This was the best semester of teaching stats in the 20 years I've taught that class. Why? Because I feel like they truly achieved the course objectives and can now use statistical thinking in their lives. It wasn't about me and what content I "got through." It was about how much they learned.

Since I think everyone has passed the finish line (cue the song “School's Out”), I hope you have already had some time for rest and relaxation, or you, at least, have something planned. While our students are making the most out of their summer, we're wired a little bit differently. Yes, we need a break and a chance to exhale, but we also know what we should do to make our lives easier in the fall.

While you deserve this much-needed break, it’s also an excellent time to catch up on items you missed during the year-end chaos. In case you missed my May series, “Redesign Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum” (videos below), I give practical information on buy-ins, funding, and impacted areas that will help you navigate your redesign.

I know that you’re giving everything you can to your schools right now, leaving very little time to read through emails and blogs. For Almy Education’s last April blog post, I’ve recapped all of our April communications (newsletters, blogs, emails, etc.), all in one centralized location.

When students are engaged in project-based learning, the classroom becomes an active community.. Students are using mathematics practices, talking, and working together to solve problems and complete complex tasks. Students often think of PBL as fun, unaware of the intense learning that’s taking place. It’s necessary to purposely assess this learning during PBL instead of using traditional testing. By doing so, evidence can be evaluated by rubrics through PBL.

Formative assessments take many different forms: exit tickets, quizzes, rough drafts of written assignments, prototypes for projects, and more. Whenever you have evidence of students learning, it can be used as a formative assessment. Even the summative test results can be used to see areas of strengths and weaknesses to inform the teaching of future classes.

In April, more than one news outlet addressed the growing achievement gap likely to be caused the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent school closures. We will likely encounter a much larger gap in knowledge among our various students this upcoming fall than we have in past years. What can we as educators do to help bridge this increasing achievement gap being caused by the Covid-19 crisis?