Mathsational

Here is yet another late #SundayFunday post.  I'm still making progress towards making a post on time though.  This post is 3 weeks :/    Here  is more info if you'd like to join in the fun. The challenge this week is to share a bit about how to successfully incorporate group work into your class.  I love group work in theory.  The possibilities of students learning from each other are worth the difficulties of implementing a group work routine.  I think the routine piece is what makes group work WORK :) One way that I try to make group work more focused and avoid the typical problem of one student doing all the work and another doing nothing is to use participation quizzes, especially during the first few group assignments.  At first, I am the one providing feedback to groups, but eventually I like students to take over monitoring their own groups. I first read about participation quizzes in Jo Boaler's Mathematical Mindsets book....

Group work, whether formal or informal are a very important part of learning.  This is the part of class where students really get to talk through their problem solving strategies.  Students explain their thinking and learn from each other.  Misconceptions become visible and can be addressed. I use informal grouping almost daily.  For informal groups, I typically use pairs only.  This might take the form of "Talk to your neighbor about ... " or a Kagan strategy.  My favorite Kagan strategy is Boss/Secretary.  The secretary does nothing but write what the boss tells them to write.  The boss tells the secretary how to write the solution to the assigned problem.  This is great for getting kids to show work, explain their reasoning, and practice vocabulary/notation. I use formal grouping during each rotation in my hybrid classroom.  This equates to every other instructional day.  For formal groups I prefer to assign groups of 3...