Every Class is Different ... Very Different

We are soon coming to an end in our semester and this week I have started the review process with my grade 11 university math classes. I have two sections this semester. The first day of the review I sent a few minutes discussing how I would manage my time if I were them and what I would recommend they do to prepare for a math exam. At this point in their educational career I give the students quite a bit of leeway in how they study. As such, after my few minute talk I set them loose to sort through their tests and start on the large set of review questions, in a very individualized manner. I sat back for a minute and watched my class get to work, and noticed something very interesting in the way my two classes approached this time. My morning class got right down to work, either by starting directly into some problems or by review tests and making a plan. The class was very quiet and looked like what you might think a productive classroom would look like. During my afternoon class about 75% of the class proceeded to take out a rats nest of a binder and start to clean and organize a mess of notes and homework sheets. I was overwhelmed by the number of grade 11 students who could not find their assessments from units past, or even the note on trigonometric identities from last week!

I am not sure if this is a case of my morning class not caring about organization or my afternoon class being way less organized... or some of both. This experience really showed me how different two classes can be, even when they have the same teacher and virtually same educational experience.

Secondarily it made me think that I need to talk to even my grade 11s about organizing their math binder... maybe on the agenda for the first week of second semester.

Learning to Help, Helping to Learn

This week in my grade 9 math class I came across an issue for the first time. We are starting to review for our provincial standardized test coming up (we can debate standardized tests another time). Just before the holiday break we did a practice test and this week we were taking up the solutions. As part of this I had the students paired up (our desks are always in pairs). One particular student did quite well on the test and her desk partner and friend did not do as well. The activity was framed around the partners helping each other "so we can all do well on the actual test". A few minutes into them working on comparing their answers this girl was on her phone and disengaged. When I talked to her about it she said "I already did this, why should I have to look at it again" and "she can figure it out" when referring to her friend attempting to solve the problems. I thought this student would want to help their friend do well on the test and then get the added benefit of explaining their thinking to their friend. As the interaction continued I found myself at a loss to convince this student that it was in theirs and their friend's best interests for them to help each other.

Has anyone else seen this issue? I am not sure how to "make" these students want to help each other...