Save it for a Rainy Day

Level 3 Calculus last period on a rainy day. I had planned to explain how to incorporate ratio word problems into constraints, for Linear Programming 3.2 (AS91574), but during lunchtime I decided that I did not want to spend the end of the day standing in front of the whiteboard. Instead I quickly put together a cooperative learning activity, something I am trying to use more this year, to consolidate our learning.

I chose two questions from Nulake Linear Programming 3.2, put them on an A4 doc, printed out 4 copies, labelled each question page A, B, C and D and chopped them up using the guillotine.

Questions taken from Nulake Linear Programming 3.2

The idea was that there were going to be four groups (A, B, C and D), but due to a few students being away it ended up only being two groups - girls versus boys.

'Do you want to make this a competition, or a group activity?'
      'Competition!'
'How many hints should I give each group?'
      'No hints!'
'Should I help out by putting steps on the board?'
      'No Steps!'

Students wanted to challenge themselves.

The pieces of paper given out to each team covered two different problems - one about a food store and one about a media retailer. To complete the challenge quicker each of the groups split up to work on both problems at the same time. The students quickly identified that one problem was harder than the other.

The teams within the teams both finished the easy problem after about 25 minutes and then helped out their other team members with harder problem.

The food store question confused both of the groups because chicken nuggets and chicken pieces were similar words but represented different things. It meant that the students had to clearly identify their variables and I believe helped develop for their problem solving skills.

The students enjoyed the activity and also made connections with between Maths and Science:
      'It's like physics - when one goes up, the other goes down'

I will look at more ways to do cooperative learning activities and I am interested to see how I can recreate this activity digitally to allow for automatic feedback.