I started student teaching last week; it's exciting to have students in the classroom after all the training we've been doing with other staff. Due to all the interventions that my middle school puts in place, we've been mainly focused on procedural stuff in the beginning and we haven't been able to do math yet. We did a group ball toss activity to learn names: the students enjoyed it, and it helped me remember most of the students' names on the second day.
In the seventh grade classes, we had groups of 4 students work on a puzzle that spelled TEAM. It was not obvious that the puzzle pieces spelled a word, so several groups tried to fit all the pieces into one shape. Only one group out of each class got the word spelled out in the 10 minutes that we gave them to work on it. We used this opportunity to discuss what works well to solve problems as a group: everyone helping, trying different strategies, drawing in each person in the group. My teacher gave the students guidelines about how to work in a group, and showed a powerpoint that detailed conversation tips for groupwork. One ground rule that she stipulated that I would not have automatically thought of was that every person in the group needs to agree on their question before they ask the teacher for guidance. This encourages the students to talk among themselves before turning to outside sources for assistance. I noticed a couple of groups that did not include everyone, but the majority of students seem to have experience working within groups and shared the process.
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