Students Become Teachers in Grade 7 Mathematics

May 17, 2023 | All School, Blog, Inquiry, Middle School News, News

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. β€œMake 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:
  1. Create a lesson on your assigned unit.
  2. Have a summative. For example, hand out an β€œexit ticket” or homework assignment.
  3. Engage the whole class with an activity or game like Jeopardy or Blooket.
Each group was assigned one of the following units:
  • Similar Figures
  • Proportional Reasoning and Percents
  • Rational Number Operations
  • Expressions, Equations, and Inequalities
  • Circles
  • Surface Area and Volume
  • Probability
  • Data Analysis & Statistics
The first group selected presented the Expressions, Equations, and Inequalities unit. Much like many of the other groups, they had a short refresher where the class worked out math problems together and then moved on to the prepared game. This group created a Jeopardy challenge, dividing the class into groups of two and three to battle out for the ultimate prize, a small bag of candy.
Ms. Lucas describes this process as one of the most powerful ways for a group to review together, saying, β€œSometimes 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.