As the year comes to a close, there is no better way to see if students have mastered the understanding of a concept or a topic than to ask them to teach it. “Make sure you’re being respectful. It takes a lot of guts to get up in front of your classmates and present.” Grade 7 Math Teacher April Lucas reminded her class as she randomly pulled a group number. For the last week, students working in small groups have prepared lessons on units they studied over the course of the year. There were three criteria each group was required to meet, providing plenty of wiggle room for creativity:
- Create a lesson on your assigned unit.
- Have a summative. For example, hand out an “exit ticket” or homework assignment.
- Engage the whole class with an activity or game like Jeopardy or Blooket.
- Similar Figures
- Proportional Reasoning and Percents
- Rational Number Operations
- Expressions, Equations, and Inequalities
- Circles
- Surface Area and Volume
- Probability
- Data Analysis & Statistics
Ms. Lucas describes this process as one of the most powerful ways for a group to review together, saying, “Sometimes when students become the teachers, they can explain and teach a concept in a different way than I would think to, and it ends up being that much more meaningful for the class. It’s always exciting to see the kids really showing off what they’ve learned over the course of the year!”
For the remainder of this week, all three of Ms. Lucas’ Grade 7 Math classes are presenting their assigned units. She plans to pick the most helpful games and play them again in preparation for their last summative assessment of the 2022/23 year.
