3 students attended. One was the student from previous weeks who has been following the material capably in advance of the teaching schedule but feels the need to have me nearby in case she has a question. She was taking the mock coursework; this week we are learning the technique applied there. Also in attendance was the student from the visa email.
Many natural processes follow an exponential form and can be reduced to more manageable linear form using logarithms, so that can apply more straightforward techniques to them. This was today's lesson. This takes the students to the point where they can now do the coursework and so it was set in this class. I had intended to withhold this until the end of the class, so they paid attention to me solving problems on the board and didn't spend their time reading the coursework questions. However my excitement to express how important today's lesson was meant that I let slip that the coursework was in my bag and they students became agitated until I showed it to them. There was no great detrimental effect and it perhaps helped to encourage enthusiasm in the material to see it so closely linked with the assessment.
I learned an interesting trick in today's class. I forgot my calculator and had to ask one of the students to make the calculations as I went through the examples on the board. This really engaged that student in the process and her confidence grew as her answers agreed with those I had scribbled in my notebook. I suppose with a larger group I could ask them to take turns making calculations.
By the end of the class, the students were solving with ease the types of questions that had scared them at the start of week 5. The one student who had been in attendance did not really seem to appreciate this and I remain unsure whether it was a good idea. It pleased me greatly as a marker of progress but then that is a selfish reason for pursuing a particular strategy.
The students left early, but by no means as early as in previous weeks. I wonder if this had something to do with the coursework being set.
