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.
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.