Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Practice Structures: Question Stacks

Well, it's been quite a while, 918 days to be exact. I'm hoping to make time for blogging and sharing materials again.  In the last two and a half years, I’ve started a new job, taught brand new courses with unfamiliar content, lived through a few personal life events, and am currently surviving a pandemic.  


I feel supported at my new school.  I left my old one because I could no longer grow professionally.  It was a very traditional school where teaching math was only acceptable in the “I do, we do, you do" format.  At my new school, I’ve been supported in my wishes to focus on self-paced instruction, flexible grouping, and competency-based learning.  These are all things I’ve been dabbling in and hope to continue to grow in these areas.


I’ve started teaching statistics (both AP and on-level) and really love the course.  It was a very steep learning curve and I still have a long way to go.  Luckily, I’ve got the support of the #MTBoS community.  So many folks are willing to share hands-on activities and to answer questions about content (even if I do keep asking about the 10% condition every few months).  I like statistics because the content is so applicable and important.  Our citizens would certainly benefit from being more literate in the area of interpreting data.  My on-level course mainly focuses on descriptive statistics and just touches on inference while the AP course obviously focuses heavily on inference.


The other class that is new for me is consumer math.  This course is currently being marketed to math students who might not be successful in pre-calc and above, but I’m trying to change that. It’s a really great course for everyone.  I personally learned a ton about my own retirement funds and my insurance policies.  We also study job-seeking skills, banking, and credit/loans.


My goal for the next few posts is to share a few more practice structures along with editable examples.  Today, I’m starting with question stacks.



I’m not sure who invented this practice structure. Maybe @mathequalslove.  Question stacks are great because they are self-checking. They are also relatively easy to create if you already have a bank of questions to pull from.  I often take worksheets and turn them into question stacks.  You can focus on one topic or several in a review type situation.  The idea is very similar to chain problems or scavenger hunts. The only real difference is that in a question stack, the answers are on one side of the cards and the questions are on the other, so there is a bit of thought that needs to go into making sure they are printed correctly. The main idea is that students start with any card and solve the problem.  Then they look for their solution on the backs of all the other cards.  When they find the matching answer, they solve the problem on the front of the new card and continue until they find that the solution to the last question is on the back of the first card.


To help you create your own, start with Sarah’s post about clear directions, including a printable for learners and several examples. Next, follow up with Audrey’s post that includes a template and directions for creating your own.


Here are a few of mine that you are welcome to use.  If you have questions, comments, or compliments about these, I’d love to hear from you. I'd also love to add to my collection if you are willing to share :)


Consumer math question stacks

Car Purchases and Leases

Promissory Notes

Annuities

Salary 

Cash Advances

Renting or Owning a Home


Statistics question stacks

Evaluate re-expressed functions

Z-scores

Combining Random Variables


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