Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The fifth week of classes started yesterday. Even though I only have three lecture classes for this term, I have already given out seven quizzes and exams, with eight more for Mathematical Methods 1 until the end of the term and four more each for Trigonometric Applications and mechanics.

At the start of my MM1 class yesterday I first had a little board work on the same questions as those that came up in the quiz last Friday. This gave me the opportunity to see, from those who raised their hands to answer and from those who hesitated, what estimated percentage of the class found certain questions easy or difficult.

Finding the roots of quadratic equations by factoring they had no problem with. By any method there was still some hesitance (which my word processor tells me today is an existing word that means the same thing as hesitation). Only a handful of students were confident with their answers in the word problems.

This is something I should be doing at the start of each week (or on the very next meeting after the quiz, whenever it happens to be; the weekly quiz, after all, was on Mondays last term), because it builds up on the students finding out how to correct their mistakes in the recently taken test. And for this type of subject, just like mechanics (heck, all the lecture subjects I have this term), the introductory or fundamental topics need to be mastered to get a good grasp of the succeeding concepts.

After that, I cribbed the next topic from the book, which I had right in front of me (something I prefer not to do if I have the time to prepare, as it gives some students the wrong impression tbat they can get by with a passing grade just by studying the book on the fly the same way the teacher does).

The topic was two-sided inequalities in one variable of degree one. Obviously, the succeeding topic to this had three-sided inequalities, of more than one degree, and eventually, more than one variable.

There was at least one student who brought his textbook and, after I announced the chapter and page we were on, was following the lecture and reciting (not always on the examples) based on the text, which is sometimes a good thing, but I believe in the long run is bad.

The only thing here that they realized they had to review from the previous lessons was how to determine ranges of values from the inequalities on the number line, which was one of our first lessons.

There was no Trig App class yesterday because it was the free day they earned due to their exam outside of class hours last Friday. That means that the angle of elevation and depression measurements would have to be given as an assignment on Thursday (and passed on Monday next week) so as not to be too much behind the other two classes.

I accomplished the change of schedule form for this only yesterday morning. Little did I know I would have to do the same thing again for my mechanics class in the afternoon because all the laptops and LCD projectors were already reserved for that period, just when I was going to discuss projectile motion.

But I’ll talk about that tomorrow. It’s time. Those who are finished copying may go.