I have decided, however, to give my students a little summer prep work that will make life easier when we come back in August and a little inspirational summer reading that they'll need to reflect on via posting to a class blog. I'm going to hand these out before we leave for summer vacation to all students who have signed up for my classes, and I'm going to post copies to the school website so that new students can access them over the summer, as well. Let me know what you think. (I'm assigning various chapters from The Joy of X by Steven Strogatz. Check it out. It's AWESOME.
Much of this was inspired by or directly ripped off from contributors to http://sbgbeginners.wikispaces.com/. Thanks to all who I blatantly stole from! I'm forever grateful for your ingenuity and willingness to share!
AP Calculus Parent/Student Information Letter and Summer Assignment
Pre-AP Pre-Calculus Parent/Student Information Letter and Summer Assignment
Fantastic! I've been thinking about summer assignments, too and if they really work. Most of the kiddos try to cram it all in the day before they come back to school if even then. SBG.... hmmmm Would like to hear more about that and how you grade that. :)
ReplyDeleteI'd LOVE to share about SBG! Start here: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=346
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