Pop Quiz

What do you do when your best students are having a difficult time with a simple topic? What if you only have three more days to cover material (and three days worth of material to cover) in your class before you need to begin review for the final exam?

I've been teaching area and perimeter in my honors geometry class. This is not a difficult topic, in my opinion. So when I gave my students a pop-quiz on the subject, I was surprised to see how many of them believed the problems were tough. At the end of my quizzes, I like to ask questions about how students felt they performed on the quiz, or how difficult they thought the problems were. I haven't done this very much lately. I should be doing it more because it gives me so much information about how to pace my class.

The students, in general, did very well. But I expected them to do better, since I allowed them to use their notes. But the most surprising part was when students couldn't answer questions even with their notes. This confused me a great deal. These students had the formulas. They had example problems. And the problems I gave were not particularly challenging. Furthermore, this is not a class that needs a lot of hand-holding. Yet, several students weren't able to answer the questions.

I wonder what they'll say when I pass back the quizzes tomorrow.