I have been absolutely humbled by all of the positive feedback I have received from my previous post.  Thank you to infinity for taking the time to read, write, and share.  I believe that it is our common humanity that makes it possible for us to learn from one another, not necessarily our knowledge of content.  There is so much of my sobriety that goes into my teaching.  It is an incredibly freeing feeling to be able to be honest about that part of my life as I blog.

Rose Eveleth wrote a great piece about the roles that girls find themselves taking on in group work.  In short, Eveleth focuses on acknowledging that girls often self-assign the “recording” role, absolving (and downright excluding) themselves from a problem solving opportunity.  The end result, career-wise, may lead women away from high-profiled positions.   As teachers, it’s easy for us to overlook this discrepancy because girls, generally speaking, are neater and more organized, and may seem like the best fit for the job.  In a related article, Dale Baker does a great job of asking teachers to examine gender preferences that exist in our classrooms in order to help encourage all students to step into the “lime light.”

On Friday, I tried a simple version of this.  First, students were presented this scenario (taken from the Math Forum POW section):

The Student Council at Rahkenrole High School is planning a concert.  They’ve hired the Knox Mountain Boys, a popular local band, for $340.  A poll among the students has shown that if tickets cost $5, 140 people will come to the concert.  For every dollar the ticket price goes up, 10 fewer people will come, and for every dollar it goes down, 10 more people will come.  

I’ve been a huge fan of the Math Forum, long before I joined Twitter (and got to fangirl Max Ray at TMC14).  The reasons might not seem obvious from this scenario, but kids noticed right away that there was no question asked at the end.  What’s brilliant here is that there is literally an infinite number of questions that we could ask here.  Granted, some questions are more important than others, but I framed the task in a way that elicited what I needed.

I handed out a big white piece of paper to each group of 4 and had them divide the paper up into sections.  This way each person in the group was both the recorder and the problem solver.   I asked them to write down 2 questions they think that I would ask about the scenario and one question (anything) that they would ask.  They identified their group’s most important question and put it up on the whiteboards on the wall.

Low and Behold!  They READ MY MIND! They asked about maximizing profit, income, and people, and also requested modeling equations for each.  The excellence in this scenario (and the Math Forum in general) is that it can be applied to so many levels of math for so many reasons.  For example, most high school kids can make a table and figure out a reasonable answer for the maximization questions, and kids with more know-how can develop mathematical models.

Some great things happened:

1. They knew they needed ONE set of answers in the center of their paper.  This meant they had to communicate the work in their section. The traditional group roles dissipated, and they all had equal stake in solving the problem.
2. They solved the problem in so many different ways.  (Do you remember these types of questions from Algebra 1/2?  I’m sure they have a trendy textbook label that alludes me at the moment. But they are solved by making the variable “number of price increases. Interestingly, very few students solved it that way successfully.)
3. They were messy. And I loved it.  In fact, I made the second class use markers exclusively so that they could not erase.
4. They were uncomfortable leaving some of the questions unanswered.  When I didn’t label certain questions as “bonus” or “extension” they felt that all were necessary to be successful.  My goal was for them to collaborate with ownership in their individual contribution.  I may have gotten more joy out of this part than I should have 🙂

Here are some fun photos of their work: