Do you let your students do math in groups?

Question

When I was a student I used to love doing my high school math in a group. We would do each question alone, and when we were done the question we would compare answers. If we got conflicting answers we would look through each others step by step to discover the problem. I found this worked really well in high school, but I teach elementary, and do you think it would work at all with them, or are the math problems to simplistic at this level?

Answer 1

I would mix it up. It does NOT work for everybody. I would say at elementary lets not get too cutesy and clever. Just get the basics hammered into their little skulls. They say in teacher school that Kill and Drill is out. but I and my middle school colleagues will agree that Kill and Drill in grade school makes our jobs much easier at the higher levels.

Answer 2

cooperative learning is a very effective learning tool...research cooperative learning