Christmas tree evaluation!

The shopping malls are gearing up for Christmas with decorations everywhere and many families will be putting up their Christmas trees very soon, if not already. So why not take the time to discuss with your students what is actually the most important thing to remember at this time of year - evaluation!

Earlier this year I was pondering different ways of getting students to think about ranking different factors and making a judgment on their relative significance. Perhaps I was also pondering what I might get for Christmas because it struck me that the shape of the Christmas tree is a great model to achieve this, right down to the star on the top.

I thought that seven factors would make the perfect Christmas tree shape and once these have been arrived at then they can get busy deciding which factor is least important up to which is most important. The basic outline is shown below.

They can use mini-whiteboards to build the Christmas tree shape or alternatively you can hand the seven factors out and they can arrange them on their desks. The key thing then is to discuss as a class who put what where and try and get across that there is not necessarily a correct answer, but a justification is needed for whatever they choose.

The first time I did this I gave them the seven factors and a copy of the handout is included below. It is based on the external economic factors that would affect "SunPower", a business that makes solar panels.

Once they had got used to it, I was able to use for it any topic and usually we would come up with seven factors as a class and then use mini-whiteboards to build the shape. It worked really well and even the weaker students in the class were able to appreciate what it meant to rank different factors.

sunpower_factors.docx

If you want you could carry the Christmas theme on a bit and say wise men will follow the star and seek the most important factor as well as bringing gifts for their teacher!