Of Group Work and Projects

Over the years I've learned not to pay too much attention to students complaining about the work they have to do when it comes to group work and projects. All I usually hear is the complaining until the end of the year when they may actually say that they really liked the group work and/or the projects. Sometimes I hear from their parents about how they came home all excited and talked about something they had done as part of a group or how proud they were of their projects. As I said, all I hear at the time is the whining and complaining because I make them continue on their merry way to an education.

The seniors returned from a week of internships on Monday -- one day of class followed by no school on Veterans Day. How to set the tone for getting back to work? I looked at my lesson plans from prior years for my functions and modeling classes and discovered that I had written 2 ways to teach an introductory lesson to power functions, i.e. functions of x^n . One way was lecture and demonstration on the overhead calculator. The other way was to have the students in groups take an exponent, create a table of values for x to the said exponent, plot the points, sketch the curve between the points, and answer some questions about what their final graph shows them. Each group would then present their graph and their findings to the class. All of this within a 47 minute class. I decided to go with the group work format because they would probably be more engaged with it than with the lecture. It was successful as far as that went, but I did spend much of each class walking among the groups to keep them on task while answering questions. The presentations were good considering the lack of planning time for the groups. Wrong answers were corrected with no embarrassment. They learned more than I could have taught them in a straight lecture even with the overhead calculator. Of course, it actually was more work for me in that classroom management is far easier with students sitting in straight rows being quiet, but I am teaching for their learning. If I wanted a quiet career just for the money, I would still be in private industry.