Khan Academy Implementation (Week 4)

In truly efficient Khan Academy fashion: watch the video.

The majority of my students did not do their KA homework over spring break. 7 out of 64 students completed 1 hr. of KA over spring break. Assigning KA for homework has been ineffective (as I presumed in an earlier post). I removed the 1hr/week homework requirement and focused on increasing student motivation internally. 

At the start of the week, I gave students the opportunity to create KA groups to work together in learning new concepts. Epic fail. None of my students wanted to do this because they were already adding each other as coaches to keep track of their friends' progress. "Duh, Mr. Patel". I'm deciding to table this problem until I get more qualitative and quantitative information about what motivates my students to work on KA. 

More Computers!

Thanks to my director seizing opportunities to bring in more computers into my school (by seeing the pressing need to do so through my constant rave-age about KA in my class) I now have a full set of 30 netbooks to house in my class!

Thus, I moved to an entirely 50/50 classroom, 50% KA time and 50% new material time. This allows me to teach 16 students at a time and tailor instruction to their particular needs, as I have them grouped by ability. 

Students are now passing more of their goals than ever, as they have 40 min/day to work on KA in school. When they pass goals, they cross them off of the bulletin board and add new ones. Note: There is no extrinsic motivation to keep creating goals; they truly enjoy mastering math concepts on KA. 

Student Quote of the Week:

"Mr. Patel! I showed my sister [in 6th grade, not using KA] how to do an order of operations problem on her Math homework last night!"