#MTBoS12days - Tried and True Strategies

So the title says "Strategies", but I think I am going to share just one.  This one strategy has transformed how my kids work together in their groups.  It has turned group work into great strategy sessions that involve lots of great math discussion and problem solving.

The official name I give my kids for this activity is "Performance Tasks."  These actually started as a result of our new curriculum this year and the first performance tasks I used actually came straight from our book.  The strategy comes more from how I have them actually do the performance task.

It looks like this.  I create the performance task for the end of a Module (our book is broken into Modules with each unit consisting of 2-3 modules, each module is 3-4 lessons).  It's basically just a multi-step word problem that incorporates skills from all of the lessons.  I copy the Performance task onto four different colored papers so that in each group of four students they all have a different color.  I tell them that the performance task counts as a quiz, and they must work together and agree on what to write down as far as work and their thinking as they work the problem.  They should have some sort of graphic or picture that represents the problem or their thinking and justification for their answer.  I stress that each one of them must understand the problem and contribute to working the problem.

Then I tell them that they must make sure that each paper has everything they discussed and worked on because at the end I will only choose one color to grade and the entire group will get the grade of the color that I choose.  I also tell them that whoever's paper I chose must be able to explain to me and defend their thinking for that problem.  It's truly magic.  The discussion that has occurred over these performance tasks has been amazing.  If someone in their group doesn't understand, the others are teaching them until they get it.  They argue and bicker over what should be included in the justification and what should be left out.  They look at each other's graphs and discuss them and how they should look.

At the end of the period, after I pick up their papers, I put the four colors in a bucket and have a student draw the color to be graded in front of the class.  This way there is no question about how I chose the color to be graded.

I absolutely love these days that we do performance tasks.  I have 100% participation in class, great math discussions and peer teaching going on and the added bonus of only having to grade one fourth of the papers I would normally have to grade.

Let me know if you try this and how it works for you.