Experience First

To prepare for today’s review game, print multiple copies of the problem set. There should be enough copies for each group to have one set. Cut up the problems and arrange them in your classroom somewhere for easy access. Prepare a set of roughly 20-30 sticky notes by writing a point value on the back of them (we use pencil so they can’t see through it) and stick them to a poster or whiteboard. I write positive values between 0 and 10 on most of them but a few higher ones (15 and 20) and some negative ones, including one negative 20.

Arrange students in groups of 3 or 4. Each group should come up with a team name and write it on the board. They will be keeping track of their points.

Group members take turns coming up to the teacher to grab a problem. They work on this at their desks with their group members and bring it up to you to check. If it is incorrect, you will simply say “No” and send them back to try again. If the answer is correct they have a choice to make: will they choose a sticky note for their own team or for a different team? They randomly select a sticky note to determine how many points they earn for doing that problem. If they have chosen to give the points to another team, they can look at the value and THEN decide which team to assign it to. What makes this interesting is of course that there are some “stinky feet” in the mix and they could potentially lose points. I do not tell my students the distribution of positive versus negative points. They must then send a different group member up to grab the next problem. You do not have to hand them out in any particular order.

The game ends when there are no more sticky notes left, or after an allotted time.

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Formalize Later

Students are using these problems to prepare for tomorrow’s checkpoint. You may wish to spend the last ten minutes of class discussing commonly missed problems. In particular, our students struggled with problems B and F, forgetting about the second triangle with SSA, and having some difficulty applying their knowledge to the more conceptually worded true/false questions.