Beginning this school year, the Honors Precalculus curriculum at Lexington High School will welcome the return of the midterm exam. The midterm will function as a cumulative assessment of all the units covered in the first half of the year.
Prior to school closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, LHS’s Honors Precalculus course had a similar midterm exam. However, during the pandemic, this exam was removed.
“We figured it had been enough years [and] that it was time to bring this practice back. We felt like it was a valuable learning experience for students, especially students who report final exams in math being challenging,” Michaela Tracy, an Honors Precalculus teacher at LHS, said.
This change aligns the LHS Honors Precalculus curriculum with that of nearby schools, such as Brookline and Lincoln Sudbury. It also prepares students for assessment structures commonly used in college courses.
“[The midterm] prepares you for college, because college has very few assessments and their midterms are always weighted very heavily,” Kimberly Scheltz, an Honors Precalculus teacher at LHS, said.
Unlike the disproportionately large impact that university midterms typically have on grades, the Honors Precalculus midterm will be weighted the same as a normal exam. In addition, it will be allotted as a grade in quarter three.
These measures were designed to counteract the stress of students in the midst of numerous other end-of-quarter tests. However, Honors Precalculus students seem to harbor conflicting opinions about the change.
“[Unit one content] is fresher in my brain than [it] would be at the end of the year in June, which I guess is a potential benefit, but my workload will be larger, and I have to balance it with my other classes,” Sireeta Banerjee, a junior at LHS, said.
To address concerns about the added workload of reviewing content, the Honors Precalculus teachers have provided their students with various study materials.
“We gave a list of all the topics, and a list of study strategies and practice problems, and we have two days in class to review for [the midterm],” Scheltz said.
These review materials work hand-in-hand with different study strategies that students have adopted.
“My study strategy is pretty time-consuming, but I feel like it works for me as a person who needs to understand the full story […] rather than just memorizing, because memorizing is a lot harder when I don’t have that story,” Banerjee said.
Tracy shared a sentiment that echoed Banerjee’s idea.
“I think the goal of math in general is to not just see units as disjointed. Math is all about making connections, and a cumulative like a midterm or a final, are opportunities for students to bring those things together in a way you can’t necessarily do in a unit test,” Tracy said.
