“I took practice problems and broke it into three parts. The first part is where I would verbally write down what steps I would take to approach a problem so everyone could “see” what was going on in my brain. I emphasized that if the students do these exact steps for these specific problems they would never miss them. This helps grab their attention by saying “oh shoot, if I follow these steps then there’s no way I can miss this on a test”. The second step is where I would take the steps I wrote down and apply it to a specific practice problem. This helps the students see how I approach the problem and see which parts of my technique they can take and use for themselves. The third step of the main activity is when I would tell the students to work together with their neighbors on the next problem that involved similar concepts but instead of a “level 1” problem, I would make them do a “level 2″ problem. This allowed them to see that if they apply the steps given before, it doesn’t matter if they were given an easy or hard problem on an exam; giving them more confidence on the topic.”

– Andrew T. (PHYS 201)