A Teacher's Ruminations

Slicing every day in March!! Today we did expert groups in math for approximately 20 minutes. It was my first attempt at organizing students into self-selected groups with one student responsible for teaching the rest of the group a particular math skill. First, I asked my students to think of something in math they felt comfortable teaching someone else. Then, they wrote this down on a sticky note. Next, I collected the sticky notes and selected four students to lead four different groups. Finally, my students sorted themselves into groups by math topic. At first, my students were reluctant to write down something in math they felt they could teach their classmates. They were reluctant to play along with me because their roles were not clear, even though I had prefaced this activity by saying that we were going to  experiment  with a new structure. In other words, we were bound to make mistakes and flounder our way through this event. Afterwards, we would talk about...