This semester I am very fortunate to be working with a fantastic Student Teacher. He, also, is with MfA, and he had a full semester with another Cooperating Teacher at different school. He came to me already well at ease in the classroom, with good management skills.
As an MfA member, he goes to workshops periodically, and last week attended one on group work. He asked if he could try some of the techniques in our class. I said sure. Today was the trial.
Before students arrived, desks were arranged in groupings of four, with a group number posted on one of each grouping of desks. Five rules were written on the board.
1) You must make sure each member of your group understands the instructions.
2) Each group member is responsible for answering all questions fully
3) If members of the group disagree on an answer, they must discuss until they come up with a single answer for the group. All group members must be able to explain the group answer.
4) Before you may ask a teacher a question you must ask each of the members of your group to answer the question.
5) You may not talk to members of any other group.
We had a worksheet with a few questions comparing volume and price of donuts versus donut holes, and asked for surface area of a cake with the same volume as a dozen donuts.
I have never seen my students so engaged. All three geometry classes had better than 95% of students actively involved in discussion, sense-making, hypothesis testing, and doing mathematics.
The person who led the workshop apparently says he exclusively does group work. I'm not sure how that works out, as I think there's some material that requires at least a bit of teacher presentation. But I certainly see how this technique could be very effective in my classroom on a frequent basis. I look forward to exploring more with it. The difficulty seems to be in coming up with group projects day after day.
Today was a positive.
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