My labor of love has finally made its first appearance over the weekend: AP Statistics Unit 1 videos for distance learning.
I wanted to make these videos not only for my own students but for my products as well, since I know how, with this school year, teachers could really use these. I now have videos of myself teaching my set of notes included in all my products with my guided note sets.
I will be making videos for all my units and will be updating the products accordingly. Check out my TPT store for updates!
Now let’s get into Unit 1. I always have big plans for getting through Unit 1 in a timely manner, but I always manage to fall short. Here is a visual of how quickly I expected to go through Unit 1 and how I actually went through Unit 1:
My Schedule
First, why does my “actual” plan not have Tuesdays? Well, starting this school year, we moved to a “Flex Mod” schedule, so I only meet with my AP Statistics students for 4 days a week and those meeting times vary! I will do a whole blog post on the Flex Mod schedule soon, but here are my class periods now:
- Monday: 60 minutes
- Tuesdays: No Class
- Wednesday: 40 minutes
- Thursday: 80 minutes
- Friday: 60 minutes
Planned vs Actual
My “planned” agenda had 5 days a week, meeting for 50 minutes each day. This was a pretty big change, and my whole yearly schedule will be thrown off now, but I think I did okay considering! I’m a week behind what I originally planned, but you could look at that as taking out the 4 Tuesdays I thought I would have. There were also a few things I had to take out from my original plan and some things I added in. Here is a summary of my differences:
1. The second day of school, instead of doing the Parkinson’s smelling activity, I did a speed dating activity where the students got to go on “dates” with each other for 2 minutes and learn as much as possible about their partner. I liked doing this because it was a great way to build classroom community.
2. Notes 2 took two days to go over, as I thought, but Notes 3 took three days! This, in addition to my lost Tuesdays, had me changing my plans and doing Game of Greed, but giving the Unit 1 quiz as a take-home quiz.
3. I then had to scrap my “What is Normal” activity, and jump right into Notes 5, since I figured that would probably take me longer as well. Turns out I was right; it took me three days!
4. I was still able to have two review days before the Unit 1 test, but instead of doing a class review day and then a day for a new topic (misleading graphs, leading into the Unit 1 project), I decided to use a circuit to review the Normal Distribution and then use the other day as a class review day. I will still give the Unit 1 Project, but it will be a little more individually driven than I had originally planned.
5. The Normal Distribution circuit (and Unit 1 Review circuit that I ended up giving as practice but not assigning) are two new activities I made this year. They are now included in the Unit 1 Unit Plans, the Full Curriculum, as well as Unit 1 Projects and Activities.
The Unit 1 Test
The Unit 1 Test is happening in my 80 minute time block, so they should have plenty of time to finish. I will say, that during my 50 minute class, finishing the Unit 1 test was a stretch. If you have a 50 minute class period, here are some suggestions for the Unit 1 Test length:
✔ Train your students; when they come in on test day, as soon as the bell rings, you are handing out the test so they have the full time to take it. No questions or homework problems when the period starts.
✔ If they don’t finish in the time allowed, and you think that they did run out of time (as opposed to not finishing because they were staring off into space) then consider having them come after school ON THAT DAY to finish.
✔ You can also consider giving the 20 multiple choice questions one day and the free response questions on the next day. This breaks up the test over two days but allows time for questions at the beginning of each class and plenty of time for students to finish.
✔ Really crunched for time? Give the multiple choice questions in class and have the FRQ as take-home problems. You can’t always guarantee they won’t seek outside help but this early in the year, I don’t stress so much about being 100% AP ready just yet.
Don’t Stress!
Overall, I hope me showing you this relieves your stress. AP teachers are always so stressed over “getting it all in” and when you are already a week behind what you thought in Unit 1, the stress can hover over you like a giant cloud the rest of the year. DON’T LET IT!! This is my 9th year teaching and you can see I was already a week over 🤣 it is okay and expected.
My end goal is always to try and make it through Random Variables (Unit 4) by the end of the year. I like to try and plan to get through Sampling Distributions (Unit 5), but I have only succeeded at that one year. It is okay; give yourself some grace and don’t stress yourself out. I’m sure that is easier said than done, but work on it all the same!! How did your Unit 1 go in AP Statistics? Leave a comment below! 👇
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