Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Yesterday in my trigonometry classes I gave them review problems for the quiz on Tuesday.

Some were the expression/conversion items of one (or more) trigonometric function into another and the others were for the verification of equations involving trigonometric functions, all of which I had made up by myself instead of relying on the book, which, I realized, merely repeated certain basic problems.

I still made it into group work. But this time, just make things interesting, I said that the first ones to solve the problems would get bonus points in the quiz. That seemed to be enough incentive to get them to work.

I gave each class five problems total, which I set them to finish in twenty minutes or less. When the time ran out and they still had not finished a problem, I would move on to the next one without giving the answer. This, I said, was because there’s a possibility the item may show up in the quiz and I would like to give them the opportunity of solving in themselves when they review at home.

But I will be giving them the solutions to some (not all) of the problems on Monday morning for them to photocopy at their own leisure and convenience.

Back to the game though: for each problem correctly solved, the first one to submit their paper would get four points (or five, depending on the number of groups total in each class). The second would get three points and so on.

After several problems, the group with the most points would get a five percent bonus in the quiz. The second highest would get four percent and… so on.

The unfairness of the whole deal though, is that those who have the same skill level will usually have bonded in the first few weeks of classes, and had all agreed to be in the same group by the time I asked them to form groups. If not that, there is one overachieving member of the group who will answer all of the groups’ questions so that he would get the bonus, and the others are just barnacles.

Either way, I wasn’t surprised anymore when the same groups consistently got the top points for each question, while others trailed horribly, and one in the first class and two in the second class, got no points whatsoever.

I wonder if it would have been different if I had done my alternative setup, which was like a problem solving relay where three of the groups’ members would be in different corners of the room, and asked to supply one step in the solution of each problem. That would have seen their skill in coordination, but would have been hell to operate, even with some members of the Young Educators’ Society around to help me.

And of course there was Deiv who would jump up excitedly and run to where I was to give me his (their) solution, even when I said he could just raise his hand to be acknowledged. It was also because of him that I had to implement the “all submitted answers are final” rule, as well as the “no asking the teacher if your answer is correct”.

Besides that, there were the absences due to preparations for the Acquaintance Party in the evening, which I would have to relay next time.