understanding

Last week I described the review presentations that my students are doing this week. Today was one of the most wildly varying days I’ve ever experienced. Surprisingly, my “less able” geometry classes are the ones that did best. Students were extremely attentive to their peers, took good notes (on my graphic organizer), and actually got involved with the math. I had one student say to me,

This makes your class way more interesting. We should do this every day.

But the thing that really impressed me was hearing students challenge each other to make up and try harder versions of the same problems. They are usually not competitive about that sort of thing at all — maybe because they’re never engaged enough. Anyway, around lunch time I was ready to write a glowing report.

Then, my “good” class came in and totally trainwrecked. I’m not sure what went wrong, but I had kids heckling each other, kids taking 10 minutes to write on the board with their back to the class and then asking, “OK, any questions?” and kids who were totally lost. The only thing I can think of by way of explanation is that there are a lot of freshmen in that class. So while they’re probably better at the math, they’re less mature and less able to do social interactions in an academic context. Interesting for sure to see this flip-flop of demonstrated ability, just from a change in the way I’m asking them to show knowledge.