Partner Round Up: A Revisit

I will never stop obsessing over how easy it is to take a "worksheet" and turn it into an interactive partner activity that is rich in practice and mathematical discourse. Truly, the magic of what I call "Partner Round Up" just never seems to dim in its ability to impact student learning and increase engagement. 

I've posted about this activity before at the junior high level but wanted to share an update in a high school setting. I had the opportunity to try this out with a new content during a coaching cycle with one of our College Algebra teachers. She was working on transformations of parent functions and wanting students to recognize that the patterns of transformations were consistent with many different parent functions. 

We created about 20 cards (with repetition) with parent functions like this:

And then another set of 20 cards with transformations represented in a few different ways:

Students pair up so that a person with a parent function card works with a person with a transformation card. I like to color code them, so we all know what's going on.

Students had a worksheet to keep track of everything where they were asked to graph the new function and write the correction equation after the transformation. 

The real beauty is that after each partnership is done transforming their parent function, they switch cards and find a new partner. So, if a student just graphed a square root function, they would graph another square root function with new transformations and get to be the "expert" with that function. If a student just shifted a function down and applied a vertical stretch, they get to do that exact same thing with a new function. The back-to-back repetition without getting boring is... chef's kiss. Just perfection. 

There were a few partnerships that got a little wonky in the best way, especially with rational functions. Those conversations that start out with "is this one possible?" are gold and totally worth including just for the intentional cognitive struggle.

 

Our job as teachers? We facilitate. We walk around spot checking answers and answering questions. Every so often we may shout "We've got a parent function looking for a transformation partner!" to help the partnerships move along. But mostly we "ohhh" and "ahhh" and listen to students share connections with each other. We may provide a little "Oh, that's interesting! Now why is that?" and then walk along, allowing time and space for students to think and process.

It's just the best day. 

A Little Competition to Increase Participation

 There's a very blurred line between student engagement, participation, and compliance. You start down that rabbit hole and you quickly find that true student engagement is a tough thing to achieve. But somedays, and I hope I am not alone in this, you'd just be happy with whole class participation! Not every day is a student engagement masterpiece lesson, and that's okay! When I start to notice that students are a little down, a little tired, and a little too interested in their cell phones than normal, I like to throw in some fun ways to get kids motivated to participate through a little healthy competition! 

Now, before we talk about two of my favorite easy strategies, I have to first say that I am not a huge fan of games in the classroom that only reward the "smartest" kids who are the fastest at answering. Being a strong mathematician is about more than being fast, especially when content is newer. When the fastest and smartest are the only ones rewarded, I actually find that games can make more students check out then check in. Why participate if Sally is just going to win every time? We all have a Sally. We know who she is. And bless her, as teachers we do love Sally. I was Sally. 

MATHLOVE

I first saw this game at a CPM conference in San Francisco back a few years ago and was wildly confused until I finally tried it in my classroom and saw the simplistic beauty of it. Take a collection of problems you want students to practice solving. You know those days where you just need them to practice a skill and really hammer it home before you can dive into some of the deeper contextual connections that will truly promote student engagement? Yes, those days. 

Have students sit with a partner. They are going to be competing against this partner. 

Each student needs to fill out a MATHLOVE board. Here is my very not fancy version made in a table in Google Docs: 

Direct students to put four 3's, four 2's, four 1's, and four 0's anywhere on their board. When its finished it should look something like this: 

Okay now here is the fun part! Put a problem up on the board or direct students to complete a problem on a worksheet. Everyone works independently on the problem. When students have the answer they circle it on their paper. The circled answer is their final answer. Reveal the answer and have partners check each other to see if they got it correct. 

If they got it wrong, they get 0 points. If they got it correct, they have the opportunity to earn points. How many points? Here is how points are awarded after each problem. 

Create two cups and cut up the letters M-A-T-H in one cup and L-O-V-E in another cup. 

Draw a letter from each cup. Loudly, with lots of gusto and zest, announce the letters chosen. Students, once they know what's going on, will be holding their breath in anticipation. 

"M and V" you announce. The crowd explodes with noise. Chaos breaks out. I love it. Students check their board, and whatever number is at the intersection of the two letters is the number of points they earn for that problem. Students keep track of their points and the "winner" is whatever partner has the most points. 

Things to mention:

1. Some students will get the right answer and still get zero points, leveling the playing field a little for Sally who gets every single one right. Calm down, Sally. She will be very upset about this but that's the game. Her partner, on the other hand, will feel like he still has a chance.

2. Everyone is working on the same problem right now, together, and there is a time limit to get going. There is a sense of urgency to tune in, get started, and start working to get it done in time. 

3. If you throw each problem up one at a time students can't work ahead. I actually love this. Sally would do all of them in 5 minutes. This way as you go over the answer or address whole class misconceptions, everyone is hopefully more tuned in. 

4. It could not possibly be more low prep. Get some problems. Copy a very not fancy table. One you make the cups you can reuse them. It's great on days you need something but don't have time to create, laminate, cut, etc. 

5. Heads up... the first time you try this students will treat the board like a Bingo board and try to cross the numbers off. You could draw A & V multiple times over the course of a game so every single square stays in play the entire time. It's a one time issue and they figure it out pretty quick. 

NUMBER LOTTERY

Want to win the lottery?! Okay not really… And if lotteries or gambling is going to get you a parent email on this one maybe just change the name.

I 100% snagged this idea from a coworker. A win for one of us is a win for all, am I right? Students work in pairs and have a set number of problems to complete (I usually do about 10). Each right answer earns them a lottery number. You'll have to make sure you have enough lottery numbers for every group to claim however many they need. 

After they get a problem or two finished, they check their answers with me for approval and then go up and claim their lottery numbers by writing their initials on the whiteboard. I just ran around the room like a mad woman checking answers and addressing misconceptions with students. I love days where I get to connect one on one or two on one with everyone in the room.

At the end of the period I pulled up a random number generator and selected 10 numbers. Winners for each number got candy and everyone got great practice in for the day. Engagement? Debatable. Depends on the student and the content. But whole class participation and valuable practice time? You bet. 

Worksheet in Disguise: Card Sort

I love card sort days. I love days where students do math with out writing anything down, except for the things they want or need to write down. I love days when you can be wrong and there is no need to erase, grab more paper, or start over. I love days when my laziest kid ends up doing just as much work as my overachiever... and doesn't even know it! TRICKED YA!

I know I am not the only person who feels like students need practice, and lots of it, to solidify a new skill or concept. There's a whole world of research (some good, some not, some contradictory) that discusses at length how many times, and for how long, and for how frequent students need to revisit skills to really retain that information. But handing out worksheet after worksheet seems like a rather boring and socially isolating option. Here is my first way to disguise the worksheet and create an activity that is not only more engaging but also allows for more connections, more communication, and more organized chaos! 

SWBAT: Students will be able to calculate the measures of interior angles, the measures of exterior angles, or the number of sides of polygons given any one of the other pieces of information.

First I created a table and filled in all the answers. It looked like this: 

Then I took away 3 out of the 4 numbers in each row, leaving just one piece of information given. I made sure to rotate the given information so that it allowed for different starting places each time: 

Then, I copied the completed table on colored paper and the empty table on white paper. The colored table got cut up into little cards and put in envelopes, one for each pair of students in my class. Shout out to my awesome TA's who are always so willing to cut paper for me! 

Students then spent the ENTIRE fifty two minute period sorting the cards onto the table. The beautiful thing is that each blank in the table represents a question that could have easily been on a worksheet. This means that this card sort is like a 30 problem worksheet, but in this method students have a lot of flexibility for how they choose to sort the cards. They can rely on connections between the measurements they feel confident about and be pushed and pressed into developing connections they are still working on. Some of the rows were especially challenging since we have never explicitly talked about how to work "backwards" to find the side length or sum when given an interior angle. 

The best part for me is the talking. Partners are talking. A lot. They are teaching each other, challenging each other, arguing with each other, justifying their thinking to each other, and using each other as a resource for knowledge. Its beautiful. 

When kids are done they put the little cards back in the envelope and leave the empty mat on their desks. No writing required (but let's be real... there's a lot of scratch work & scribbling going on). You will also notice that students had their notebooks out with them with our notes from yesterday. I also allowed some students to fill in a blank table (with writing, not cards) if they wanted to add it to their notebooks after the activity was over, but it wasn't required. The notes looked like this (doesn't Ashley have the best note taking skills EVER!?): 

Thirty problems in fifty two minutes with no whining, complaining or groaning? I'll take it any day!