One of the most effective teaching methods I have encountered - ever - is a good ole' competition. In particular, I love doing competitions on a Friday. Student mood is always good: the weekend is waiting in the bushes and dreams of sleeping in and hours of Facebook are at hand. As a side note, the vast majority of students say when I ask if they have any cool plans for this weekend "not really." Bunch of boring little tykes those St. David's ones are.
In any event, kids are a little extra restless on a Friday and so I had the fortune of running some sort of problem-solving activity or competition in 3 of my 4 classes today. They split into teams of 2 and got a white board. I posted a problem on the board and dramatically revealed it. Before doing so, the kids knew that the first group to get it right would earn the best thing I could give them: my laptop. So the kids went hard to work for me, sweating out the problem with their partner. The rule was if they submitted and got it wrong, they were out permanently. Thus, there was an extra incentive for being careful. They also had to show their work. OK so I gave a piece of candy to each member of the first group to finish. No laptops were harmed.
Incredibly, both classes with this competition were able to get 2 challenging, never-seen-before problems done in 12 minutes total. I was so impressed with them. Not only did it shake away the boredom of lecture, it also got them doing some problem solving mental reps. Furthermore, they were communicating like pros. I saw kids discussing strategy, saying things like "you can't use that equation, we don't know the final velocity" and "can we assume the final position is also zero?" Not only that, they got so INTO the physics. Honestly, it was adorable.
Fellow teachers - I encourage you to use competition whenever you can. Do you have any great stories of doing this in your class? I'd love to know.
I love this idea. I use very cheesy science posters as the prize! With every shipment of chemicals, I ask for some extra "free" safety posters from the company, and give them away as prizes. I was a little short on laptops! You must have an enormous budget! Anyway, I understand that some of these posters are hung with pride in dorm rooms after the students graduate and go on to college. It never ceases to amaze me how a good competition motivates students. I wish I had more class time for fun like this! It is truly a great learning tool.
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